Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Why are modchips illegal? Once you buy something shouldn't you have the right to modify it any way you like?

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I believe Law of the Game has answered the question in post #1:

http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/2007/08/customs-raids-mod-chip-makers.html

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You don't need a modchip to mod an xbox and run XBMC. And I don't know where you get your numbers from, but be realistic. Most people buy (Wii) modchips to pirate games.

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Less Piracy = More people paying for their games = More Games

I support them. The government should put a stop to these mod chips.

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Mod chips can be used by developers to create homebrew games. Meaning... potentially more games. This can be used in lieu of the more expensive dev machines in some cases. I could be wrong about this, however.

I do think that WiiWare is intended to help some of the homebrew scene, but I also think that it will keep people from doing the precious "fiddling" that can unlock the potential of game systems, especially the Wii.

I don't disagree with the raids, but I must say that I would like to see some sort of middle ground in all of this.

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Pirates wore eye patches for night vision.

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This is stupid. So let me get this straight... Selling modchips is illegal, because they can be used to pirate games, and violate copyright laws etc... Ok, understood. This what I dont understand. CD/DVD burners are on the market for one reason, to duplicate media. These devices have the capability of copying copyright material. Sure they have legitimate uses, so do modchips, homebrew. So now we're kinda in a grey zone. When it comes to computers having a device that is designed to overlook copyright protection. We even have software that does this aswell... Nero for example... how easy is it tobrun a copy of your favorite CD with Nero? Compare this proceedure with installing a modchip and making a backup and then using it.

I think if they are gonna go after modchip makers, they need to go after EVERYTHING that facilitates piracy... so that includes Sony(like they dont have enough problems like it is), LG, Toshiba, Samsung, Pioneer, Panasonic etc....

Hell, blank media should be sued 2, since its their product that houses piracy....

I love how the US wastes our tax money on shit like this... They should have taken all that time and effort to make our schools better and safer, take drugs off the street, or do something positive.

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I agree with HigherBe1ng, another waste of my tax money, this time to use customs and immigration officers (who I thought were overburdened and underfunded already? Can someone explain how this could possibly out-weigh national security concerns?) as Nintendo's hired thugs? That's just not cool. I understand that piracy is a hot button issue. But to say that all of that money was lost due to piracy? Come on. What about used sales? We don't all come down hard on (yes, I did just type "hard on") and attack Gamestop/Eb Games/etc. for selling used games and consoles now do we? Yet, every single one of those used game or console sales, which Gamestop profits from (just as modchip sales benefit modchip retailers), robs Nintendo or a third party publisher of a sale just as pirating a game does (and used game/hardware sales numbers are more reliable figures and far outnumber money lost to pirating). I believe that anyone selling pirated games should be crucified. But not letting me bypass a region lockout on something I own and paid for? Using my tax money to raid modchip distributers? That's BS, pure and simple.

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Most i know use their modchips for non-piracy purposes (granted these aren't Wii modchips we're talking), a friend modded his PS2 to play new songs for Guitar Hero II, and of course i have friends with XBMC

But those who mod for import purposes are actually INCREASING revenue for the company, buying products that would otherwise be inaccessible.

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I'd hate to break it to you anti-modchippers out there but here in the land of Oz modchips are fairly popular and set to become more and more so. Ecspecially with our release schedule being SIX MONTHS behind North America.

Oh, and price. Shall we get into that? Let's take EB for example. The American website sells Res Evil 4: Wii Edition for USD29.99 (AUD34.95) whereas the Australian site sells it for USD68.57 (AUD79.95).

But no. Your right. We should just lay back and take the big unlubricated fisting Nintendo is giving us.

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To answer #7, the test is "substantial non-infringing use", established by the famous Betamax case back in the early 80s (?). In other words, will a reasonably large number of people use it for legal purposes, or will (nearly) everybody use it illegally? With modchips, the industry can probably make a pretty good argument for the latter.

I know there's all kinds of cool things you can do with a modded console -- my Xbox wasn't chipped, but with a softmod I ran XBMC until the day the box died... I loved that thing. But Nintendo (et al) can mount a pretty strong argument that they're *principally* to support piracy, which is probably true.


Now, as far as claiming each pirated game as a "lost sale"... well, I'll just say I'm amazed how blithely all the news outlets just let that sort of thing slip by unchallenged. I mean, you and I both know that little Timmy the 12-year-old who got his classmate's older brother to mod his Wii is going to pirate a hell of a lot more games than his 10-dollar-a-week allowance would buy him. But when the big corps pretend that's not the case, nobody calls them on it (except in blogs like these). It's a shame, as it detracts from the seriousness of the issue when they issue wildly inflated numbers like that.

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Hooray for Australia! Where modding consoles is perfectly legal!

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When I had a modded xbox it wasn't really to pirate games. It was to copy games I bought onto the hard drive, put on NES emulators, and have better correspondence with my home computer, DVD player, etc.

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