Prosecutors Drop Charges in Xbox 360 Modding Trial

[JDKJ]

But if you were the owner-operator of a recording studio, or a CD manufacturing plant, or a mom 'n' pop record store, etc., etc., forced to shutter your business because of the death of sales in recorded music, then an alternative in live music performance isn't much of an alternative.

So we should have stopped the automobile industry because it put saddliers/stables and horse breeders out of business?

Independent musicians can still make money if they never get a dollar from record sales (and it is now much easier to overcome their biggest problem, obscurity, than ever before).

Independent software engineers don't get paid if their software does not sell.

Does my point remotely resemble anything from which your rhetorical question should logically flow?

My point was made to illustrate the fact that for some facets of the recorded music industry, there is no viable alternate revenue stream once they fall victim to the effect of piracy.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

They had a TRIAL ATTORNEY on the jury?

Is this regular practice in the states?

As far as I understand it, that kind of practice is considered a conflict of interest in the UK to have members of the legal establishment sit in as part of a deciding jury, I could be wrong.. and if I am, please correct me.. it just sounds pretty bad.

(I'm interested in a REAL answer to this.. so, no supposition please, if you don't actually 'know', then any answer you give isn't going to help.)

Anyway.. I certainly give kudos to the Judge for being so upstanding about this, it wasn't something I expected from the US judicial system when corporate entities are involved.

It depends on the state in question generally. Since this was a federal matter, anyone can sit on the jury so long as they do not indicate a predisposition towards the guilt or innocence of the parties involved. A trial lawyer would not, as a result of his profession, have a natural inclination on a verdict. By contrast, a doctor sitting in the jury of a medical malpractice suit would almost certainly raise eyebrows because they have a legitimate conflict of interest as their own livelyhoods will almost certainly be impacted (in some way) as a result of the verdict.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Maybe that'll be the move forward, you rent access to games per week, instead of ever buying anything again.

Of course, that removes anyone without access to good quality internet from the customer base, but I can't see them having any problem giving up genuine customers if it gets them more potential customers from the pirates.

Why on earth wouldn't you sacrifice customers for the chance of some more customers, it works so well with DRM after all.

As has been said, if piracy was the only reason to mod a console, they'd have more of a case, but as it stands, they should go try taking someone to court in the US for selling guns, I've heard they're quite popular in crime, despite being mainly a piece of sporting equipment.

I'm absolutely not in support of piracy, but I'm even more against twisting law to fit prosecuting people for not breaking the law.

It's like how the flood of new anti terror laws over the past few years seem to end up just harrassing and searching people to find a few wraps of marijuana, instead of looking for bombs or a Google map printout of the way to the fertiliser warehouse then the Pentagon.

It's illegal in the UK to photograph a police officer now, which both makes it hard to get evidence if they're acting inappropriately, and also upsets families at their weddings, not being able to hire a photographer. (I may have made up the second bit.)

 

[Koganesaga]

Despite not having read the full article, all I needed to hear was someone got off the hook for basically encouraging people to steal. Bullshit. This guy should have been nailed, and hard. Send a message to all those people who don't feel the companies that produce these games deserve their money. Hell, this probably can be used as a precedent in future cases, therefore encouraging people to pirate, "oh hey that guy got away with a slap on the wrist, why don't we stop paying"? I'm not a publisher, but I feel if someone spent much of their time (years in some cases) to create something you liked, the least your cheap ass can do is give them the 50 dollars they earned.

 

[Radelaide]

I don't see why messing with the product you payed for angers the manufacturers. It belongs to you.
It's like a car manufacturer complaining about you putting a new engine in your car.

Fighting pirated games is one thing. Telling people not to mess with their own property is another.

You realise that this is the way a lot of things work. People mistake "buying something" for "owning something". Take out your wallet and look through all your cards: I'm sure at least ONE of them says "This remains the property of ." A lot of IPs can retain the right to their product to ensure stuff like this doesn't happen.

 

[ace_of_something]

They had a TRIAL ATTORNEY on the jury?

Is this regular practice in the states?

