The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

TV judge holds court over Wii modchip case

Piracy isn't the problem, though

Here's a video clip of a televised court case about a pay dispute between a man and his neighbour over the modification of a Wii console.

Amusing as all this 'he didn't pay me' stuff is, The People's Court judge appears to express no concern that the act of modifying a console to "play free games" is illegal.

The 1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was enacted to prevent hardware being hacked to gain access to copyrighted material.

This was brought up in court in December 2010, when a Californian man was arrested for modifying Xbox consoles. He escaped punishment, due to mistakes made by the prosecution when presenting its evidence.

The fact that nobody picks up on the piracy element is rather comical. Even the crowd seem zombified throughout. How they refrained from smiling, let alone cracking up in full-blown laughter at such a case is beyond me. What do they put in the water? Or in the words of the presenter - who offers a series of meaningless pop vox in the middle of the programme - "What Wii're they smoking?" ®

More from The Register

US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us
Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
All roads lead to Chrome?
 breaking news
Borked your iDevice? Pay EVEN MORE to have it fixed by Applecare
Or scream at their hapless techies on their forums
Euro PC shipments plummet into bottomless pit of DOOOOM
11th quarter of decline, 20pc drop on last year - Gartner
MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'
With 20Mp sensor - NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?
Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report
Wyse up, suckers, could this be a new set-side-stick?
Report: AT&T dropping Facebook phone after dismal sales
Turns out folks won't buy that for a dollar