Student Faces Ten-Year Sentence for Modding Consoles

[Raidou]

A college student in the U.S. is looking at a possible ten-year prison sentence after being arrested for the dastardly crime of modding game consoles.

"Playing with games in this way is not a game - it is criminal," said I.C.E. agent Robert Schoch. "Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers."

Read the article at The Escapist: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.128965
5 Aug 2009 4:19 am


What do you folks think? Do you think in the digital world of today, modding is a wrong?

IMO, I think the sentence is kind of harsh as compared to big crimes such as rape, terrorists, drugs dealing.

[Less Than Liz]

Not that I don't think ten years in jail is excessive, or that I don't have my beef with the piracy police, but you're conveniently leaving out the part where he was doing this for money so folks could play pirated games.

[Raidou]

liz, i do agree that the making money part is absolutely wrong. i just feel sad that the boy got a heavy sentence.

[Luisfe]

If he was doing it for his own console for personal use, I would see a very heavy problem with that.
But since he was providing the service to others and charging for it... Very excessive sentence, it is ridiculous.

[freeflow^]

well through my travels around the world I have come to realize that in more countries than not piracy is commonplace. Commonplace in the way that you see it on every major street in every major country. South America, Africa, and Asia all have no piracy laws, and literally millions of people have profited off of pirating other people?s creative works. I can see people say ?Well he wasnt in these countries, so what are you getting at?? My point is that my interpretation of the piracy law is to protect the artistic creations of people around the world, but isnt it kind of a dumb law when millions of people around the world, probably more people than not, do it with no consequence? Add that to the reality of how other media, like movies and music are so easily obtained for free and passed around with no way to track and catch the downloader, or source, then you have some big ideological problems IMO.

so ya, I think the penalty is harsh.

[moogle]

So having a modchip is legal, personally installing a modchip is legal, but doing it for money is illegal? Where's the logic in that? Reminds me of prostitution laws.

[Genopuff]

thats what happens when you get caught

[Nickoten]

Pretty shitty. The kid's being made an example of with a sentence that big. I doubt he'll actually serve that long, though.

Anyway mod chips have use outside of piracy so stuff like this has always pissed me off. Want to mod your 360 so you can play that region-locked Japanese game? Sorry, that's illegal, and poses a significant health risk to you and those around you.

Anyway, legally speaking Moogleman I believe that circumventing the protection of the devices is against the law, at least to my knowledge. You paid for the product, it belongs to you, but heaven forbid you decide to short a circuit on your DS so you can play Nethack on it!

[Trillian]

That sucks. Some dude in Tokyo only got 30 months in prison for distributing pirating games online (http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20090803p2a00m0na009000c.html). That's pretty harsh in comparison.