Legalities of Modifying your Xbox
Depending on the country you live in Xbox modification could be legal or illegal.
In the USA Xbox modchips are illegal under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) The DMCA states that “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.” (Wolf, 2003) However the “modchips in question are nothing more than the same chips used in nearly every electronic device we use today” (Kay, 2007). So the big question is can modchips be really classed as illegal as computers are devices that circumvent copy protection, does that mean computers are illegal too?
In the UK modchips are now illegal too, “Under the UK's implementation of the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), Europe's answer to the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to bypass copy protection mechanisms” (Smith, 2004) This means that if you used a modchip or a softmod to modify your console you would be breaking the EUCD.
The Laws
After finding out it was illegal to modify an Xbox and looking in to the laws that define it as been legal its obvious the laws are very vague and can be twisted to best fit a situation. As I know from personal experience, it’s possible to modify an Xbox just using a computer that’s capable of running Windows, does this mean computers should be illegal? Of course not! However, the DMCA states “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection” (Wolf, 2004) this could quite easily make computers classed as illegal as even the most basic PC’s can be used to circumvent protection such as encryption. Computers are not classed as illegal under the DMCA, however Modchips are. Despite modifying Xbox’s being illegal its worth noting that 88% who participated in my online survey stated they would not use there Xbox today if it wasn’t modified (Appendix 2). Even though console modification is not legal if it extends the life of the Xbox is it really such a bad thing?
