Judge berates prosecution in Xbox modding trial

[Kali Yuga]

Not really seeing how todays' events in particular have much of a bearing on DRM or the DMCA in general.

Seems more like the prosecutors are pulling some shenanigans, and the judge blew his stack. It doesn't necessarily reflect on the validity of the law itself.

[sabredog]

Console modding is legal in Australia, Sony attempted to sue a playstation modder and lost.

Perhaps collectively judges are a little tired of these type of lawsuits?

Just to add to my post. The mods are only legal here to circumvent region locking, though it was argued successfully by the defence that the ability to use backups was also valid.

Australia's copyright law changed in 2007. Nintendo successfully won two cases under those new laws.

[mrscoach]

The prosecution dropped the case.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...pen-dismissed/

“based on fairness and justice.”

Their idea of fairness was the fact that they couldn't prove anything but that he made the change. Whether he placed a pirated copy of a game in the console is unknown, because the persecution witness (not a typo) never claimed at any time before that Crippen had done this. Not until Sunday, supposedly.

Yeah, right. It sounds like they were trying to prove what they claimed they didn't have to prove in the first place, that he KNEW he was doing something illegal, and were grasping at straws by having the witness claim this. There was no proof Crippen placed anything in the console, much less a pirated game.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

The prosecution dropped the case.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...pen-dismissed/



Their idea of fairness was the fact that they couldn't prove anything but that he made the change. Whether he placed a pirated copy of a game in the console is unknown, because the persecution witness (not a typo) never claimed at any time before that Crippen had done this. Not until Sunday, supposedly.

Yeah, right. It sounds like they were trying to prove what they claimed they didn't have to prove in the first place, that he KNEW he was doing something illegal, and were grasping at straws by having the witness claim this. There was no proof Crippen placed anything in the console, much less a pirated game.

I thought that he was being prosecuted for selling DRM-circumvention devices (illegal under the DMCA), not for software piracy? Since when has not knowing that you're doing something illegal been a valid defence?

[mrscoach]

From the first article, one of the things the judge ripped the prosecution for was saying they didn't have to prove Crippen knew he was doing wrong, when some handbook they have says they do have to prove just that. I'm not saying I understand it, just that that is what I read.

[FF2]

I believe he was being prosecuted for the MODIFICATIONS. While I don't pretend to know the specifics of the law, he was NOT SELLING the method, he WAS DOING the modification of others' devices. That may not have been an offense. It does sound as if the judge might have had a "bad hair day" and went ballistic - he might just have felt that there are real crimes with real injuries.

And remember he is appointed for life - he can do what he wants within reason.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The man was allegedly running a business modifying X-Box consoles to allow them to run pirated games.

That's one reason for moding a console, there are several others.

[FatDog]

And they have dropped the case:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...pen-dismissed/

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

Yeah, right. It sounds like they were trying to prove what they claimed they didn't have to prove in the first place, that he KNEW he was doing something illegal, and were grasping at straws by having the witness claim this. There was no proof Crippen placed anything in the console, much less a pirated game.

The fact that the witness did not previously report the test is certainly grounds for resonable doubt. Without being in the courtroom it is hard to be sure, but my guess is that the witness was actually telling the truth about Crippen testing with a pirated game. This is because neither he nor the defendant knew the case would revolve on this act (so Crippen tested, and Rosario did not report it at the time). The case was dropped because the prosecution screwed up by not telling the defense about the new testimony last Sunday. Also, they probably decided that dropping the case on a "technicality" was better than loosing with the jury.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by FatDog

And they have dropped the case:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...pen-dismissed/

Sanity and common sense prevails.

This may well reduce the number of unnecessary lawsuits.

[wallcraft]

Andrew "bunnie" Huang has posted an interesting summary of what his testimony would have been in the case, see USA v. Crippen — A Retrospective. I did not know that the Xbox content is not encrypted, but rather watermarked - and the hardware mod, plus a user-provided data table, disables the watermark checking.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that the hardware mod isn't enough on its own to read the content and so it is non-infringing. By that argument the mobidedrm script would be legal because the purchaser of a MOBI ebook would need to provide their PID to make the script work. The same would be true of ereader2html, which requires the CC info to work. The Adobe DRM stripping tools, and the K4PC tools, "discover" the key and so could not use this defense.