I mean wow, black and white never produced a gray line to me! I know once you own it its yours I agree perfectly as long as it DOESN'T interfer with someone or another companies right or in this case copyrights and intelectual property. I dont even see a practical use for a modchip other than to not have the DVD kit which I think sucks to buy just to watch movies. I cannot find a logical use for a modchip.
Poolman and Cyberion have already given some very valid uses. The XBox is deliberatly crippled. It contais code which serves no other purpose than stopping the XBox from running any code which Microsoft doesn't want you to run. In other words, the XBox is designed to make and enforce moral decisions on your behalf.
Unfortunatly this code is rather crude. It stops *ALL* 3rd party code and discs from working - it has no way of determining if they actually violate any copyrights. For example:
- If you are a programmer, you can't write any code for the XBox, without paying Microsoft for an XDK and signing a restrictive licensing agreement.
- Ever heard of the Fair Use doctrine in copyright law? It is your legally-given RIGHT to make a backup copy for personal use, of copyrighted content. What use is this right if the XBox assumes ill-intentions and refuses to play legal backups?
- How about convenience? I've bought CDs. I've bought DVDs. The first thing I did with them, is ripped them to my hard drive. I did it simply because I find it a hell of a lot more convenient to click an album in WinAmp than to physically swap discs. I didn't infringe any copyright laws (although you'd argue that ripping a DVD entails bypassing protection hence should be illegal).
All of the above are examples of perfectly legal actions which are stopped because some bit of code in the XBox tries to prevent illegal copying, even if it means taking away rights which have been granted to you as a result of many legal precedents.
If the MPAA/RIAA cartels get their way, some day PCs might feature similar restrictions at a hardware level. In the future, you might not be able to buy a DVD/CD and copy it to your hard drive for future access. You might not be able to make a copy of a CD to play in your car. You might not be able to rip a CD and download it onto your MP3 player. If this happens, would you consider it wrong to buy a modchip for your PC which eliminates these restrictions? If not, why are XBox modchips any different?
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