Federal Mod chip raid spans 16 states (joystiq.com)

[8th lutz]

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/02/federal-...s-16-us-states/

 

The video game industry's war against enemy solders continues unabated, with 16 U.S. states recently becoming legal battlegrounds for federal customs agents working under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement group. According to the New York Times, more than 30 businesses and homes were raided in search of illegal modification chips and far more sinister sounding copyright circumvention devices. The groups and individuals targeted are suspected of importing, installing, distributing and smuggling devices which allow pirated games to be played on PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox consoles.

 

The pirates asking where all the ROM has gone should cast their functional eyes toward Nintendo -- the company notes in a separate press release that it fully supports the sinking of illegal chips. "Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products," said Jodi Daugherty, senior director of anti-piracy at Nintendo of America. "Nintendo's anti-piracy team works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to seize mod chips and counterfeit software. Since April, Nintendo has seized more than 91,000 counterfeit Wii discs globally."

 

Friendlier seas won't be found with Nintendo's competitors either. Last month, Sony promised to "aggressively pursue" PS3 pirates and in May, Microsoft gave modified systems the boot from its Xbox Live service.

 

This is why I never moded a game system. I had a feeling that this is going to happen sooner or later.

[supercat]

This is why I never moded a game system. I had a feeling that this is going to happen sooner or later.

 

It seems to me that game pirate mods are designed to serve two functions:

 

-1- Get around restrictions in the bootloader that won't let a game load if it doesn't think the game is genuine

 

-2- Get around restrictions in a game that won't let it run if it thinks something is fishy.

 

Would there be anything illegal about a mod that was controlled by a panel-mounted switch which would get around the bootloader restrictions, but would do so in a fashion not compatible with commercial games (but which homebrew games could be programmed to accept)? I wonder if any hacker communities might be interested in that sort of approach?

[Hyper_Eye]

I believe that the DMCA specifies that modifications that circumvent copyright are illegal (correct me if I am wrong. I don't believe it to be more broad then that.) In a case where you could do a mod that circumvents the rejection of homebrew but does not circumvent the check for authenticity of copyrighted works then it wouldn't fall under the category. The problem is that there is no way to load homebrew without circumventing the checks on authenticity of copyrighted works. The test is one and the same.

 

The precedent in the courts (and I don't know what effect the DMCA has on this) is that a device cannot be made illegal for allowing copyright infringement if it's ultimate purpose is for a greater good or advancement of technology. When VCR's that allowed for recording from input and dual-deck VCR's which allowed for tape duplication came out there were lawsuits alleging that they were malicious and allowed for illegal copying of copyrighted works. The courts threw the lawsuits out on the basis that the purpose was for a greater good and advancement of technology. I don't know if this could be argued for modchips but, with the huge growth of the homebrew community and the massive increase in functionality that is gained from modification on modern consoles, there could possibly be a case to be made on that precedent.

[supercat]

The problem is that there is no way to load homebrew without circumventing the checks on authenticity of copyrighted works. The test is one and the same.

 

Why not? Depending upon what the mod chip does, that could be quite easy--at least compared with the task of making the mod chip work in the first place. For example, suppose that the console expects to read a specific data pattern in an area that can't be written on a normal DVD-R. If a mod chip made the DVD-ROM drive respond to requests to read that area by substituting some other area that commercial games used for some other purpose, then homebrew games could write the proper 'protected area' information there while putting all the game code elsewhere.

[Crimefighter]

Gee whiz, if we buy a product...who is the government to tell us we can't make changes to it for our own private use? Just think what would had happened had this applied to IBM PCs!

[Bill Brasky]

It's so reassuring to see that ICE finds the time to do huge, multi-state mod-chip raids while millions of illegals invade over our unenforced borders. Good to see they have their priorities straight. I wonder how much this cost Sony/Microsoft.

[Hyper_Eye]

The problem is that there is no way to load homebrew without circumventing the checks on authenticity of copyrighted works. The test is one and the same.

 

Why not? Depending upon what the mod chip does, that could be quite easy--at least compared with the task of making the mod chip work in the first place. For example, suppose that the console expects to read a specific data pattern in an area that can't be written on a normal DVD-R. If a mod chip made the DVD-ROM drive respond to requests to read that area by substituting some other area that commercial games used for some other purpose, then homebrew games could write the proper 'protected area' information there while putting all the game code elsewhere.

