Xbox pirates charged for selling chipped consoles

Three Los Angeles men have been charged with copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for selling chipped consoles along with hard drives full of pirated games from their Melrose Avenue store. The store, ACME, is a high-profile and fashionable one; perhaps prosecutors are hoping that this will help prevent other stores doing the same thing. An individual was prosecuted for simply selling modchips in 2003, but the message doesn't seem to have gotten across.

This makes an interesting international picture: in Australia, mod-chipping was declared legal after a long court battle, but in the UK
(where the sale of modchips is illegal) a Cambridge graduate was  sentenced in July for selling modded Xboxes loaded with games.

With the Xbox 360 more hack-proof
than the Xbox, it may take some time until we see equivalent modchips, but the first steps (decoding the DVD filesystem) have already taken place—perhaps this case is merely a figurehead to scare potential 360 hackers away.

[via Xbox 360 Fanboy]