Mod chips soon in vogue Down Under

Good to see that governments everywhere are realizing that DMCA and DMCA like legislation goes way to far in protecting copyright owners and harming the rights of the consumers.

Keep the amendments and clarifications coming.

End Result: Australia will get shit-all insofar as new games are concerned.

"Australia could push game console makers to separate their region coding and copyright protection technologies in the future."

Wouldn't it just be better to not be completely retarded with foreign markets and either release them at the same time/reasonable time or get rid of region coding altogether? It's antiquated and stupid to block games in other countries.

"While likely too small of a market to force the alteration of current manufacturing processes, Australia could push game console makers to separate their region coding and copyright protection technologies in the future."

Or, get rid of region coding all together.

The legislation only outlaws chips which are 'solely' for the purpose of piracy. This is a loophole where chip makers can say that there chips are circumventing region coding (legal) with the 'unintended' side effect of allowing piracy.

If you get rid of region coding, that arugment is null.. there would be no region coding to break and any mod-chip would be basically for piracy.

(you do realise that PS3 is region free, right?)

Yeah, the PS3 comes with all the tools you need to get linux and start pirating those BR movies and games without a mod chip.

Wow. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. If game and movie companies start cutting them off they have only themselves to blame.

but if they get cut off theyl just make mod chips and import the games!

lmao awesome!

Region coding is why my PS, PS2 were mod-chipped, and my Gamecube had a switch installed. B'coz of the mod-chips, I played pirated games on PS & PS2. I was hoping the Wii would come w/o region lock, especially with its VC games! I grew up playing Japanese games on the Famicom, Super Famicom & PC Engine. Even though I live in the US now, I would like to be able to purchase and play Japanese games IN Japanese.

Modchips are great! A modded XBox is better than a 360 in terms of media center functionality.

There is no point, IMO, for region specific stuff. I think Australia is doing a good thing. More countries need to stand up and put a stop to this BS.

Australia doesn't have the market power to put an end to region coding - they'll just get shit releases until they re-join the region coding, platform-controlled Borg.

Now, if Japan or the US allowed region coding circumvention... THEN we'd see some progress away from heavily controlled "platforms" that track everything we do.

@3

We already get screwed here man, even when things are released we have to wait for it. Six months or more or more sometimes. So we are already screaded really.

Meh, no great loss if the paystation3 misses Australia, I got stung on the PSP and won't be aiming to buy a 'does everything' machine again (because, IMO, they do everything but only half assed).

If they slow the shipment of games here, well with us (slowly) getting (sparodic) access to high speed net access we'll just put our mod chips to good use and download the games off bittorrent if they won't let us buy them, problem solved.

The modchip in my GC was one of my best investments, let me use games that weren't available over here (so this becomes a moot point? They're already crippling us with releases so we actually need the mod chips just to get some semblance of support from the game companies!)

I agree, we had to wait like 6 months for the 360. But i dont think this will change anything it will just create more pirates (YARRR!). Its not like they wont release games here, that would be retarded.

Lex, KirbyMeister,

This is wonderful news. If the so called big boys decide to cut us off until we 'force' region coding, we'll just import all the first release movies and games from the US, Europe, and Japan and play them anyway. Besides, there is a big market here. The entertainment companies are not going to throw that income away.

No region coding means no restrictions on who we can get our games from.

Region coding is a great evil perpetrated against the consumer. This is a tremendous advance against it.

The PS3 DOES have region coding. Its just different (but worse in online gaming).

http://www.gamebrink.com/forums/showthread.php?p=30690#post30690

The legislation passed here is intended to give consumers more free choice in the equipment that they've legitimately bought and own - you own it, so you can do whatever the hell you want with it (your warranty will still be void, but you probably haven't broken any laws unless you gain some profit from copyrighted material). It'sactuallly aimed at a very much larger scope of products, which just happens to include entertainment consoles.

And I do concur with the points raised above; shutting us off will do what that hasn't already happened? In general, due to the already high price of games and equipment here, and the interminable and usually unjustified delays in releasing games and hardware in Australia, whats it going to matter if a company holds off from releasing their console and games here for 6 months to a year out of concern over piracy? They already do! The pirated copies of games are still here a day after their release (thankyou, oh vast series-of-tubes) and with each day a release is delayed here they reach a wider audience by the time the game gets legitimately released. Fanatics buy import, and no one else cares.

So I say F#@$ the region encoding phenomena, it's bullshit that's there to extort isolated markets for more cash. It's amazing our government is actually doing something that disagrees with corporate interests and employs civil liberties for once - normally their collective lips are fixed firmly to the arse end of George Bush and every big international company with lucrative taxable consumer products they can find.

Case in point - FFXII will probably be relased out here sometime in March. Three separate individuals I know from uni are already playing it, and are copying it for their friends.

Quite frankly, who gives two shits if we don't get the PS3 until April 2007, if at all? It costs an arm and a leg (and a kidney, a lung and a testicle), there'll be bugger all games available for it here worth putting in the thing until 2008, it's an ugly great monolith, and if not already, after christmas everyone in Australia and probably most of Europe will be gaming away merrily on a Wii or 360.

Wow... What a rant. Sorry! To summarise: Woohoo, gaming in Australia gets less shit, F#@$ the F@#$ing F$*!ers!