 

Modern console use signed files to authenticate the software. These signatures cannot be faked. The only way to get passed this is to hack the files the signature is checked against (not possible with the 360) or bypass the signature check. It would be impossible to allow homebrew without also allowing the ability to play copied games.

[warmachine]

I wonder how flash carts factor into this.

I know nintendo has to be feeling the pinch quite a bit more than sony or microsoft

due to the fact that you don't have to even open up a gba or ds to rip nintendo off,

I bet they're feeling it twice as hard now that you could install a chip in a wii and not

even have to solder anything only 4 months after the wii being released on the market.

[SINGLE TOOTH]

It's illegal to mod your system????

[shadow460]

It's illegal to mod your system????

 

that sucks. I mod then almost as fast as they come through the door. What a shame that I might be breaking the law. Last time I checked, the hardware belonged to me.

[+RandomPerson]

I wonder how flash carts factor into this.

I know nintendo has to be feeling the pinch quite a bit more than sony or microsoft

due to the fact that you don't have to even open up a gba or ds to rip nintendo off,

I bet they're feeling it twice as hard now that you could install a chip in a wii and not

even have to solder anything only 4 months after the wii being released on the market.

 

 

Wii mod with *no* soildering? News to me and I've been up the Wii mods from the start.

 

Anyhow Nintendo fixed the easy exploite on the Wii with the new D2B chipset now having the legs cut off that you need to wire up the mod chip. Only way you can do it now with the new layout is to actually dremil off the top of the GPU to expose the 3 leads that nintendo cut the legs off of (pictured below) and to tap a seperate hot spot for certian chips like the ninja although most don't need the alternate hot spot. It used to take like 30 mins tops to mod a wii, now it takes alot more time and alot more risk of fucking your system cause one wrong move when your dremiling that GPU anf your system is a paper weight. Not to mention it's like microscopic surgery working the insides of a chip with a razor blade and soilder lines.

 

 

[

[SINGLE TOOTH]

I wonder how flash carts factor into this.

I know nintendo has to be feeling the pinch quite a bit more than sony or microsoft

due to the fact that you don't have to even open up a gba or ds to rip nintendo off,

I bet they're feeling it twice as hard now that you could install a chip in a wii and not

even have to solder anything only 4 months after the wii being released on the market.

 

 

Wii mod with *no* soildering? News to me and I've been up the Wii mods from the start.

 

Anyhow Nintendo fixed the easy exploite on the Wii with the new D2B chipset now having the legs cut off that you need to wire up the mod chip. Only way you can do it now with the new layout is to actually dremil off the top of the GPU to expose the 3 leads that nintendo cut the legs off of (pictured below) and to tap a seperate hot spot for certian chips like the ninja although most don't need the alternate hot spot. It used to take like 30 mins tops to mod a wii, now it takes alot more time and alot more risk of fucking your system cause one wrong move when your dremiling that GPU anf your system is a paper weight. Not to mention it's like microscopic surgery working the insides of a chip with a razor blade and soilder lines.

 

 

[

 

What the hell? You have to actully dremel into the chip? That sucks. Wii had the easiest mod to do at first too.

[warmachine]

For some reason, I thought I read somewhere that there was a solderless mod for the wii.

 

Wow! Nintendo actually cut the legs of the chip?

It seems so cheap and simple but it appears to be really effective.

[+RandomPerson]

What the hell? You have to actully dremel into the chip? That sucks. Wii had the easiest mod to do at first too.

 

 

Yep and I had to find out about the new chip layout the hard way too! I did my own console a long time ago and I got a first gen 2DA so it was simple as pie. Heck it took longer to open the console than it did to mod it. And when a friend of mine asked me to mod his system i said sure only to find out it was one of these new ones, man o man it took a while. All I know is I'm never moding another one of these new series board\chip Wii's cause it's a total pain in the ass.

[Fighter17]

$700 million in losses.

 

Go to Asia Nintendo and fight the bootlegers there.

[supercat]

Wow! Nintendo actually cut the legs of the chip?

