Charges Dropped Against Xbox Modder

Matthew Crippen was being charged with 2 counts of violating anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Mr. Crippen was allegedly running a chip-modding business where he would modify an Xbox so that it could run copies of games. Normally, and Xbox can only run official copies of games, and games that are burned to DVDs will not play. Modifying allows the Xbox to play backup copies of games you already own, but it also allows you to play pirated games you downloaded from the web.

Needing to prove Mens rea, that the defendant willfully broke the law, the Prosecution's first witness testified that he secretly videotaped Matthew Crippen modify an xbox and tested the mod job with a pirated copy of a game. While relevant, the testimony that Mr. Crippen tested his modification with a pirated game was not first submitted to Mr. Crippen's attorneys, a huge procedural misstep. In addition, the act of secretly videotaping the defendant was likely in violation of California's privacy laws.

Prosecutor Allen Chiu admitted that the evidence should have been shared with the defendant's attorneys beforehand and requested the case be dropped for “fairness and justice.”

This was an interesting case and I will dig deeper into the facts and pleadings in later installments.

See also Wired's reporting of the case.

Microsoft Bans 1 Million Xbox Live Users for Modding Their Xbox 360's

Microsoft made the bold move this week by banning 1 million Xbox live subscription accounts because Xbox believed those users had modded their Xbox 360 in order to play pirated games. Xbox 360’s have security protections in place that only allows the Xbox to read and play valid and verified game disks. However, you can get a mod chip or other device installed on your Xbox, usually for about $100, which bypasses the inherent protections allowing pirated games to work. Somehow, it isn’t clear yet, Microsoft was able to determine which users had mod chips or other similar mods on their Xbox. The banned users can still play offline; only the online play capability provided by Xbox live was removed.

It is important to note that not only is making pirated copies of video games illegal (assuming no fair use right), but so is modding an Xbox. By modding an Xbox, the user has bypassed the protection put in place by Microsoft that prevent unauthorized disks from being read by the system. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) says that “no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.” By modding the xbox, people are violating the DMCA.

Given the fact that Microsoft had the identities and account information of all the people who modded their Xbox, those users should feel lucky that they are only losing their Xbox live subscription and not facing a lawsuit.