>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I asked lawyers, and they think it's still uncertain. According to lawyers for some powerful companies (content (music, movies, games) companies), under DMCA of 1998, anything that facilitate violation of copyright laws, EULA, copy protection schemes etc are subject to civil and criminal prosecutions. That includes VCR, DVD recorder/burners, photocopiers, cameras and library cards or even search engines. (without search engines and YouTube, I would not be able to find modship sellers, tech info and installation guide/videos). You may remember a couple weeks ago, Digg.com got into a lot of problem trying to ban users posting part of the encryption key for HDDVD (and Blu-Ray?). Anyhow, just read the first couple paragraphs: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/web/digg-finds-the-key-is-safety-in-num bers/2007/05/14/1178995074634.html
Modchips are designed to bypass copy protection and region coding, so is clearly illegal under DMCA. But so far, no one had bring a major case to court despite, supposingly, plenty of legal ground for MS, Sony and Nintendo to go after modchip makers, distributors and even information portal/websites such as Digg and Google. Our lawyers think that it's because secretly the content companies are afraid if they push it all the way (to Supreme Court?) they will ended up having DMCA overturned. So for now they are using lots of C&D letters (aka scare tactics) but timid to bring cases to court. Watch the Digg vs. AACS saga for where things will go. A bigger war is brewing, MS is going after the GNU-anything world, Fortune magazine calls it the impending "Patent Armageddon": http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/ index.htm?postversion=2007051409 Oh completely off a tangent: Fortune profiled some TV exec whose personal worth is about $2.8 billion, on his timeline of major achievements/events was bringing Power Rangers to the US. >>>>>>>>> It makes sense if you are using it for pirated software, but if you are using it to play a legally purchased copy from a different region when there is no version for your region it shouldn't be an issue I would think. They are getting more money in the long run. -------------------------------------------------- The Gundam Mailing List MK-II [email protected] Archives: http://www.gundam.com/gml Help: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the BODY: help list
