Legality Of Modding An XBOX

ChipZilla

Hi, forgive me if this seems off-topic - I didn't notice a Legal Affairs forum anywhere.

I was looking through the rules in the For Sale forum and noticed the bit in the rules about selling modded consoles. It says it is legal to mod consoles, except for XBOXes:

All mod chips and machines that have been modded are prohibited from been sold here. Although it is not illegal to mod chip a console in Ireland/EU (except the X-Box)

What makes modding the XBOX different to a PS2 from a legal point of view?

Tivoli

just a guess but maybe its becuase a modded xbox has a region free and macro vision free dvd player


i can't see why hardware you bought isn't yours to do what you want with.

but...

i totally agree with keeping it off the" for sale" forum, you'll just have lads buying xbox's, moding them then selling them at a profit, boards is a community and shouldn't be used for making money

thelad

I know that it is now illegal to sell modchips in uk whether it be xbox or ps2 as they have copyrighted code on the chips... xbox scene has changed though as they now ship them with a linux based bios which gets around the legality issue and thus they can openly sell xbox chips with no fear of been lagged... they are starting to clamp down on ps2 chip sellers in uk lately but as far as I know Irish law is not up to date on this issue despite getting pressure from EU to change copyright laws..

ChipZilla

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't going touting for business or anything I just wondered cos I'm not long back over here after living in Glasgow for a few years. There seemed to be a thriving chipping and "backup" industry compared to here - I thought the laws might be a bit different. I dunno if the macrovision/region-free thing has anything to do with it - PS2s can be made region-free too with a bit more soldering than an XBOX. Now that thelad mentions it, it's probably more to do with the code on the BIOS. I should have thought of that myself :rolleyes: Thanks to ye both for replying

thelad

I take it you know the barrows fairly well then (-;

ChipZilla

Been there once or twice alright to buy backups of my legally held software, and to have my XBOX adjusted to run Linux

Giblet

You own the X-Box, you can do anything you want to it. The legal issue is to do with copied games and such.

ColmOT [MSFT]

When you MOD the XBox you are changing software which you do not own , but which you have licenced.

This is the legal point (AFAIK)

Any reverse engineering of the XBox software is deemed illegal because of the licence you agree to by powering it on.

ChipZilla

Hmm, I must check my XBOX manual - I don't recall seeing anything about agreeing to licence the software (ie. contents of the BIOS) when I power on for the first time. I'll post back with my findings;)

elmer

if you use a cromwell bios on your xbox chip then there is no illegal code - it was written from scratch - the whole legality is grey - very grey - and if you boot from cd and don't touch the hd then you won't be modifying software either - region free dvd player is an app your downloading which is compiled with the microsoft xdk which is copyrighted and that makes it illegal - i don't think there is anything illegal about macrovision of region removal. due to a recent course case it's legal to mod in italy

Nige

ChipZilla

Well, I've checked the copyright section in the XBOX manual, and the only thing which is expressly forbidden is the reverse engineering of the Macrovision copy protection (Although this conflicts with what elmer has just said. Just goes to show what the law knows). There is no mention of the owner having accepted any licence agreement by switching on the XBOX for the first time. I was half-expecting to see something on the last page of the manual saying something like "By opening the sealed bag this manual comes in, you give Bill the right to come round your house any time he wants to make sure your XBOX doesn't have a 300Gb Maxtor full of warezd games. Doh! You've already opened the bag - too bad"


Some interesting articles I've just found:

http://ipjustice.org/media/release20040112_en.shtml <- Elmer's story (It's about Playstations - I know. But the same argument could be used for Microsoft. What judge is going to know the difference between a PS2 and an XBOX anyway? And Italy has implemented the new EU Copyright Directive. Ireland has not. Hmmm.)

"The Bolzano Court ruled that the new law does not apply because the modified chips are not primarily intended to circumvent copyright protection measures," explained University of Milano Law Professor Giovanni Ziccardi. "The court held that the aim of the modified chips is not to create infringing copies, but rather to fight Sony’s monopolistic business practices and to allow consumers to exercise a fuller range of their rights such as reading imported discs, back-up copies of games, and other lawful but unauthorized discs," said Ziccardi, IP Justice Board Member in Italy.

The judge said that Sony put into Playstation consoles "absurd limitations". For example the consoles can only read discs from one geographical region and can only read discs manufactured by Sony. According to the court’s decision, Sony divided the world into three areas, and the Italian Playstation consoles cannot read discs, for example, intended for the American market, and vice-versa. Besides the region-coding restrictions, Sony’s consoles can only read original discs, so many legitimate copies cannot be read by Sony’s equipment either.

http://www.fipr.org/copyright/guide/ireland.htm <- I like this one better though. It's about Ireland's forthcoming (read "probably never") implementation of the EUCD.

Typically Ireland misses the deadline for transposing and implementing EU directives by 18 months to 3 years. Therefore, the missed deadline for the Copyright Directive implementation comes as no surprise.

Current copyright law in Ireland is among the most liberal in Europe.

Under current Irish law, any act to further the use of a copyrighted work under the premise of fair dealing is legal. It is not clear how the anti-circumvention restrictions in the Directive will affect this. It will be difficult to separate circumvention for the legal purpose of fair dealing from circumvention that illegally infringes copyright.

And the Italians kicked Sony's argument out of court? I'd like to see a test case here...