-Z- wrote:
On Wednesday, May 16, 2007 13:53, Joseph Riggs wrote:
Doesn't sound that difficult to arrange. Has any civil
rights group arranged a "prosecution" in order to push it up
the court system? It seems to me that the DMCA is
practically begging for something along those lines, similar
to the way the Scopes trial was brought into being.
(*ahem*) It appears that an Inconvenient Truth is in order here.
Although Clarence Darrow made a fool out of William Jennings Bryant, arguing
circles around him, the scientific validity of evolution wasn't upheld and John
Thomas Scopes was convicted of teaching it in violation of Tennessee state law,
specifically the 13 March 1925 Butler Act.
After eight days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate.
Scopes was found guilty on 21 July 1925 and ordered to pay a US$100.00 fine.
Upon review, the Tennessee Supreme Court found the statute to be constitutional,
but set aside the conviction on appeal due to a legal technicality: the jury
should have decided the fine, not the judge, as Tennessee judges could not at
that time set fines above 50 dollars. The prosecution did not seek a retrial.
Not until 1968 did the U.S. Supreme Court rule in Epperson v. Arkansas 393 U.S.
97 (1968) that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause because their
primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the
previous year.
-Z-
Just to put in my two cents...mod chips are par for the course here in
the Philippines - all gaming units that need a mod chip to play games
from other regions are sold with mod chips already installed. Yes, it
voids the warranty, but it also makes the range of games available for
the Philippine market (via grey market sellers) much wider. Be it
pirated or authentic games, mod chips make all the difference in terms
of what gaming consoles people buy. Sometimes, one even has a choice of
which kind of mod chip to attach - this is very true in the case of the
PS2, as some mod chips, while being very hardy and efficient, also
cancels out the ability to play PS1 games (for some reason, I'm not sure
why it works this way); if one still has a working PS1, one goes for
this mod chip.
