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ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Console Modder
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:35 PM
from the mebbe-subtlety-would-have-been-a-virtue-here dept.
from the mebbe-subtlety-would-have-been-a-virtue-here dept.
Donkey Konga writes "A San Diego man was arrested after a raid turned up over a thousand counterfeit games, modded consoles and mod chips. Frederick Brown 'had allegedly built up a thriving business selling counterfeit games and installing mod chips, having advertised his services on Craigslist and other web sites. He allegedly sold pirated games from his Vista, CA residence as well, including both discs and hard drives preloaded with games that he would install into customers' Xboxes and Xbox 360s.' After the ESA learned of his activities, they contacted San Diego law enforcement and the San Diego Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Unit led the raid on his home. '"CATCH was very receptive to the evidence we brought them and were able to put the investigation together in very short order," ESA VP Ric Hirsch told Ars.' Brown now faces 10 felony counts related to selling pirated games and modding consoles."
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Games: ESA, EA Caught Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries 86 comments
With the whitewashing of Wikipedia now an easily-reviewable record, it's been noted that games-related organizations are not above tweaking their public image online. Joystiq notes that EA, for example, is unabashed about removing founder Trip Hawkins from their entry. More ominous edits from the Entertainment Software Association are reported by GamePolitics. The organization, which you may recall backing the recent raids on mod chippers, has made a concerted effort to cast mod chips in a negative light. " In one paragraph, someone at ESA deleted a nuanced discussion of mod chip legality, replacing it with a flat assertion that mod chips are illegal. Less than a minute later, a lengthy section on the positive uses of mod chips was deleted, as was a notation that the US Supreme Court has not yet dealt with the DMCA. Finally, a sentence stating that mod chips are legal in Australia was removed."
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Vista residence? (Score:5, Funny)
The dummy turned off UAC (Score:5, Funny)
"You door is about to be kicked in, Cancel or Allow?"
Parent
Okay... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I understand the pirated games part, but how can he possibly be charged with anything about modding consoles? Sure, the console manufacturer doesn't want you to do it, and (in the case of the Xbox 360) they'll go to great lengths to prevent you from doing it (that's their "right"). They can't make it illegal though, can they? That's just stupid.
Hello, DMCA? The modded console is a copyright circumvention device.
Re: (Score:2)
Modded consoles are not only used for copyright circumvention, but to enable the hardware to do other stuff that it couldn't do before. Since I bought the console, I own the hardware, I should be allowed to extract any added value from it I want, right?
I don't disagree. Yet the law is what it is.
Re:Okay... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Okay... (Score:4, Interesting)
The use of modchips is a very gray line and using a modchip in and of itself is not a crime even under DMCA... most are sold blank or with "legal" firmware that does nothing to aid in circumvention of protection mechanisms. Xbox 1 chips specifically come pre-loaded with "Cromwell" bioses that are based on Linux and don't actually allow the playback of backup discs.
The bioses that do allow the playback of backup discs are hacked version of the original bioses or development bioses, and themselves are considered pirated material (like the Evox and X2 series of hacked bioses for the Xbox 1).
Seeing as I know someone who was recently arrested for selling pirated Xbox games "and installing modchips" He was only ever charged with the piracy issues... It's my understanding that most of the time they'll report about the installation work in the papers but it's so far over the heads of the police and prosecutors that they don't even try to make a case for the modchip stuff... it's just too much work to make a sound case for it when they've got X hundred counts of piracy that they can easily nail them with.
Parent
The headline is a little misleading (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The headline is a little misleading (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it's a stupid law. But it's still the law, and if you break the law (and get caught!) you get arrested.
I have to wonder if they guy -wanted- to be arrested, though. Advertising illegal activities on Craig's List? Jeeeez. Maybe he could put posters on the Police Headquarters' doors next time, instead.
So, WHY would he want to get arrested? There's only 1 way to get a law off the books: Fight it in court. Yes, it's stupid, too. You have to actually break the law you think is unfair, do jailtime, and then beat it in court (probably several courts) before you can get the law removed.
