so whats the deal? i see sites selling pre modded xboxes. is this legal? is there any law that this breaks?
someone give me the 411 please
~cb
looks like its the bios that is not legal and not the hardware. any comments?
Gamester17
2004-09-01, 12:25
all depends on the country you're selling it from/to plus yours and the procecutors/courts interpetation on that's countries copyright laws.
exampels:
- i would say that in the usa it's illegal to sell a modded xbox or modchip that contain hacked microsoft code (bios) that circomvent the xbox security, but that's just my interpertation, as far as i know no one in the usa been convicted for doing so.
- in the uk someone was just convicted for selling playstation-2 chips that circomvent ps2 security. no one has yet been trailed or convicted for selling xbox chips. on the flip-side to this you cannot use the ps2 as a pc via a modchips as you can with xbox.
- in australia a man was trailed for selling xbox modchips (with ms code) but he was not convicted, (he still went to jail though becuase of a other change, ...as he was also selling pirated xbox-games).
a simple workaround for xbox modchip-manufactures/resellers today is to sell the chip/xbox with a linux-bios, it does not contain any ms code so doesn't break copyright and you can't play pirated games with out of the box. most those linux-bios comes with a integrated flash-software making it easy for the end-user to flash it with a ms hacked bios, making the reseller protected because the end-user have to get a hold of the ms hacked bios (from the internet) themselves.