News Microsoft will not apologise for Xbox bans

You heartless *******!

 

Fight The Power!

Grief.

Enough with the bickerings and minute pickings over each others posts. If the corporate world could make giving games away or selling second hand (and they did try) illegal then they would, but there is no way to regulate it. Hence why digital copies are getting locked to accounts.

Out of 1,000,000 banned accounts, how many were acceptably modded consoles? None, it's not acceptable.

 

Look at the kittens!
Fluffy kittens!
Silly kitten, what are you doing in a mug, you don't belong there!


This thread was getting a bit too angry, and a bit serious. Union rules dictate we must now take a mandatory kitten break.

 

Ahem. I assume we're done with the ins & outs of the legal definition of theft, piracy and copyright/IP infringement?

All that aside, this is not exactly new. Even with the original Xbox, if you went on Live with a modified console then you got banned from Live - end of. Now I'm not sure of the console was banned, or simply the Live account; I have a feeling that the console was banned, but I really can't back that up. You get caught with a modification that bypasses the built-in protections against running modified software, you get banned - I can't see a problem with that. As many have pointed out, they could have just as easily bricked the console; now that would be a disproportionate response.

I did actually modify my original Xbox to install a mod-chip. Buying the chip was not against the law, and neither was selling it - as long as it wasn't sold with the intention of being used as a mod-chip. Installing the chip was not illegal either - it may have voided my warranty, but my Xbox was already well out of warranty by this point. What was illegal however, was the reverse engineering of the Xbox BIOS to bypass the in-built restrictions against running unsigned software by the original hackers, and by extension, my use of a modified BIOS in the mod-chip in order to bypass these protections. What was also illegal, was compiling homebrew software using illegal copies of Microsoft's XDK. Even with the open-source XDK that's now been built, you still need to have an illegally modified console in order to run the software, as it will not be signed software.

I did also get hold of pirated games for the Xbox - I'll freely admit that. I also stopped doing this soon afterwards, because the games were either massive and took ages to download, or had degraded video & audio samples. This doesn't justify breaking the law though, and I admit that - and you can argue 'til the cows come home about exactly which law I broke, or whether or not it constituted piracy or theft, but it's still illegal.

As soon as I found XBMC, my modified Xbox became a media centre - something which it has excelled at for many years, and it's only being retired as it doesn't support HD codecs.

 

I know several people in your situation.

 

I would think you could setup your router to mac address clone.. then change the mac address to whatever you want and put it in the 360 config http://rcc.bgsu.edu/info/Xbox_360_MAC_Address

as long as they didn't delete your account- then be careful not to play games early.. they probably can't see the hardware mod on their end.. it's more like what was mentioned, playing games early or playing bad copies

I don't have a console anymore.. sold years ago

 

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16823
Sounds a bit complicated, but not too bad I guess.

 

Well as far as i know GAME isn't testing to see if the console is band or not but that could have changed over the weekend but its a great way to make ppl buy a new one wounder if that's what Microsoft was really thinking?

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft thought of that as an upside. I'm personally surprised anyone having been banned from Live would pay for another console - stuff ain't cheap! The gaming community must be really damn good to get that kind of devotion.

Incidentally (please, please just humour me this once) a fair bit of the EULA has never been challenged in the courts because it would indeed be contrary to UCTA; provisions relevant to resale and 'public performance' I suspect would top the list.

 

Indeed. Quite a few posters in this thread are confusing British piracy laws (which include criminal offences) with EULA (a private contract between the customer and copyright holder).

If you were to break one of the terms in a EULA, it would be a civil matter and you could be sued. As PureSilver has so rightly said, this is when said terms would have to be tested in court, with the copyright owner proving a reasonable agreement was broken.

There has been numerous examples of outlandish EULA terms, some even going against local laws. Often these are quickly drawn up documents (usually authored not by a legal secretary, not a lawyer/solicitor) with the sole aim of covering as many bases as possible, with fair use laws being an afterthought.

M7ck's post may be hyperbole, but he makes a good point. A EULA could effectively ask you for anything, taking full advantage of the fact that a very small percentage of people actually read them. Whether or not they would take you to court over it is a very different matter.

This is exactly why loaning, selling or giving away a game does not make you a pirate or a theif, even though it goes against most EULA. It's also the same reason chains like GAME can freely sell second hand games without fear of repercussion, as there isn't a court in the country that would side against them.