This is true no matter how stupid the law is, and that's why there's still a law in FL that makes it illegal to blow bubbles underwater, or to lead your elephant down Main Street backwards in Maine. (I may have the places wrong, but they exist.)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's a stupid law. But it's still the law, and if you break the law (and get caught!) you get arrested.
There's no need to be patronizing in your replies, it's quite rude. Most everybody here is well aware of copyright law, I wanted to know what law specifically prevents somebody from modding their console?
So, WHY would he want to get arrested? There's only 1 way to get a law off the books: Fight it in court. Yes, it's stupid, too. You have to actually break the law you think is unfair, do jailtime, and then beat it in court (probably several courts) before you can get the law removed.
I highly doubt this is a case of Civil Disobedience. If he was only modding boxes, I could maybe see your point, but having thousands of dollars worth of pirated stuff is something different.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm sure he was just a stupid criminal, in it only for the money. Why? Because he was committing massive copyright infrigement too. If the whole thing was a ploy to dispute the "circumvention device" parts of the DMCA, he would have only installed modchips, but not distributed games also.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A simple mod-chip that has not been reflashed can not be considered illegal, even under the DMCA.
Re:The headline is a little misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
These stories are always the same: somebody does something irrefutably illegal and is arrested and charged, but one or two details about the case are in a gray area, so everyone goes apeshit about the minor details. Find me a story where someone is charged over ONLY the minor details and I'll stop considering Zonk nothing more than an inflammatory troublemaker.
[/rant]
Parent
Misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
WRIGHT, WRONG, and right, (C), and right (the direction).
Re: (Score:3)
"Counterfeiter" is misleading too. After all, those are the real games; they're just illegally duplicated and distributed. A completely correct title would have to read something more like "ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Copyright-Infringer of Games."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about it, indeed? He didn't copy it! If he had, then he would possibly be "counterfeiting" the item, because he would have been trying to pass it off as the original. However, he was instead providing these games as files on a hard disk, making no attempt to disguise the fact that they were unauthorized copies, presented in (explicitly) a different form than the original thing. That's why I say it doesn't q
Stupid... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why don't you just go ahead and put a sign on you lawn proclaiming your ill-goten warez? I'm all for Mod-chips (for import gaming) and pirating games off BitTorrent (if a game is hard to find), but when you make a business out of it, then you've just crossed the line.
I wonder when car manufacturers... (Score:4, Funny)
Mod Chips shouldn't be illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand that this guy was also selling unauthorized copies of games and HDDs preloaded with games, and he should have to face penalties for that, but why should I be disallowed to by a mod chip simply because I "could" pirate games with it? Should I be disallowed from buying a computer simply because I could copy music, games, or applications with it? I have two Xboxes in my house that are modded, but only so I can use them as media centers and to let me and my daugter play games we own without risking damage to the original DVDs.
The DMCA sucks nuts.
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Preloaded XBox 360 hard drives? (Score:3)
He's not the only stupid one (Score:3, Funny)
In my little college town, there was a guy who owned his own small business, doing mostly PC repairs / upgrades. He acquired a reputation in my geeky-friend circle as being a little shady and a lot overpriced.
Apparently he also started modding XBoxes on the side. I met a neighbor that had one that he'd worked on, and as a result of the mod you'd get an extra splash screen when booting your XBox. I'm futzing the details, but the splash screen said something like this:
I'll mod your console too for $35!
Contact me at 1234 Main St, (999)-999-9999.
I was dumbfounded that he'd leave such evidence on something that he had to have known was illegal. It made me want to buy one and forward it to Microsoft just for spite, because it seemed a tragic injustice that someone could do something so stupid and never have to deal with the results.
I never got around to it, though, because then he skipped town without paying the last X weeks of back wages to his employees. As far as I know no-one ever found him, but I didn't pay much attention after the first bit of news.