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| Three men face 17 years in prison for selling illegally modified Xbox consoles |
| Wednesday, February 01, 2006 at 22:20 by Rich Kavanagh |
The two owners of a Hollywood video game store and a third man who worked with them have been indicted for pirating video games by pre-installing games on specially modified Xbox game consoles sold through the game store. The men installed illegal modification chips on the game systems which allowed users to store and play pirated video games.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment last week alleging that the owners of ACME Game Store, together with a third man, modified and sold Xbox game consoles that allowed users to bypass copyright protections and play pirated video games.
The three indicted were Jason Jones, 34, of Los Angeles, a co-owner of ACME Game Store; Jonathan Bryant, 44, of Los Angeles, a co-owner of ACME Game Store; and Pei "Patrick" Cai, 32, of Pico Rivera.
The five-count indictment accuses the three of conspiring to: 1) traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system; 2) infringe on a valid copyright for financial gain; and 3) willfully infringe a copyrighted work by reproducing and distributing pirated works worth more than $1,000.
The indictment additionally alleges two felony violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits trafficking in technology designed to circumvent digital copyright protection technology, as well as copyright infringement and copyright infringement for profit.
This case began when the Entertainment Software Association reported to law enforcement that its private investigators had purchased a modified Xbox game console, pre-loaded with pirated games, from ACME Game Store in May 2005.
According to court documents, Jones and Bryant had modified Xbox game consoles, with over 50 different pirated games on each, running as demonstrators in ACME Game Store and would describe in detail to customers the advantages of the modifications. Customers would pay from $225 to more than $500 for the modifications and the pre-loading of pirated video games, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of pirated games that were pre-loaded on to the hard drive. Cai would pick up game consoles to be modified from ACME GameStore, modify the systems at his home, and then return the game consoles to ACME Game Store to be picked up by ACME Game Store customers.
If convicted of all five counts in the indictment, Jones, Bryant and Cai each could be sentenced to as much as 17 years in federal prison.
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| That's a long time, and harsh. I hope it doesn't come to something as long as 17 years but you can't condone what they did. Selling modded consoles is one thing (which plenty of websites do) but pre-installing pirated games is downright foolish. 17 years though is ridiculous, they haven't harmed any individual, I'd say mugging someone or burgling someone is far more serious than ripping off a large company, I think they should go jail, but not for longer than a robber would. |
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| re: #1
it is theft, so they are robbers... |
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| Ridiculous. Throw your xbox in the bin. |
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| crimes against Genuises. If I could make your old shoes into flying shoes you wouldn't groan. Here they were making something that was dying into rebirth. Heck everyone would want an xbox then. Piracy in some cases is advertising, I don't think the playstation suffered from it, look at how well it did. I never saw any N64 illegal copies . Piricy is a neccessary evil. If there was none do you think apple would had made the ipod or their istore? piricy is freedom and too little or too much is a bad thing :) |
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| The Enron CEO received less time and he stole billions, Pedophiles receive less time and they should be hanged.. I love our Judicial System. |
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