A bit off topic, but GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that a Spanish Judge has ruled that Xbox mod chips are legal in Spain . Mod chips allow the console to play DVDs and games from other countries; they also allow users of chipped consoles to play copied software.
The ruling came after Guardia Civil tried charging a Barcelona games shop with offering its customers to modify their Xbox and Playstation 2 consoles to play games and DVDs from anywhere in the world. The modification also let customers play games that had been downloaded off the internet according to diagrams found on the premises. The judge said that even though these modifications might constitute a crime against the intellectual property of the manufacturers there was loop hole in the law that meant this was legal. The penal code article 270 describes "the manufacture, distribution or possession of means to crack computer programme security codes". This law however does not include video game consoles or equipment designed to run image and sound software, so he threw the case out.
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A Spanish judge has ruled that modifications to games consoles to allow them to play DVDs and games from other countries "are not illegal".According to El Paés, the ruling comes after the Guardia Civil charged Barcelona video games shop Innovagames with offering its clients "alteration of Play Station 2 and X-Box games consoles to allow them to read games from other parts of the world or downloaded directly from the Internet... by carrying out modification of their components as per diagrams found on the premises".
The loophole exists in article 270 of the penal code, which mentions "the manufacture, distribution or possession of means to crack computer programme security codes". It does not, however, cover "components of video games players nor, in general, equipment designed to run image or sound software".The judge concluded, therefore, that he must reject the Guardia Civil"s case. |
The full story can be found over at The Register. I think it's unfair that companies produce consoles / electronics that lock users to a certain region. It means longer waiting for titles and possibly even the titles being more expensive. If companies like Microsoft and Sony don't want their consoles being modified with mod chips to play other regions then they shouldn't put region lock outs on their consoles. I'm sure no region lock outs would reduce the amount of users installing mod chips which would mean less users getting pirate software.
Source: The Register
