Mod chips can be legit????

I Found this in the paper today while i was waiten to get out of the hospital and i thought id post this .... cause its good talky topic lol pretty much just state what u think legal or illegal

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Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided 32 businesses and homes looking for mod chips.A yearlong investigation out of ICE's Cleveland office resulted in the raids in 16 states including North Carolina. The agency would not release the names or locations of where it executed the search warrants.
A mod chip is a piece of hardware that allows an owner of a video game console -- often a Wii or an Xbox -- to bypass controls that allow those systems to play only games approved by the console. The chip would let someone play a home-brew game on his Wii or Xbox, or pirated ones as ICE, Microsoft and Nintendo are alleging.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, signed into law in 1998, bypassing copy protection controls are illegal.
Still, bloggers are scratching their heads over what the big deal is.
"Ahh, DMCA, let us count the ways you suck," Wired's Charlie Sorrel wrote. Salon's Machinist blog suggested that mod chip sellers switch to guns.
The raids were supported in a big way by Microsoft and Nintendo, which actively aided ICE in its investigation. Piracy, of course, was the issue behind the raids, but there are legitimate uses for mod chips that do not involve playing stolen software.
Amateur game makers can use them to play their own creations on their consoles; they also bypass the region codes that only allow certain consoles to play certain games.
All told, it's an odd move for ICE to hit modders so hard.
For the record
Week before last, we told you that Microsoft had spent $1.15 billion to extend its warranties from 90 days to one year.
We goofed. Instead of just one year, Microsoft has extended its warranty to three years. For more information on the specifics, visit: Xbox.com | Xbox.com Home

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Why would Immigration be involved for it? That makes no since. Since they do something completely different.

What they go after is illegal aliens in the country and not goods. It would be the FCC doing the raids on mod chips and not the Immigration office.

And how are mod chips illegal? They aren't anyways. It's perfectly legal to use them.

It's illegal to pirate the software but in fact if you own it you have the right to make as many copies of it as you want as long as it doesn't leave your house.

Just a load of bullshit there. If Immigrations came to my house looking for mod chips I'm sure of it the police will come and arrest them followed by a law suit against the department.

NoPeace - out

Yeah mod chips aren't illegal, even though selling them has been banned in some countries

Whats a mod chip :x?

I had one for the regular Playstation a hellofa long time ago...

Sooner or later when they became more discovered a few games stopped working in it, I would get home and try to play and some message would pop up letting me know some shit like "Your playstation has been modded" Wtf! like I didn't know that?...

The gaming companies are corrupt and make a large thing out of basically nothing... I hope they die

Well basicly a mod chip can be anything (mod standing for modification). In the case of game consoles it means most of the time that back-ups (read: playing copied games of which the owner doesn't own the original) can be played without any problems. The chip circumvents several security measures or fakes them in order for the console to play the disc while thinking it's an original.

Mod chips were and still are extremely popular for the Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox and these days the Wii, as they all used regular disc systems (as opposed to the Gamecubes mini DVD's). Todays consoles are a little harder to do, except for the Wii as that one can be easily installed with a mod chip aswell. Xbox 360 has several security measures in place which makes it tricky to do any mods, not to mention that no mod chips are usually used, and with the risks of getting banned from Xbox Live, and having your 360 breaking down (with no warranty left) most people don't bother, same goes for the PS3 who also has several security measures in place, and due to the fact that it uses a Blu-Ray drive it remains the question wether it's worth modding at all right now.

There are also softmods and bootdiscs which can accomplish the same, a softmod involves sending certain data to disable certain security (i have this on my Xbox which allows me to do a lot of cool stuff, including running games at 720p and 1080i, and ofcourse use copied games, which i don't own btw), and bootdiscs can also dodge the security, in the Dreamcast games were released with bootdiscs info already in the ISO (a format that can be read out with burning software to write the disc) so the game would load without any problems or modifications, while on the PS2 you need a actual disc (which you have to buy as it needs to be a original disc) and then you need to swap discs (for which there are kits to avoid the system to see that you are swapping the disc)

In the end though modchips are most popular in most cases, it's most advertised and it's quite simple to use once installed, in most cases it doesn't even require you to do anything at all, ever.

Obviously any of these mods are 99% of the times used by people that use it to play games that they don't actually own, which is like all piracy, a hit to the financial welfare of the companies that own the products.


Oh and there are also methods for the current handhelds, the PSP can be firmware (it's operating system) flashed to a older (with security flaws) or a custom firmware (firmwares made by hackers) to allow to play games from the memory stick, and in the case of the NDS you can buy game cartridges just like the NDS games itself where you can put in flash memory on which you can put games.
Both have big advantages, PSP games load a lot faster and doesn't have the same problems that the UMD (the discs the PSP uses) has (for example NBA Live 07 has loading problems when commentary is given because the UMD is not fast enough, when played from the memory stick this problemd doesn't exist) and you can play all sorts of homebrew (made by unofficial programmers) on it allowing you to run things like Snes, Nes, Megadrive and many other games from such systems on it, and the custom firmwares can play any PS1 game without having to own a PS3, or be limited to what they got to offer... not to mention that you don't have to buy games AGAIN, as most people own a fair amount of PS1 games already.
The NDS has the same advantage as the PSP also has, and that is that you can carry a large amount of games with you without having to constantly switch.
Still in most cases these mods and all are used for piracy, and thus they are a thorn in their respective companies side.

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The gaming companies are corrupt and make a large thing out of basically nothing... I hope they die

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It's not nothing, i'm not saying they aren't asking to much for games (although if you wait a while then they really drop in price a lot), but let's not pretend it's nothing, if everyone thought that, then there would no longer be any games.

I in no way desired to insinuate that er ah forget it I have no rebuttle for such an excellent and well contemplated and distinguished post.

Although I must say that implying that the gaming companies were corrupt and should die was meant to be registered as sarcastic and I in no way actually believe this.

I agree that its not nothing but I do believe that raiding businesses and homes for mod chips is a bit extreme...
There are much more important things out there to focus on such as hmm you know drug trafficking, serial rapists, terroristic threats just to name a few... but no of course not, the gaming companies are losing a miniscule amount of their billion dollar empires so lets go break down some doors and take people mod chips?
This whole task force they have makes me laugh so hard. Illegal guns, drugs, etc all over the country and they act upon this type of stuff and focus on it.

Money talks bullshit walks I guess. Taxpayers money isn't as important as the technology companies paying them.

These chips are the only way to use copies of your ***legaly purchased*** games. How many of us have spent $50 or $100 on a game CD only to get a scratch on it?

If game stores were obligated to take scratched games and replace them for free with new copies I would immediately be satisfied. Paying an additional $50 because a CD fell on the floor is ridiculous at best and a scam at worst.

I understand that piracy has to be dealt with but why should it cost hundreds of dollars out of the pockets of honest people when the whole premise is due to human error?

I doubt it will affect the flow of modchips though... that scene seems to continue no matter how many people get arrested.

These things are not illegal yes we no they do lots of things but? why are they