X-Box pirate gets jail time and huge fine

September 18, 2005

The owner of a major retailer of pirated games and modded Xboxes called Pandora's Cube has been caught by Washington authorities and was sentenced to five months of prison with three years of supervised release, including five months of home confinement. Besides that he was also fined nearly $250.000 and has to complete 80 hours of community service. Also other employees of the company were caught and received jail time and have to complete community service.

The Pandora's Cube employees modified Microsoft Xbox video game consoles, in violation of the DMCA, and turned them into what Pandora's Cube called 'Super Xboxes." These 'Super Xboxes" were designed solely to defeat the Xbox's copyright protection system and permit the user to avoid purchasing and paying for legitimate Xbox video games. The Pandora's Cube employees also loaded illegal copies of video games onto the hard drives of the Super Xboxes, in violation of federal copyright law.

While many here agree that making money of copying instead of making personal backups is not done, one can also argue how far punishments of these people should go. At least a big fine is what someone deserves who makes money on a way like this. Read the entire story here.

Source: TheEESA.com