In a surprise move for the UK legal system, the Court of Appeal ruled that mod chips designed for games consoles do not contravene the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (2003 Amendment). Accordingly, the charges levelled against Neil Stanley Higgs - for which he was found guilty six months ago - have been quashed on appeal and he was awarded full costs.
Mod chips are hardware modification boards that by-pass the copy protection systems of the console, and thus enable people to make unrestricted backups of the discs they own. However, it is plain that such a facility is sometimes abused and game piracy through the illegal distribution of the disc images is not uncommon. For this reason the games console manufacturers are consistently against their manufacture and use.
Following his earlier conviction for importing the hardware, Higgs - trading under the name of 'Mr ModChips' - had argued that any copyright infringement was carried out by the person copying the original disc and not by the hardware modification itself. As an analogy, Higgs claimed he was no more responsible for infringing copyright than, for example, Dell would be if someone made a backup of a copyright movie using one of their laptops.
Interestingly, the Italian and Australian courts have made similar rulings in the past, but later changed the law to make them illegal.
You can read the original story, as reported on the specific modchip forum here:
