California Student Arrested For Console Hacking 1016
jhoger writes "Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It's much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a 'circumvention device' it is a criminal issue. Guess it's time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF."
Back before it was even called the DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
the poll on the nbc site ... (Score:4, Informative)
your options are
I voted Furious
But the current scores are
Pirated PS3 games gave me swine flu (Score:2, Informative)
Um...exactly how does a pirated PS3 game create a health or safety risk?
Re:I wonder where these numbers came from? (Score:2, Informative)
page here [amazon.com]
correcting an error in my post - apologies (Score:4, Informative)
I can't understand how the freedom of a business comes before the freedom of the people.
There is a quote attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Mussolini, but he is alleged to have said "FASCISM should more properly be called corporatism, because it combines the power of the business sector with the power of the state".
I do believe America is suffering now under a kind of corporatism. The term seems more accurate than capitalism. At least since we are also a democracy there may be hope.
Re:What's the issue here? (Score:3, Informative)
No, you've got that backwards.
Downloading a game ISO has only one purpose. The playing of that game, without paying for it.
Modding an Xbox, as you say yourself, allows you to run XBMC on it. A legitimate use of the hardware, which harms nobody.
Re:Not that disturbing (Score:3, Informative)
Aug. 21--A former Spokane Valley car dealer, who now sells used cars in Post Falls, avoided a likely prison term and a substantial fine by helping investigators unravel an international odometer rollback case. Instead of low-mileage bargains, more than 135 buyers were stuck with high-mileage Canadian imports with altered mileage gauges. For his part in the conspiracy, Richard "Rick" Shafer got no prison time Thursday, but must complete six months of home detention when he's not at work and repay a Spokane credit union $172,792.
There's another where a dealer got 10 months.
Anyway, last time I sold a car (In Indiana), when you sold the car there was a checkmark on the form where you could say that the odometer was not correct. (I knew it wasn't because it rolled around past 00000) Modifying your own odometer was perfectly legal, as was paying someone to do it, as long as you didn't sell the car as having that mileage.
Modifying game consoles isn't fraud, unless you don't tell a future buyer that it's been modded.
They say it's a circumvention device, but like the Sony Betamax case, if he can show that there are significant, non-infringing uses of a modded console, he could win. (If he has the resources to fight)
Re:What's the issue here? (Score:4, Informative)
this is far less of a moral grey area than downloading is.
I think you have that backwards.
downloading (as implied in your post) is specifically to avoid paying for content.
Modding an Xbox can lead to playing homebrew games, apps, and other very cool stuff that has little to nothing to do with piracy. Hell I modded countless Xbox 1's to run linux.
Re:Playing pirated games will cause you do die (Score:1, Informative)
I think he meant modifications could pose a safety hazard, not piracy itself. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that he might fuck it up and cause the console to overheat, short, etc (i.e. fire hazard). Not very likely, of course, but still a possibility.
Re:The cops that arrested him must be proud (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they were proud of what they did, not just doing their job. FTA (chief of the investigation no less):
"Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers," he said.
Counterfeiting and piracy have grown in recent years in both magnitude and complexity, according to ICE. Industry and trade associations estimate that counterfeiting and piracy now cost the U.S. economy as much as $250 billion a year and a total of 750,000 American jobs.
I wonder what his source of information is. Oh the MAFIAA? Thought so. Next thing you know they're going to release videos saying it supports terrorism and child molesters.
Re:Parity? (Score:2, Informative)
So what's your point? That we should be punishing people severely for things they have no control over? I presume you believe the punishment for violating the DMCA to be disproportionate, but you picked a poor example.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Informative)
That statement does not pertain specifically to mod chips or software, but is a general statement about such goods.
Hardware, batteries, etc that are counterfeit can and have caused injury and death.
Counterfeit medicine, vitamins, and supplements have caused sickness and death.
Counterfeit toys and children's clothing contain dangerous chemicals, lead based paint, are missing flame retardants, or are made of flammable material.
Re:What's the issue here? (Score:4, Informative)
Downloading a game ISO has only one purpose. The playing of that game, without paying for it.
No, it doesn't. Optical media is delicate.
Re:They force you to lease software (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Playing pirated games will cause you do die (Score:3, Informative)
It seems like that statement is trying to suggest that a modified XBox 360 or Playstation 3 will explode or shock the consumer when they use it or something. When really it is just soldiering a Mod Chip to a part of the motherboard so that Homebrew games and other unsigned games can be played.
Actually since he is a professional, he'd do a better job than if the consumer tried to modify their game console by themselves and risk bricking it or something worse.
Ars Technica dug up sources a year ago (Score:5, Informative)
The 750k jobs is a dubious claim from 1986 about counterfeit goods. The $250 billion is a 1993 figure given for the worldwide market of, again, counterfeit goods.
Re:Scary (Score:4, Informative)
Re:correcting an error in my post - apologies (Score:3, Informative)
Good thing you made that correction...socialism is the exact opposite of corporatism.
Actually, socialism is not the opposite of corporatism/fascism. They are both forms of command economy where the government decides how to distribute resources. They are also both about the group being more important than the individual.
Re:Scary (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Parity? (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree it was the kid's fault. The cop was responding to a "disturbance call without starting his lights and sirens" and he "sped around a short curve". So he was speeding to the call without putting on the safety devices that allow him to break normal traffic laws. He caused the accident by driving carelessly on a dangerous road. A 1 day suspension for what is basically reckless endangerment is laughable.
Re:Justice (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Playing pirated games will cause you do die (Score:1, Informative)
I assume that they're talking about modifying the hardware. A bad solder job, a short circuit, and your modded console fries. No one around to notice, and it burns down your house.
Of course, even the un-modded hardware does that occasionally [destructoid.com]...
Re:Justice (Score:2, Informative)
That's just not true; in fact, federal agents especially tend to focus on the bigger gangs and organized crime because they think it's more efficient to get rid of the big fish than chase after a lot of small ones. There's a reason that organized crime organizations (in the U.S. at least) have tended to go out of their way to avoid violence with police; in fact, if an individual in one of those organizations killed a cop he would usually be killed by his own organization in a very public way to assuage police anger.
Re:Not-for-profit (Score:4, Informative)
Reverse engineering is against the DMCA.
Woah, I think you need to re-read your DMCA.
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Re:Playing pirated games will cause you do die (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Scary (Score:2, Informative)
Sure, maybe he enabled a few folks to violate copyright; however, unless he was placing copyrighted code onto their modded consoles, he only made some software and hardware modifications on boxes that had been legally purchased with the owner's consent.
Facilitating copyright infringement is against the law.
Re:Parity? (Score:4, Informative)
I clicked your link... The kid was struck crossing a busy, unlit road at night, by a car coming around a blind corner. Sounds like tragic accident to me. If anybody is to blame it's the kid's parents for letting him out at night on a bike, without proper safety instruction.
Read the article. The cop was speeding around a blind corner without his lights or siren on. Yes, he was responding to a call, but he was breaking police protocol, and probably state and local laws, by speeding and by failing to turn on his lights and siren. Should the kid have been in the street? Well, there's no law against riding your bike in the street that I've heard of. How do you know that the child had no safety instruction? It seems to me that the cop is the one without adequate safety instruction. Hitting and killing that child seems to have been caused by the officer's negligence - driving too fast without his lights and siren on.
So what's your point? That we should be punishing people severely for things they have no control over? I presume you believe the punishment for violating the DMCA to be disproportionate, but you picked a poor example.
My main point is that there is a severe lack of parity in the US justice system. Those with money and/or power (cops, giant corporations) can basically do what they want while the little guy (kid on a bike, hardware hacker) get screwed or worse. A side point would be that a crime that has actually caused significant harm (the cop killing the kid) goes basically unpunished while the "crime" of modifying game consoles which hurts basically nobody can be punished by 10 years in jail.
Re:Scary (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that in the video game industry, when you boycott by simply not buying, you instantly become a "pirate". We are way beyond this type of boycott having any kind of positive desirable effect.
Re:The cops that arrested him must be proud (Score:5, Informative)
they're trying to put a kid away for ten years of his life for tinkering with a console. I'd say the moral wrongness of that is quite clear.
Just for clarification, the 'kid' is actually 27 years old. More importantly, as is often the case in these reports, the maximum penalty for the charges would be 10 years. As the case hasn't even gone to court yet, there is no indication as to what the actual sentence (if any) will be.
Not saying I agree with the charges, but at least let's discuss the facts.
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Re:Justice (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the WHOLE POINT of most 9mm SMGs is that they can use standard 9mm pistol ammo, which is cheap and plentiful as opposed to expensive rifle ammunition. Most American police agencies use Heckler & Koch MP5 SMGs chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum, the exact same round used by the common Beretta and Glock pistols used by police officers.
Re:Consentual acts with consoles (Score:4, Informative)
This thread is PedoBear approved!
Re:Scary (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not-for-profit (Score:3, Informative)
Even without that sort of eclectic collection, if the guy from the article had a few friends that played LAN games between a few copies of a console, twelve would be easy. That said, I'm guessing the feds have more evidence than the console count, but there's nothing intrinsically incriminating about having twelve consoles.
Beyond that, arresting a guy for modding consoles on any level below mass-production (at least a few hundred consoles a month) seems like a real waste of time. Much like arresting prostitutes, you're shutting down one small time provider of an "illegal" service, but the built-in demand will ensure that you do nothing to stem the tide.