 

I would have thought it would have been easier and more effective to blow those pins' bonding wires off the chip. Tie ground pins to ground via ~0.1 ohm resistors, and then connect the bonding pins to -2 volts. If the chip has many grounding wires, they should be easily able to handle enough current to take out the bonding wire for the pins in question (the pins could be engineered in advance to blow easily, if desired).

[SINGLE TOOTH]

What the hell? You have to actully dremel into the chip? That sucks. Wii had the easiest mod to do at first too.

 

 

Yep and I had to find out about the new chip layout the hard way too! I did my own console a long time ago and I got a first gen 2DA so it was simple as pie. Heck it took longer to open the console than it did to mod it. And when a friend of mine asked me to mod his system i said sure only to find out it was one of these new ones, man o man it took a while. All I know is I'm never moding another one of these new series board\chip Wii's cause it's a total pain in the ass.

 

I'm glad I know that now...

 

Do the systems have different model numbers, or do you have to open the case to tell which one you have?

[shadow460]

$700 million in losses.

 

Go to Asia Nintendo and fight the bootlegers there.

 

Very true.

[+RandomPerson]

Do the systems have different model numbers, or do you have to open the case to tell which one you have?

 

 

Yes, just google it and you will get a a full SKU list with which ones are easy to mod and what ones are not.

[JimmydelaKopin]

$700 million in losses.

 

Go to Asia Nintendo and fight the bootlegers there.

 

Very true.

Indeed.

With all the cheap-ass multigame discs sold cheap in every store that sells computer equipment so full of bootlegs...and all the bootlegs that were for sale on offbrand dedicated systems back with plug-ins were hot...

...the feds and the companies are instead going after homebrew modders.

Oh, that's right, they can't go after Wal-Mart. Can't have Big Wally pissed at you...

[potatohead]

Actually it's not illegal to mod your system. You can break your system into little pieces, repurpose it, throw it away, etc...

 

It's still yours.

 

The DMCA is a bit more evil than that.

 

What is illegal is distributing or trafficking in devices that circumvent access controls. The defintion of 'device' has been pushed a long way too.

 

A chip is clearly a device. Source code has been ruled a device, though that debate is ongoing. Schematics, how-tos and other knowledge sharing means and methods are regularly being challenged as well.

 

In short, if you can figure out how to mod your own machine, that's legal. If you tell others how to do it, not so legal, depending on what you say, about whom and when. Delivering the means to circumvent is basically illegal, but for narrow exemptions carved out by the copyright office every few years.

 

This is why things like the broadcast flag are such a big deal. It does not matter if the access control is lame, only that it is being circumvented and that a device is involved.

 

Put an access control on something and suddenly you've sharply limited what others may do with it, unless they do it themselves and not talk much about it.

 

A while back the "Hacking the Xbox" book was self-published. Why? Because no publisher wanted to run afoul of the DMCA, despite the content of the book being more or less a compendium of knowledge anyone can learn and has access to. That particular collection added value in that it made focusing on the modification problem easier, thus it enters DMCA territory.

 

Sad huh?

 

I enjoy retro computing and gaming largely because I really don't want to support this crap. If I buy something, it really needs to be mine and I sure don't want to have to consider what I tell others, nor how I modify it, or what I buy to add value to it.

 

I've a PS2 and it's currently unmodified. Thought about it, could have done it, but just didn't because the whole deal is a big turnoff. I'll game on it, from time to time, on a title that's worth the price, but that's about it.

 

This is also why the new media delivery tech coming online is not all that appealing either. Bluray, hd dvd, etc... all are built with these controls in mind. DVD was that way too, but ended up being a non issue, for the most part. It's plenty open and I know all I need to to deal with that, so I'm ok with it.

 

These days, barring DVD, I don't buy much of anything that is access controlled. A modest subscription television purchase, along with new and used DVD, CD game media is about the limit. The rest of it is just not worth the hassle and risks that come along with the access controls.

 

Honestly, if consoles were cheaper, I might reconsider. To me, not being able to easily repurpose something really lowers it's overall value. If we are gonna have strong laws on circumvention, then perhaps we also should get some economies of scale and have less expensive devices in exchange.

