http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4315172.stm
Now here’s hoping that has an effect that reaches elsewhere as well. North America needs more intelligent judges.
So pro-mod = intelligent?
Let’s have this debate again!
Holy FUCK. Australia? Australia has the most draconian copyright laws in the world.
Actually, I was thinking more on the level of regional control for purposes of suckering more money out of consumers.
Saying “Mod chips IS BAD” doesn’t do dick. You can still go get a mod chip if you want pirated games, same as you can still buy pirated games themselves. All making them illegal does is get in the way of people using them for legitimate reasons.
see also: file sharing apps, writable disks, harddrives, burners, flash roms and link cables, etc.
As with any crime, deterrent is possible and effective even when prevention is not. See: padlocks.
And yet, importing games is not actually a crime!
I will not engage in a semantic battle with you.
Seems the real issue is the debate over regionalization. Is such a practice, created and supported by content publishers to protect their distribution system and business model, a legitimate business tool or an infringement on consumer rights? And if it is legitimate, how far should the state go in helping businesses enforce it? If it’s not legitimate, why not, and how far can consumer rights go in dictating business practices?
I’m not aware that mod chips are illegal in the US. That doesn’t mean that the console manufacturers have to support them or that they have to respect people who choose to mod their systems. As such, there is nothing wrong with what the manufacturers do in regards to mod chips.
I rule this thread illegal.
I think region coding is dumb. I understand why they do it, and I dont care that they do it, so long as I can totally fucking ignore that they do it.
I will say having to hit a silly amount of buttons on my dvd player to flip ythe region to another is pretty annoying.
How are console mod chips and different from aftermarket car parts? Nissan and Nismo aren’t the only company that makes parts for your Nissan, for example.
Anything that circumvents a copy-protection scheme is illegal under the DCMA. That might even inlcude Sharpies and shift-keys for certain CD copying methods.
Australia (based on my non-native knowledge) is screwed for DVD & game releases because it’s been put into its own region. Because it’s a small market, some games & movies won’t get released there, and the ones that do get released are prohibitively expensive compared to prices in the US. Modchips as a method of combating regional lock-out are just self-defence against a system that the country really didn’t have a lot of control over.
Cars don’t run on intellectual property. Car parts (even the IC’s) have a primarily mechanical function. Mod chips have no mechanical function, their function is to disable regional lock-outs and copy protection on a console to enable it to use unauthorized (in one way or another) software. This isn’t Mad Katz making a steering wheel for the PS2, which might be closer to your analogy.
IANAL, but I think DMCA only makes a device illegal if circumventing copy protection is its main function. It seems like the Australian courts are asserting that the main purpose of a modchip is in fact circumventing the region lock.
BTW. Does anyone know if region locks are confirmed for all next gen consoles yet? I’m guessing they won’t be changing the system, but think about what a huge boost in consumer goodwill e.g. Nintendo would get if Revolution didn’t have regions.
And amodchip for a region free console would only have one purpose, which might make it less defendable… seems win/win to me except the loss of being sure your game isnt imported.
Australia (based on my non-native knowledge) is screwed for DVD & game releases because it’s been put into its own region.
Australia is its own region for DVDs, but shares the same region code (and PAL TV format) as Europe for games.
R4 actually covers South America and New Zealand as well. Of course, ever since DVD players have been released here they’ve been either region free or (more commonly) multizone which gets around RCE discs.
The whole thing became farcical when Final Fantasy was released here as a Zone 1 DVD with a big yellow sticker on it proclaiming “You need a multizone DVD player in order to play this disc”. (NZ box image).
The bigger issue is the PAL/NTSC split but on that front we win anyway - all modern TV’s in Australia and NZ can play either NTSC or PAL video with no difficulty.
Wow, I can understand New Zealand, but S.A.? What the hell would you have in common with those folks, certainly not the native language.