Mod chips ruled legal in Australia

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.[/quote]

I’m not aware of a console manufacturer ever going after an individual, retailer, or producer of mod chips in the US. Modded systems obviously void your warranty and console manufacturers do other things to discourage mod chip usage, but they don’t legally oppose it unless there are patent issues with the chip.

Sarkus, look into the FBI’s bust of the guy who used to run isonews. He was arrested for selling xbox modchips that contained a modified version of MS’s bios on them. He’s doing time right now, if I recall correctly.

well duh, thats no different than having games on the HD. It is MSs bios.

I think smart people sell them unflashed or whatever.

There is no debate. There are at least four completely legal and reasonable uses for mod chips on the XBox (as an example) that don’t involve piracy.

  1. playing imports
  2. using your XBox as a media center
  3. saving images of your legal games to disk for carting around to LAN games
  4. replacing the hard drive when the goddamn thing breaks and MS tells you too fucking bad

I think even Dave Long has finally agreed that mod chips aren’t always bad.

Nobody has faced legal action for buying a modchip in the US, no. Selling yes, buying no.

Don’t be naive, kids… that doesn’t mean you’re immune. DirecTV got $3500 out of essentially every american who purchased a smartcard programmer from 2001 to the middle of 2003. Smartcard programmers obviously do have other uses than stealing satellite TV, for hobbyists mostly, and it just didn’t make any difference. If you didn’t pay DirecTV their $3500, they would sue your ass.

As far as I know, everybody settled. It was a perversion of justice, an abuse of the judicial system to extort from consumers with no intention of every facing due process.

Will it happen to modchips too? Depends on how many of 'em people buy.