RE: Jail for seller of illegal Xbox chips

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

Ian Lowe wrote:
> Well, as bad as the US DMCA is, it looks to be quite a
> balanced bit of legislation compared to the modifications
> just made the copyright law in the UK :

The US has far stricter plans in the pipeline. DMCA was merely step one.


UK law is likely to be further tightened by upcoming EU legislation.
There are also discussions for more international law that would likely
be adopted by most of the Western world.

> Unfortunately, trying to mobilise and motivate people to
> write to their MPs, express an opinion, or even to just
> simply *care* about this sort of legislation is difficult,
> despite the success of people like stand.org.uk

MPs usually succumb to pressure from their political leaders or from
other sources of pressure before considering the views of the electorate
as should be obvious from recent votes made despite a seemingly
overwhelming public feeling against the result.

I seem to recall claims that more people voted in the Big Brother
competition than in elections around that time. The obvious apathy for
the current selection of politicians this demonstrates is unlikely to
encourage the electorate to petition them.

Add EU and International treaties into the mix and campaigning purely to
UK MPs will have little effect on Intellectual Property Law long term.

> The discussions in this group have been a perfect example of
> why this is a bad thing (tm) the XBox modchip discussions all
> focus on the cool HA uses of them. I don't think I saw
> anything other than a passing comment about not having to buy
> games, yet the legislation "to control piracy" is being used
> to prevent people from using the device they have purchased
> in the way they want.

The XBox hardware, as all games consoles, is heavily subsidised by the
manufacturer. The console industry operates on a similar principle to
mobile phones and set top boxes where the hardware is subsidised to
promote an installed base with the subscriptions and extras providing
the actual revenue and hopefully profit. In the case of consoles, game
are the primary revenue source for return on investment.

Although mobile phones and set top boxes will sometimes provide an
option to buy the hardware without restrictions, this is usually at a
huge premium. I doubt you would want to pay such a premium for an Xbox.

> I'm thinking very seriously about an X-Box for our living
> room, and on a matter of principle, there won't ever be a
> game played on it: I'm viewing it as a network enabled
> DVD/Divx/Mp3 player.

Presumably because the devices designed solely for that task are priced
without subsidy so are not an attractive proposition.


Mark.