As far as I understand it, that kind of practice is considered a conflict of interest in the UK to have members of the legal establishment sit in as part of a deciding jury, I could be wrong.. and if I am, please correct me.. it just sounds pretty bad.

(I'm interested in a REAL answer to this.. so, no supposition please, if you don't actually 'know', then any answer you give isn't going to help.)

Anyway.. I certainly give kudos to the Judge for being so upstanding about this, it wasn't something I expected from the US judicial system when corporate entities are involved.

As long as there was no particular conflict of interest regarding any of the parties involved, there's no reason why he couldn't be there. Going into law doesn't suddenly exempt oneself from jury duty.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys need to agree on jurors, so if either side thought there would have been a conflict he wouldn't have been allowed.

Though you're absolutely right there is no official rules that exempt you based on occupation it's still really odd.

I've been called to jury duty every year for the past 9 and every year after spending a day, sometimes two of my life they always get rid of me because I'm a cop.

 

[hyperdrachen]

Oh great somone went in with a half-cocked case against copyright circumvention and now all the "homebrewers" celebrate. Yeah backups and imports... I'm sure. I think it sucks that I can't modify my xbox to include features microsoft refuses me like ya know... a web browser, but modded consoles are for piracy - the noble uses of modded consoles would never have gotten them on the radar. The other things it can potentially be for exist as little more than theoretical defenses to keep pirating tool salesmen in buisness. I like that this guy was making money selling a way for you to screw other people out of getting paid for thier work.

Stow the rhetoric and stow your nonsense about homebrews and backups. Console makers would not give a damn about you running your homebrew kinect game. The only thing that made modding show up on thier radar was piracy. Rampant piracy. So yeah it sucks that you ruined it for the rest of us, but I'll take that lump if it can make these pirates pay.

I for one am for unlocked consoles, I'd rather see consoles get the Steam-DRM treatment. Good compromise of slowing pirates and giving me a better service, and freedom of use on my console.

 

[hyperdrachen]

So you don't think people should be able to backup their media? Even when 360's have been known to damage discs?

Well I'll avoid the debate of how known 360s are to damage discs. Out of the 6 i've owned I mainly know them to red ring. But I don't know 360s to be any more common of disc eaters than any other disc spinner I've encountered. So this was an unknown issue to me. That aside.

Yeah I think ideally we should be able to make personal backups of games we own legitimate copies of and have not sold. As I said, I think it's an awful shame that the noble uses of unlocked hardware, are denied to us. However these uses are not even remotley the majority of why people mod thier consoles and certainly not why there are people able to charge money for the service of doing so. I think I was pretty clear that I think we deserve to have backup and third party OS functionality. But it's one I am willing to sacrifice if it can squelch some piracy.

Which brings me to this... it's not working. I understand why, the tech this guy was selling can be used for piracy just as a pipe can be used to smoke marijuanna. But buying a modded console is not piracy and I definitly don't think 10 years in jail was what this guy needed. Lots of things you own have restrictions on what you can do with them. You can't pull the brakes off your care and have it on the street legally. But that involves other people and public roadways, I would think in a perfect world you could make your 360 cook breakfast and hook up to a printer and no one would care.

I'm also not so blind as to drink all the microsoft kool-aid. I'd venture a guess that they're more worried that people who currently pay for gold subscriptions will stop when thier cracked xbox has a web browser and they can get facebook and last.fm for free. The real victims in all this are the developers, and paying consumers. The real villains are the greedier more controlling elements of the hardware companies, and the worst of the hack community. I know some people do the hacks for hobby or increased functionality I have no problem there, until that increased functionality becomes, pirating other peoples hard work for free.

Every time one of these discussions come up people go on about backups and homebrew, but the people using it in this manner only seem to exist on the internet. I have never ever met anyone with a modded xbox that did not chiefly use it to rip rented games to thier hard drive, or play burned game discs. I have never talked to anyone in real life that knows anyone who is an exception to this rule. Yet every time I get on the internet half the people in the discussion seem to be these people. I must live in a really bad area.

 

[LT Cannibal 68]

at least the poor guy didn't get sent to jail over an XBOX

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Wait a second. What?

They dismissed a case against a modder for basically being unfounded?

I'm losing my mind here.