Duby

Cortana, because she could get into your suit and make your balls kick themselves.

Cortana. She can, like, get in your head.

Of course, as one Australian put it to me, "Why do all Americans know Fosters? Fosters is the shittiest Australian beer!"

Detroit--Ann Arbor area--at 4:00 am a friend and I drove to Best Buy, where we ended up being 29 and 30 in a line for 24 Wiis, according to the manager. So we left and drove by Target, which had a line of about 20 for 12 consoles. Then we passed Game Stop, which was swamped. We checked out Meijer, but they didn't hold any for Sunday. On a whim, after already conceding our defeat, we dropped by the Sears and called our girlfriend's to wake them up and see if Sears were on NintendoWiiSeeker. They weren't, and we couldn't figure out the store's hours.
Once again, we were about to concede, when I suggested that we play at least one game of networked MarioKart on my friend's Dual DS's. While we were playing, at about 5:30, a mom dropped by with a chair and said that somebody at the EB games in the Briarwood mall heard a rumor about some Wiis on Sunday.
So we stayed and I started studying for my copyright exam, which is Monday morning at 9:30.
At 7:00, Sears opened, and the 6 of us who had gathered by then at the entrance went in to make sure there were no Wiis being sold at Sears. There weren't, so we walked through the mall to EB Games, which was still closed. There we met a secuity guard who told us that we were not allowed to walk the mall yet because it doesn't open until 8--we had to wait outside at the nearest entrance where...THERE WAS A LINE OF PEOPLE. My friend had taken a drive around the mall at around 6:30, concerned that the line was so small by Sears, but there was nobody at any other entrances. We knew that everybody in that line had come at least 2 hours after we had gotten there. The two of us and the four moms in line behind us were worried that we might incite a riot if we went out there and told them that we were there first...but one of the moms did that, with a heavy measure of politeness and calls for fairness and pity, so the people outside agreed to maintain our order. Mall security then decided to let everybody form a line inside by the EB games. My friend and I were first. But we soon found out that the store didn't open until 10. Rumor had it that there would be 6 or 9 units. People also started showing up for pink and black DS units.
A little after 8, the manager showed up and spent about 20 minutes "counting the units" in the back. He finally emerged to report that there were only 5 Wiis, 3 pink DSes, and 7 black DSes.
We waited another hour and a half and finally got our hands on our Wiis. I got an extra remote/nunchuck and DragonBallZ / Madden (for my dad).
But I promised myself not to open it until after my final tomorrow....

Shouldn't they be able to introduce some element of "supply" into their equation, rather than relying on just demand? Rather than tweaking the effectiveness of the guns, can't they pretend the "virtual manufacturers" of the guns adjust their production lines to accomodate the increased demand? Of course, that will basically just lower the price of the deagle, perhaps until it is ubiquitous. But, darn it, if that's the gun I want to play with, I don't want to be told I can't afford it just because everybody else wants one.
(I get that enough when I browse the consoles formerly known as nextgen on ebay.)

Opening up the Xbox would certainly violate agreements like Warrantees, etc.

But don't get too fed up with Copyright! It does allow authors to protect works, but it also LIMITS the control they can have over their works. Copyright is a legal mechanism to prevent censorship excessive control of knowledge.

For example, copyright preempts state laws (many scholars, and I would argue that all sane scholars agree that that includes contract), so a company generally can't worm its way into rights to a work not granted by copyright law. That is, a publisher can't contractually require you to ask permission for any use of a book.

So celebrate the limitations copyright law imposes on copyright holders!

There is no way that a court would consider the purchase of an Xbox360 a license rather than a console. It's just Microsoft's chutzpah-legal department making a long, long, long reach, the only possible purpose of which could be to threaten a nigh-frivolous suit that some defendant will be too poor to litigate.

If you open up most books, you will find the copyright notice: no part of this publication may be used in any way without the permission of the publisher.
That is NOT true. That would mean that you need the permission of the publisher to READ the book...or use it to prop up a table.

Just because a company says it has a right or tries to license a right doesn't mean that it has the power to do so.

An Xbox is a device for playing video games, not a work of expression fixed in a tangible medium. It is not the within subject of copyright, so there is nothing to license. Under just about every applicable precedent, this would be a sale of a good and even if copyright WERE applicable, would be subject to the First-Sale Doctrine (you can do what you want with the item you buy).

Elements of the Xbox are protected by patent, so those elements cannot be copied or manufactured. You're always free to destroy a patented device that you buy.

The only things you CAN'T destroy once you buy them is certain works of fine visual art protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act

That IS ridiculous! I just e-mailed your comment to my Prof. so she would get a good laugh.

Another note: As I mentioned, if the technological measure is protecting something not covered by copyright, the DMCA does not apply. So if the modding wasn't for the purpose of copying games, but just getting around some protection of the console's (hypothetically) uncopyrightable software controlling a process (e.g. for the purposes of interoperability), DMCA would not apply. But whether or not the protected software is copyrightable would make for big expensive litigation that most modders would not be willing or able to afford.

