Sony has lost a legal battle in Australia over the modifying of its PlayStation games console. The High Court has ruled that chipping the console so that it can play imported games does not breach copyright law.
The ruling ends a four-year legal battle between Sony and a supplier of so-called mod chips, which bypass regional controls on the machine. Consoles such as the Xbox and PlayStation 2 can be modified by chips that are soldered to a console's main circuit board to bypass copyright and regional controls.
The chips allow people to play games purchased legitimately in other countries, as well as running backup copies or bootleg discs.
Once the xbox comes out, a lot of one-man companies will rise again to modify the boxes. Actually, a lot of the "illegal" use has been tempered by clever software in XBox live which detects if you're using a modified box. If you are (or you haven't set the switch to pretend you have a standard version), the XBox server bumps you off and "bans" you.
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