Three Los Angeles men who
sold modified Xbox units have been arrested for allegedly conspiring to "traffic in a technology used to
circumvent a copyright protection system." Of course they are referring to that scourge of hackers everywhere, the
federal DMCA, which explicitly prohibits any such
circumvention.While this case only involves the original Xbox, it is easily read as a warning. In the midst of the launch of the Xbox 360, and the enormous financial investment being made in next-gen gaming, you can expect Microsoft and the others to vigorously pursue any attempts to facilitate copyright infringement on their consoles. With the news that the filesystem has been decoded, Microsoft surely has prepared a legal response should the hardware be hacked... now about that hypervisor.
[Update: Reader heistgonewrong wrote in saying, "...they were loading the HardDrive with 77 illegally copied games. This is pretty much the only way that they were able to lay criminal charges." This is not correct. According to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in LA, they were charged with conspiring to "traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system." According to section 103 of the DMCA it is illegal to "'manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in' a device, service or component which is primarily intended to circumvent 'a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.'" Copyright infringement is very much illegal and they may be held accountable for that yet, but the big fish here is the circumvention: if people don't have the technology to play pirated games then there won't be any pirated games.]