That is, if you were modding an Xbox360 to support a Wii Remote (who's gonna try it?!) my guess would be that you're fine, though Microsoft would still probably sue you.

PS I'm also not licensed to practice, so do not take any comments or suggestions I make as legal advice.

ps: circumventing copy protection under the DMCA is illegal even if not done for money, unless it's one of the exceptions, like academic encryption research.

UK does have a DMCA-like protection against Technological Protection Measures, implemented for compliances with EUCD. UK also has a different system for exempting some uses. UK Copyright has "Fair Dealing," not "Fair Use."

I don't know much about the UK provisions and I haven't started studying for my US Copyright exam yet (too busy studying First Amendment), but:

First: DMCA only applies to protections of copyrighted material. If the modding affects non-copyrighted material, it should be perfectly fine under the First-Sale Doctrine (that is, you can do what you want with a good you buy. e.g., once you buy a copy of a book, you can write in it, tear it apart, paint on it, resell it, etc. You can't copy it and distributes the copies, though, unless that qualifies as a fair use)

I'd be careful about blindly applauding the enforcement of a law as incoherent (or at least as inconsistent) as the DMCA. In fact, many scholars argue that the DMCA is not only bad policy, but is unconstitutional. Both the language of the act and judicial interpretations vary regarding the effect of the DMCA on Fair Use. subsection 1201(c) of the DMCA states: "OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
If this doesn't affect the right of fair use, than there shouldn't be liability for cracking a protection measure to, for example, make an archival copy. Or it could be interpreted to mean that fair use rights survive against INFRINGEMENT claims, but not against claims of cracking access and copy protection measures (not infringement).
Under the first interpretation, I have the right to circumvent protection to make an archival copy. I don't know the first thing about modding. Mr. Modder can circumvent on his own console. But I can't pay Mr. Modder to do for me what i have the RIGHT to do for myself because that's trafficking.
Under the second interpretation, I can't do squat. Fair Use is gone.
You must remember that the purpose of US Copyright Law is NOT to reward authors or give authors control of their works (let alone companies who buy the rights to these works). The purpose of copyright, literally codified in the Constitution, is to PROMOTE PUBLIC LEARNING through the means of granting exclusive rights to authors for LIMITED TIMES.
The "limited time" right now is "lifetime plus 70" or, in the case of a corporation, 95 years, although those numbers always seem to get bigger as soon as Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain. The Supreme Court has held that these times are limited enough, though I personally would disagree. (Did you know that the Content-industries actually tried to argue that "forever minus one day" would be a permissible limit?) The court (for now) left no doctrinal rule to distinguish lifetime plus 70 from, say, lifetime plus 500, which is technically limited as well. But that's besides the point.
The point is the Technological Protection Measures are FOREVER. They don't turn off after lifetime + 70 or 95 years or even 5 years. That's one major argument why the DMCA is unconstitutional. Now, you might counter that, once the copyright in a work has expired, the work enters the public domain, and so under the DMCA it ceases to be protected from circumvention of its DRMs. However, for the majority of us who are not modders (or copyright scholars!), DRMs block our access to works FOREVER.

There's also a question as to whether Fair Use is constitutionally mandated, if not by the balance of exclusive rights for the promotion of public learning, then at least by the First Amendment. I can't contractually agree to not use my first amendment speech rights because they are public rights--my waiver hurts the public interest in whatever speech I may make. Technological Protection Measures are self-help tools by "private" individuals or companies that stifle speech. The First Amendment only protects speakers from State actions and State actors, but that criteria is satisfied by the DMCA, which creates civil and criminal penalties for circumventing those technologies to make protected speech.
The Supreme Court has stated in dicta that the fair use provision in the copyright act incorporates first amendment protections into copyright.

So:
1. DMCA and its ilk are
a) bad policy
b) inconsistent with the copyright act
c) vague--courts are split on interpretation, some seem inclined just to go for rough justice and equity
d) possibly unconstitutional

2.
a) The Content-industry would have you believe that such a conviction is perfectly justified, but it's questionable.
b) The industry would also have you believe that there is such a thing as stealing a copyright or stealing content. There is NO SUCH THING. You can INFRINGE a copyright, but you cannot steal it or digital content. If you steal a sack of potatoes, the sack is gone. If you make a copy of a poem, the poem is still there. A copyright does not give you ownership of a work. A copyright gives you ownership of a copyright, which is a bundle of LIMITED exclusive rights, such as the right to make and distribute copies. Copyright does not give you ownership of a work's market--it gives you limited exclusive rights in the market, such as the market for copying and distributing the work. If that were not the case, it would be infringement to write a game-guide or a walk-through. Just because it is possible to make some money related to a work, it does not mean that the copyright owner is entitled to that money! Don't just lap up the propoganda the content industries push!

3. I had a third point, but I forgot it. It might have been that there are other ways to protect against rampant copyright infringement in the digital age.

4. write your congressman and senator to ask them to rewrite the DMCA!