Some of you will remember but this all came to a head back in 2002 when Sony took a mod chip seller, Eddy Stevens, to court, claiming that using and selling mod chips violates copyright law. The court wasn't convinced and Stevens won, although he was separately found guilty of selling pirated games.
Round two, and Sony lodged an appeal in the Federal Court in 2003. Some say they lost round one because they bodged their case. This time they didn't, and the judge ruled that selling mod chips in Australia was in fact illegal. You could still own them mind you, just not sell them.
Old Eddy Stevens wasn't real enthused with this so he lodged an appeal to the High Court in 2005. This time the court overruled the previous judgement declaring that mod chips were not illegal if they could be used to circumvent regional lockout. The main thrust of Steven's argument was that, yes, making pirated copies of games was illegal, but the act of playing a game with a mod chip is not. This really hinged around the fact that consumers could use a mod chip to play legally acquired, imported games. Ding ding; Sony lost round three.
Fast forward to the US Free Trade Agreement and the government, selling their soul to get the Americans on board, knew they would have to come up with an Aussie version of the DMCA. One of the conditions of the FTA was a 'harmonisation of copyright laws', which was really interpreted as Australia adopting the US model as closely as possi
02/06/2007
How do you get an emo out of a tree? cut the rope!