14 DAY TRIAL // World-renowned Xbox hacker Andrew Huang has agreed to testify for a modder charged with offenses under DMCA, because he believes console mod-chipping represents should be exempted from the law.
According to Wired, the a federal jury trial against Matthew Crippen, a 28-year-old Xbox hacker from Anaheim, California, who modded consoles for cash, is scheduled to begin on November 30 in Los Angeles.
Andrew Huang, who has an Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT, was the first person to ever hack an Xbox and later even wrote a book about it.
The method he used is known as mod-chipping and involves installing a modification chip (hence the name) with the purpose of disabling the console's restrictions. A modded Xbox will allow users to play non-licensed or home-made video games.
However, unlike the more popular jailbreaking, which is a software modification, mod-chipping requires a relatively high level of technical knowledge and skill.
Because of this, most gamers interested in having their consoles modded pay hackers to do it for them. For example, Crippen charged between $60 and $80 to get the job done.
Prosecutors claim that this is a deliberate circumvention of anti-piracy measures, which is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
However, Huang believes mod-chipping is not a DMCA violation and that just like cellphone jailbreaking, it falls within the scope of fair use.
"[…] The activity of an iPhone owner who modifies his or her iPhone’s firmware/operating system in order to make it interoperable with an application that Apple has not approved, but that the iPhone owner wishes to run on the iPhone, fits comfortably within the four corners of fair use," the U.S. Copyright Office ruled in July.
Huang argues that under the same principle, Xbox owners, who want to run home-brew games, should be allowed to mod-chip their consoles.
"The bottom line, I would like to see the scope of the DMCA limited to an appropriate statute that respects fair use, one that respects traditional rights," the hacker told Wired.