 

Like many here, I've still got my older consoles and computers. They still have decent value! New content continues to arrive and with it, few, if any, real expectations or limitations that are not totally livable. The same goes for all the open, or really pretty damn open gear I've purchased over the years.

 

I've often looked at the complete and total mess we've got with cell phones for great examples of how this imbalance is affecting us. If the phones were open, we would have a lot more use out of them today than we currently do. The whole affair would be a lot cheaper too. Every time I want to make a change in service, I essentially am forced to get another damn phone, or act like a criminal and "open" my phone so that I can actually leverage it.

 

Moving content into and out of my phone is a complete PITA. Enough of a PITA that I essentially don't do it. Result: I make and receive phone calls, take some VM and that's about it. Investing in the rest of it really comes with too high of a price tag in terms of having to re-learn, get content locked in, pay, etc...

 

Service providers are just complete asses because they know they have significant lock in. Our phone investments are devalued because many of their features go unused. Some of these features are unused because the service providers simply do not allow their use period, despite the fact that the phone is perfectly capable of said use!

 

I find this whole affair completely bizzare. Consoles are getting there quickly. The experiences are good, but not that good, so count me out for the time being.

[BigO]

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/02/federal-...s-16-us-states/

 

The video game industry's war against enemy solders continues unabated, with 16 U.S. states recently becoming legal battlegrounds for federal customs agents working under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement group. According to the New York Times, more than 30 businesses and homes were raided in search of illegal modification chips and far more sinister sounding copyright circumvention devices. The groups and individuals targeted are suspected of importing, installing, distributing and smuggling devices which allow pirated games to be played on PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox consoles.

 

The pirates asking where all the ROM has gone should cast their functional eyes toward Nintendo -- the company notes in a separate press release that it fully supports the sinking of illegal chips. "Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products," said Jodi Daugherty, senior director of anti-piracy at Nintendo of America. "Nintendo's anti-piracy team works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to seize mod chips and counterfeit software. Since April, Nintendo has seized more than 91,000 counterfeit Wii discs globally."

 

Friendlier seas won't be found with Nintendo's competitors either. Last month, Sony promised to "aggressively pursue" PS3 pirates and in May, Microsoft gave modified systems the boot from its Xbox Live service.

 

This is why I never moded a game system. I had a feeling that this is going to happen sooner or later.

 

I haven't kept up on this issue at all since I'm not into the modern console scene, but I wonder how it comes under the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement if the mods are being performed here (U.S.) and the chips are being programmed here (possibly even manufactured here) and the firmware for the chips is written here (if it's not, it surely could be) and the original consoles and chips are being imported legally.

 

Is it because the charges are being leveled from by entities within another country?

Edited August 8, 2007 by BigO

[christianscott27]

Remember thats your Homeland Security Dept busting up some college kid with a bunch of modchips. They're responsible for serious stuff like responding to hurricanes, preventing another 9/11, stopping drugs and protecting the border. Think about that... They have the resources to raid 32 homes in 16 different states on the same day, really, hundreds of agents involved, nothing more important to do I guess.

[BigO]

This is why I never moded a game system. I had a feeling that this is going to happen sooner or later.

 

It seems to me that game pirate mods are designed to serve two functions:

 

-1- Get around restrictions in the bootloader that won't let a game load if it doesn't think the game is genuine

 

-2- Get around restrictions in a game that won't let it run if it thinks something is fishy.

 

Would there be anything illegal about a mod that was controlled by a panel-mounted switch which would get around the bootloader restrictions, but would do so in a fashion not compatible with commercial games (but which homebrew games could be programmed to accept)? I wonder if any hacker communities might be interested in that sort of approach?

 

I was sorta thinking along those same lines. But, is it really just about the illegal copying of games, though?

 

An argument might be made that such modification as suggested would step on the rights of the console maker as they lose licensing fees that would have been paid for games that would have been written to work on the unmodified console. Was the unlicensed game issue not at least part of the reason behind the earlier consoles being built with protection devices? I don't know if the manufacturers would have a legal leg to stand on when it came to blocking such modifications, but I'll bet they'd try.

[+Random Terrain]

I wonder how many people posting in this thread will soon be going to prison?

 

You know that game cheats will eventually become illegal. I'll be in big trouble then.