Reports claim Australian court rules mod chips legal
Posted by Marcel Klum on 01 September 2003 - 08:47 · no comments & 136 views
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Full name: Marcel Klum
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According to the report, the ruling by the Federal Court threw out an appeal by Sony against an earlier ruling by the Victorian Supreme Court which ordered it to pay the full legal costs of, and make a public apology to, two Melbourne companies which had advertised mod chipping services for PSone and PS2 consoles.
However, this would appear to run contrary to an earlier case, in which Sony won a case against one Eddy Stevens, who was ordered to cease providing mod chips and to pay Sony's legal costs in the case - with a decision about damages still pending. This case took place almost exactly a month ago, and only last week the USA claimed that it was pulling back slightly in its "negotiations" with Australia over copyright laws, mollified mostly by the Stevens decision which established that "copyright circumvention devices" (like mod chips) are illegal there.
So has the Australian legal system taken a complete U-turn, or is this simply mis-reporting? The reports of the case are quite detailed, claiming that Sony was defeated over the fact that mod chips do not themselves allow the copying of games in the console; however, although the story is spreading quickly online, the original source remains unclear.
Furthermore, a search of legal case archives in Australia turns up no case which matches this description, although it's possible that the ruling is so recent that no official online archive of it yet exists. For now at least, this story remains impossible to either confirm or deny; we'll bring you further information as it becomes available.
Trillian maker Cerulean Studios is interested in signing a deal with Microsoft, the company's co-founder and head developer Scott Werndorfer said in an e-mail answer to a reporter's questions.
"We're anxious to work with Microsoft on any licensing models they might have," Werndorfer said. He added that Trillian Pro 2.0, which entered beta testing on Aug. 1, supports the latest MSN IM protocol, but did not say if that means that older Trillian clients will be locked out from the MSN IM network soon or if Trillian Pro 2.0 would work with MSN IM regardless of a licensing deal.
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Because of this unknown flaw, Microsoft is forcing users of several older versions of its own MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients to upgrade to newer versions. Users that have to upgrade have been alerted via e-mail and will soon start to see notifications in their Messenger client, according to Microsoft.
MSN Messenger is one of the most popular IM services on the Internet, along with AOL's Instant Messenger and Yahoo's Messenger. Microsoft claims about 100 million unique users log on to its service each month. IM services let users exchange text messages in real time and providers have also added video conferencing, PC phone calls, gaming and other features.