He shouldn’t have received any jail time for this. Drat.
I hope he appeals…
THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW REACHES OUT TO XBOX MOD CHIPS
A hefty fine and harsh jail sentence for Xbox mod chip retailer

David Rocci sold the Enigma mod chips for the Xbox on his site, IsoNews.com, and was found in breach of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act whose draconian rules seized the site, his equipment and set the wheels of unjustice rolling. He pleaded guilty to selling illegal copyright circumvention devices under the Act.
While we don’t condone the ability to pirate software, this is surely an outrageous and disproportionate punishment for someone who merely facilitated people to tinker with their own Xbox. It is their Xbox once they bought it isn’t it? How many people have a CD-RW in their PC – surely the multinational companies making and distributing these must be party to copying, but I doubt they’re quaking in their boots. It’s like going to a garage and converting your car to run on LPG, is that wrong?
The whole thing stinks. A mod chip’s a mod chip and simply because it can be used for illegal purposes this makes it illegal, and this ruling is from a country that prides itself on its inalienable ‘right to bear arms’; weapons which can be used for illegal purposes.

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This just in from the EFFector:
For this release:

http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030220_1201_pr.php
Copyright Office website, including posted comments:

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

EFF comments to Librarian of Congress and U.S. Copyright
Office
EFF volunteers special thank-you page:

http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030220_1201_thanks.php

* Public Asks Copyright Office to Allow Common CD/DVD Uses
Electronic Frontier Foundation Encourages Public
Comments
San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today announced that it helped 245 consumers submit comments to the Librarian of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office requesting protection for certain ordinary uses of CDs and DVDs.
The consumer comments supported the EFF’s December 18 request that the
Librarian of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office grant four exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in order to permit bypassing of certain technological protection measures for copyrighted works.
Currently, the DMCA prevents users from making the following four uses
of some digital media:
(1) Listening to copy-protected music CDs on certain stereos and personal computers
(2) Viewing foreign movies on DVDs on US players due to region-coding restrictions
(3) Skipping through commercials on some movie DVDs
(4) Viewing and making fair uses of movies that are in the public domain and released on encrypted DVDs
The commenters described their difficulties with the DMCA’s ban on bypassing technological locks on copy-protected music CDs and movies released on DVD:
* 55 comments described problems people had experienced with copy-protected CDs, ranging from inability to play music that they had purchased to complete computer operating system crashes requiring major computer repair.
* 130 comments focused on problems playing foreign movies on region-coded DVDs. One person originally from Denmark expressed sadness and frustration at not being able to play movies his mother gave him. Others discussed special interest works, such as anime, and foreign movies that are only available outside of the United States, but unplayable on U.S. DVD players.
* Many parents wrote comments describing their concerns about unskippable commercials and promotional material in a number of Disney movies released on DVD.
* Several people also expressed frustration about the limited use that could be made of particular public domain movies, such as Charlie Chaplin’s Movie Marathon, which was released on a CSS-encrypted DVD.
“The large number of comments reflects consumers’ growing concerns about the DMCA and the very real impact that the law has on their lives,” said EFF Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze.
“These EFF-inspired comments alone count for more than the total number of comments the Copyright Office received during the previous rule making in 2000,” added EFF Activist Ren Bucholz. “We’re hopeful that the Copyright Office will listen to the growing public voice demanding reasonable uses of their own CDs and DVDs.”
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030220_1201_pr.php
Copyright Office website, including posted comments:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
EFF comments to Librarian of Congress and U.S. Copyright
Office:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20021218_eff_dmca_reply_comments.html
EFF volunteers special thank-you page:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030220_1201_thanks.php

DMCA Takedown Notice, Scientology, and PacBell

It turns out I was given a DMCA Takedown Notice from the Church of Scientology for the Xenu.net web archive (notice that this is now a 404) I setup in December 2002…
When I originally contacted SBC I was told that they couldn’t reconnect my service until the “policy block” is removed. I was then given a number for policy and told to leave a message and that I would be called back within 24 hours…
Calling the number yielded a cryptic computer generated voice (which I couldn’t understand) and I was then dumped right into voicemail.
I later found out that this number had been disconnected. After talking to a number of supervisors I was able to have one admit that they were redirecting customers to a disconnected phone number! Other support department supervisors said they could not help me without approval from Policy and they were not willing to believe that the number was disconnected…
I finally received a call from a *memo* sent to the Policy department. It turns out I was given a DMCA Takedown Notice. This is about 80 hours after I first noticed my problem on Monday morning…
It turns out that Scientology (I assume using Google) found me through my blog where I linked to the wayback archive running on PeerFear .
Right now the content has been moved to a temp directory and is no longer hosted on the site. I am considering my options for restoring service including moving the content to a hosting provider in a country with less draconian Copyright laws.

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I’ve made the Pavlovich Decision available in HTML too (that’s true to the PDF document page-number-wise – for easy printing, citing, etc.).
Let me know if you need me to embed a link for you for a specific purpose. (That’s the point of having these documents available online — So we can all reference them and cite specific portions directly.)
Supreme Court Intervenes in DVD Dispute
Supreme Court Urged to Settle DVD Copying Dispute; Could Be Landmark for Online Content

The Supreme Court has temporarily intervened in a fight over DVD copying, and the justices could eventually use the case to decide how easy it will be for people to post software on the Internet that helps others copy movies.
More broadly, the case against a webmaster whose site offered a program to break DVD security codes could resolve how people can be sued for what they put online…
The California Supreme Court ruled in November that the former webmaster, Matthew Pavlovich, cannot be sued for trade secret infringement in California. Justices said he could be sued in his home state of Texas, or in Indiana, where he was a college student when codes that allowed people to copy DVDs were posted on his Web site in 1999.

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I’ll be reporting from the ElcomSoft Trial going on this week in San Jose, California.
Here are a pair of stories I wrote about Dmitry Sklyarov and ElcomSoft last year if you’re interested in refreshing your memory about the situation:
And Justice For Adobe
Dmitry Sets The Record Straight
Here are a pack of stories by Joanna Glasner for Wired News about what’s been going on with the trial so far. The prosecution made its case last week. The defense presents its case starting tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be posting updates every evening starting tomorrow night.

All Eyes on ElcomSoft Trial

Opening Salvos in ElcomSoft Trial
Adobe: ElcomSoft Outside U.S. Law
Testimony on Tape in E-Book Trial

MATTHEW PAVLOVICH, v. DVD COPY CONTROL ASSOCIATION, INC

Consider this blog entry a little greeting card to whoever it is that made this donation…
An anonymous donor has given a million dollars to Duke University that will be used to finance a new center for research on curtailing copyright extensions.
See the Register’s:
Anonymous $1m grant to test copyright laws

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Ed Felten has started a new Freedom-to-Tinker Blog to raise awareness about the DMCA’s negative impact on education and innovation.