Sony Heads to Australian Courts Over PS3 Modchips

[Logan Westbrook]

Sony Heads to Australian Courts Over PS3 Modchips

The sale of the new PS3 modchip has been temporarily blocked in Australia, and Sony is hoping to make it more permanent.

Whether it's playing backups of your games, running homebrew applications, or even engaging in digital piracy, there's a lot you can do with a modded PS3. Sony isn't particularly keen on letting you do any of that though, and SCE Australia has been granted a temporary injuction to prevent the sale of the new USB modchip [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102890-Rumor-Hackers-Crack-PS3-Copy-Protection] while it pleads its case to the Australian Federal Court.

The injunction lasts until the end of the month and, as well as preventing the sale of the device, also stops any further imports. On top of that, any stock of the modchip must be surrendered to Sony's lawyers until the August 31st deadline has passed. Unless, that is, Sony is able to convince the court to permanently ban the sale of the chip, in which case there's not a lot of point in the distributors having the stock back, as it will be illegal for them to try and sell it.

This won't be the first time that a platform holder has gone to the Australian courts over such a device. Earlier this year, a site selling the R4 cartridge for the DS was ordered to pay Nintendo damages [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98409-Nintendo-Wins-R4-Lawsuit-in-Australia] of more than half a million Australian dollars. We won't know until next week whether or not Sony has had similar success, so keep watching this space for updates.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5623505/sony-temporarily-blocks-sale-of-ps3-modchips]




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[Loonerinoes]

Milk it baby! MILK MILK MILK!

 

[Zing]

Good stuff, hope Sony wins. I don't understand why they're using our courts though?

 

[matt87_50]

here we go again. ps2 modcip case was pretty big here too. not least of all because the mod chip guys won and it caused DVD region encoding to be illegal in Aus...

 

[Sebenko]

Good stuff, hope Sony wins. I don't understand why they're using our courts though?

I hear it's because the Australian courts tend to favour copyright holders and this sort of thing.

And Nintendo already had success in Australia with the R4, and this could be considered similar.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

...

THEY'RE NOT MODCHIPS, TEHY'RE FIRMWARE HACKS!! GAH!!!

*cough*

Anyway, this is little more than fingers in dykes. Unless they kill the source, they're not going to be able to stop ps3 piracy.

Then, even if the sale of preloaded usb memory dongles is made illegal, people will just load up their own.

 

[Phoenixlight]

Go Sony! I hope they win although I'm not sure why this is limited to Australia.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Milk it baby! MILK MILK MILK!

ROFL! well can you milk a kangaroo ?

 

[squid5580]

Why are they going to Australia? If they do win there wouldn't that just ban them in Australia? Sure they might win some epic loot but what good will that do?

 

[Jared]

Well, seems Sony is making its move now, although still been eerilly silent about it...

 

[Cynical skeptic]

Why are they going to Australia? If they do win there wouldn't that just ban them in Australia? Sure they might win some epic loot but what good will that do?

Most likely its just the only place where the law is written in such a way as they have a chance of doing anything about importers.

 

[Zing]

Good stuff, hope Sony wins. I don't understand why they're using our courts though?

wasnt the modder australian?

I thought they were coming out of Hong Kong?

 

[Jack Gruff]

Go Sony! Tell those Aussies how to use your over-priced blu-ray player.

 

[oranger]

Ah, yet another case of "you are really RENTING the stuff I sold you, even though I didn't tell you that at the time". And of course, the guy doing the sueing has lots of money, so he can make that work.

 

[Jumplion]

Well, seems Sony is making its move now, although still been eerilly silent about it...

I can just imagine on court day;

"You honor, I would like to make a motion."
"You mean a notion?"
"No, a motion,"
*opens suit case, Mexican music plays*
"ARRIBA BITCHES!"
*Sony lawyer dances around a sombrero*

Yeah, I don't know why I was thinking that. Would be damn weird though...

BUT, on topic, I hope Sony wins for obvious reasons. I doubt most people who buy the modchip use it for "legitimate" reasons anyhow.

 

[poiuppx]

Good. I hope Sony destroys them lock, stock, and barrel. It may have positive applications, but you can bet your bottom dollar 90% of their sales went to self-righteous tossers who believed that with this magic bullet (that they didn't have to do any real work to get or make, no less) they could at last defeat the vile Sony and the evil game developers by exercising their mandate from heaven to play games for free. And you can bet that dollar again that the folks who made this little gem damn well knew that's what it would be chiefly used for.

 

[Andronicus]

I love how Australia has some of the worst game prices in the world, and we always seem to be the first to have potential piracy applications and products banned. Seriously, it actually feels like some kind of conspiracy: target Australians specifically and make them pay through the nose, whilst removing any and all methods of obtaining games illegally so they have little to no other choice.
Do people really hate us that much? I mean, I don't pirate games myself; I just buy overseas. But it really seems like they're trying to make a point of forcing every last 5c coin out of us.

If we get that stupid internet filter, I'll bet $1000 that every game company in the world will be pushing to add torrent sites the list.

 

[Adzma]

The reason why this is happening in Australia is because it was a bunch of Australian guys who developed it.