XBOX modders arrested

[Glock 19]

Xbox modders charged with copyright crime
December 19, 2005 5:30 PM PST
Two owners of a Los Angeles game store and a third man face a up to five years in prison on charges filed Monday in a federal copyright infringement case for selling modified Xbox game consoles, prosecutors said. The modifications allowed the machines to play pirated video games, they said.

The three men are being accused of "conspiring to traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system and conspiring to commit criminal copyright infringement," in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.

Jason Jones and Jonathan Bryant, two Los Angeles residents who own the ACME Game Store on Melrose Ave., allegedly sold Xbox game systems that had been modified by Pei Cai, of Pico Rivera, Calif.

Cai allegedly equipped the Xbox consoles with modification chips and large hard drives to allow the user to copy rented or borrowed games onto the device for future playback. Buyers would pay from $225 to more than $500 for the changes.

During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.

The consoles involved in this case were of the first-generation Xbox, not the recently launched Xbox 360, a representative for the prosecution said. This isn't the first crackdown on modding.

The defendants will have to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in late January, the prosecution said.

Posted by Joris Evers
LINK: http://news.com.com/2061-10805_3-600...1848&subj=news

[Justin Buser]

Is this some new legislation or something that enables them to prosecute modders?

[cablekiller]

I think it's covered under existing copyright law. Microsoft can't stop someone from modding their xbox, but they can stop them from SELLING modded xboxes.

[purp]

their downfall was selling the boxes with games copied to the harddrive. If they just modded and sold they would be fine. There are literally 10's of dozens of sites that sell modded chipped boxes with legal bios's, and no problems. It is only when games are illegally copied that you run into trouble.


My Modded Box
XBOX v 1.3
XECUTER 3c with Xecuter Bios
Seagate 120 gig hd.
Dash Xbox Media Center (XBMC)

By the way, where do you think Microblows got all its nifty ideas for the 360? .... XBOX modders.

[ElderScroller27]

Nobody cares if you buy chips and kits and modify your own X-Box since you own it and can do whatever you want with it. The Problem was that these 3 Bozo's were Modding the X-Boxes with the ability to make illegal, unlicensed copies of games and then loading 77 pirated games onto the console and selling it from their store... thats bad stuff. It's already bad enough that you have all those places in China making pirated copies of DVD and games then selling them on EBay through people here in the USA which is hard to track and stop. But those 3 Bozo's were not even trying to be sneaking about it.

I know that Pirating software is taken seriously because my old Home Town in Pennsyalvania had a small Architectural firm with 100 employees...then one day they got Raided by the FBI, It was a big local scandel for a few weeks as it turned out there was a Professional 3D CAD (computer aided drafting) Software package that was retailing for $5000.00 each and the local firm needed 40 copies, but instead of dishing out the $200.000.00 to buy the software they just loaded 1 copy onto 40 different computers which were not connected to the internet. they got caught when some Tech Support guy who didn't know the piracy was happening set up a network with the computers and linked them to the rest of the companies computers and the internet, so suddenly the software company had 40 duplicate copies trying to auto register.....hehehe I if recall correctly a company that has their software pirated can sue for twice the retail value of the pirated software....