Neil Higgs, aka Mr Modchips, ‘guilty’
p2pnet news | Games:- Britain’s Neil Stanley Higgs, aka Mr Modchips, said to have earned in excess of £1 million (more than $2 million) from selling mod chips on www.mrmodchips.com and www.mrmodchips.co.uk, has been convicted of console chipping offenses.
This makes him the second person in UK to suffered the fate, says MCV, going on:
“Higgs, 39, was found guilty on three counts of advertising, supplying and selling a modification chip or ‘modchip’, designed to enable people to use illegally copied games in their consoles. In addition to this he was found guilty of 12 counts of possessing 19 chipped games consoles in the course of a business and another 11 counts of possessing ‘Executor’ modchips for Microsoft consoles in the course of a business. And Viper GC chip for Nintendo consoles.”
But he was cleared of four other counts of possessing chipped consoles, “because it was deemed that these were owned by friends and family,” says the story, adding:
“Higgs argued that all 19 of the chipped consoles found in his possession were owned by friends and family, but this was later dismissed by Judge Carole Hagen.
ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, like the gaming industry’s RIAA) was responsible for Higgs ending up in court. .
Higgs, who set up his business in 2002, is appealing the conviction.
Definitely stay tuned.
Also See:
MCV – ‘Chipper’ Who Made£1Million Convicted In Landmark Crown Court Hearing, October 25, 2007
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October 25th, 2007 at 8:49 am
“Higgs, 39, was found guilty on three counts of advertising, supplying and selling a modification chip or ‘modchip’, designed to enable people to use illegally copied games in their consoles.”
Shows what these ignorant bastards know. What about playing back-up copies? What about imports?
Since when is it against the law to provide something that can have any number of non-infringing uses, simply because it’s capable of assisting copyright infringement? Fuck the DMCA, and fuck all these corrupt bastards for bringing these anti-consumer laws into power.
October 27th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Umm, this is in the UK, not the US.
October 27th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Mod chips aren’t only used for illegitimate purposes. One perfectly legit mod chip usage that doesn’t violate the DMCA or similar laws in any way is to turn an Xbox into a machine capable of running Linux. The prosecution of modders is based solely on the premise that mod chips are exclusively used and marketed as devices that allow one to intentionally break copyright laws. Playing out-of-region games is another legitimate use. One can kill their neighbor with a pair of scissors, but we don’t often see prosecutions of scissor salespeople for intentionally selling murder weapons; likewise, BitTorrent is often used to distribute Linux distro images in a faster and less bandwidth (per node) intense manner, yet Comcast and **AA and other groups similarly situated attempt to tear it down based only on the abuses while ignoring the legitimate uses.
I’d love it if some bastards tried to sue or convict me for mod chipping consoles. I’d plop an Xbox with Linux in front of the jury and fire it up, and ask “What’s wrong with me making a computer system able to do this for someone else?”
June 29th, 2008 at 2:18 am
> > > I’d love it if some bastards tried to sue or convict me for mod chipping consoles. I’d plop an Xbox with Linux in front of the jury and fire it up, and ask “What’s wrong with me making a computer system able to do this for someone else?”
ha, you think that would work?