Comments on: Neil Higgs, aka Mr Modchips, ‘guilty’

By: Sketch

Sketch — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:18:48 +0000

> > > 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?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:04:18 +0000

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?”

By: Sanji Himura

Sanji Himura — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:30:08 +0000

Umm, this is in the UK, not the US.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:49:28 +0000

“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.