Three owners of a videogame game shop in Los Angeles have been changed for copyright infringement for selling Xbox game consoles that have been modded and fitted with a large hard drive containing pirated games. As the mod chip also breaks the copy protection measures on the Xbox, they effectively violate the infamous DMCA also.
The investigation involved undercover agents purchasing a modded Xbox, which came fitted with a hard drive containing 77 pirated game titles for $265. The three men are due to appear in court late January; however their shop still remains open in the meantime. If convicted, they could face up to 5 years in jail.
While most
mod chips cause issues with the DMCA by circumventing copy protection, mod chips also have legitimate uses such as removing region locking as well as allowing the use of 3rd party software. However, as the shop fitted the modded Xbox consoles with hard drives containing pirated games, their opponents are obviously not going to take this lightly.
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According to a complaint filed in LA federal court, ACME Game Store owners Jason Jones and Jonathan Bryant sold systems, which had been modified by Pei "Patrick" Cai, loaded with mod chips and larger hard disks, allegedly violating the ever-popular Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However the key thing to note here, it would appear, is that an investigation into the trio's activities involved the purchase of a modded Xbox for $265 with 77 pirated games installed - something that casts a much darker shadow over their activities than simply modifying the consoles. |
While many consumers agree that mod chips should be allowed for the legitimate purposes, in this case the owners were clearly doing something wrong in that they would have got themselves into trouble even if they found a way of offering Xbox consoles loaded with pirated games without the use of Mod chips. This would be much like selling PCs preloaded with pirated software.
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Source: Game Industry - News
