Man Gets 5 Months Over Mod Chips

[JonInMiddleGA]

Apr 13, 12:56 PM (ET)
By The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - A Virginia man has been sentenced to five months in prison for operating a Web site that helped video game enthusiasts bypass anti-piracy technology on popular games.

David M. Rocci, 22, of Blacksburg, Va., pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to import, market and sell modification chips, which let users play pirated games on consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2.

An Alexandria, Va. federal judge, in Friday's sentencing, also slapped a $28,500 fine on Rocci and five months of home detention with electronic monitoring, prosecutors said.

Rocci was prosecuted under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy technology or assist others in doing so.

As part of the plea agreement, the government seized his domain name, iSONEWS.com. Authorities say the site had been used to market mod chips and offered listings of available pirated games.


AP Story

[JeeberD]

Originally posted by JonInMiddleGA
David M. Rocci, 22, of Blacksburg, Va., pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to import, market and sell modification chips, which let users play pirated games on consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2.

Rocci was prosecuted under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy technology or assist others in doing so.

Hmmm, they were showing people how to do this to their X-Box's on The Screen Savers a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if the govt will go after them?

[oykib]

Mod-chips can be used to play pirated games, but the main purpose is to bypass region coding.

BTW, does anyone know whaatever happened with the class-action suit in Australia that tried to knock down region coding on DVDs.

[korme]

HAPPY B-DAY JON!

[SackAttack]

I remember hearing that an Australian court struck down region encoding in that part of the world because it was artificially inflating the prices Australian consumers had to pay for games and movies.

Likely got appealed, dunno where it's gone since.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Thanks Shorty

[Airhog]

this guy went to jail because he sold some x-box mod chips. The website was mearly a giant forum about pirated software. The DOJ seized his domain name, but never actually took the site.

[BreizhManu]

Originally posted by Airhog
this guy went to jail because he sold some x-box mod chips. The website was mearly a giant forum about pirated software. The DOJ seized his domain name, but never actually took the site.

since the site was hosted in netherlands, they weren't able to took it anyway.

[Airhog]

Are you sure? the other large site that caters to this is hosted in the netherlands, but this site was in the usa, otherwise the DOJ couldnt have siezed the domain name...