U.S. man sentenced to jail for selling illegal Xbox mod-chips

April 11, 2003

zwieber used our news submit to tell us that David Rocci has been sentenced to five months in prison and fined $ 28,500 for selling illegal Xbox mod-chips via the iSONEWS website.

David Rocci, of Blacksburg, Virginia, was sentenced late last week in federal court in Virginia after pleading guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to violate copyright laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that has opposed the DMCA as being overly restrictive on free speech and the fair-use rights of consumers, said Rocci was one of the first people to be sent to prison for violating the DMCA.

He was charged with importing and selling about 450 Enigmah "mod" chips, after-market processors designed to be attached to the Xbox's motherboard and circumvent its security measures.

Rocci had faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $ 500,000.

As you
probably know the iSONEWS website domain was also seized by the U.S. government but can now be reached via a number of different URL's, including www.izonews.com. Read the complete article here.

Source: Reuters