Student Arrested for Modding Consoles | Hacker News Reader

Student Arrested for Modding Consoles

nbcdfw.com

13 pointsGoronmon15 comments

My favorite quote from the article:

“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,”

Last I heard it was also contributing to terrorism.

Im still struggling to get to grips that when I buy (license) software I can't disassemble or modify it. But hardware?

You can probably do whatever you want to your hardware. They're trying to stop businesses forming around piracy. Like the article said, there's a lot of money in pretending bits can't be copied.

it's not in this article, but he wasn't arrested for modding his own hardware. he was running a home business where he was essentially selling modded hardware.

from: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/game-console-jailbr...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Console modification issues sound unrelated to their task.

"Customs" -> key word

because of custom modifications? ;P

Pirated games come largely from China.

Not really. Pirated games are largely downloaded from the Internet.

Right. The real issue is that some consoles cannot play these downloaded games without mod chips, which the guy imported and resold. The DMCA makes it illegal to "disseminate" devices that circumvent copy-protection, which gets Customs involved.

And THIS is why iPhone Dev Team only ask for food donation.

None of those numbers would hold up to any level of scrutiny. I don't have time to debunk it, but I would put money where my mouth is.

Was he really just modding the systems or also installing games for people?

Seems like someone squealed to the Po-Po, if I were him I'ld love to get my hands on them.

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