Game Crimes

As reported by me to boingboing, a couple of people have been arrested in Washington, DC for modding XBox consoles and allegedly selling them with oodles of pirated games.

This stupid act was apparently being done in plain sight, as noted by another reader

I stopped in one of the locations just about two weeks ago looking into PS2/XBox mod chips and was stunned to see them selling modded systems with games already copied onto the hard-drive. (They were defintely doing it with XBox systems and may have been doing it with PS2 systems as well.)

While this kind of piracy is commonplace in backstreet bazaars in Asia, it takes some nerve (and idiocy) to commit a crime like this in the heart of an American city.

I actually do not understand why people mod their XBoxes - I use mine as the center of my home entertainment universe, but am pretty satisfied with it as is - additional functionality I obtain via my other digital devices. I'd be too scared of spoiling the device, as well as losing my XBox Live rights.

I love XBox Live - it's one of the best business models that Microsoft has conceived. We do not hear too much about the Sony online service. I like playing Links 2004 on the Live platform, besides Project Gotham Racing 2

Like the man said, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." Or, as the other man said, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Slashdot discussion underway