No, this is a case of the law being immoral. I don't know or care where the law about mod chips being illegal came from, but they shouldn't be.

What is fair to me is:
- You buy a console, you should be able to do what you want with it (to an extent)
- If you break it by opening it up or changing it, you invalidate the warranty
- Playing pirate copies of games is illegal

But changing the behavious of your own console, manually, is not intrinsically losing the manufacturer anything whatsoever, you do it at your own risk, and you are harming no one but yourself. What is wrong with that?

Let's not be stupid here, either - a mod chip may or may not use reverse engineering, but every company does this in one way or another to its competitors. The difference is, the people with more money are the ones who are in control. This is what should be illegal.

This mod chip stuff always was, so those that want to can play import games. The trouble is they are getting import gamers mixed up with modders, which is a wrong way to go about it but to MS, Nintendo etc, is killing two birds with one stone. The government have been fooled because they aren't tech wise.

Its not illegal to chip or mess with something you purchase with your money. This chap could easily argue that if you purchased a car legally, that once payment is done, you can tweak it to your hearts content. The same principal stands for consoles too, and more so PC.

Piracy is illegal and developers get no money, but importing games is legal and gives them their cut regardless.

What about the Marketing, Shipping, Regional Coding, Translation, Advertising that they pay in the UK to Promote and Produce and Sell the Games, importing costs Devs and Publishers money if everyone imported from US or Japan, then what point would there be for them to add European languages to Advertise in European Countries?

Why would they even bother shipping any units over here, if no one would buy them, what would happen to Game/Gamestation etc, Would even play.com exsist?

Think Logistics, Think Money, Think its a business to Devs not fun.

People shouldn't be forced to buy what they don't want, people should be allowed to buy what they want (which isn't the same thing as stealing). If people want a particular version, why shouldn't they be allowed to buy it, just because they're in a different country?

Piracy, too, isn't something you can stop simply by stopping one man - "pirates" don't care about business in the same way that the companies ("victims") do, so it won't change a thing. Even stopping piracy isn't going to force people to buy games that they would have got for free. If you offer someone something for free, they're a lot more likely to accept it than if you charge people for it.

Still, this isn't necessarily about that, it's about installing mod chips, which doesn't intrinsically harm anyone - it's not taking anything away from anyone. To me, it's the same concept as using an unlicenced controller - I don't see the crime in it. You have to think, what did the people punishing the man lose from him selling mod chips? It's disgusting, and makes me ashamed to live in such a world.

This isn't about anything aside from some guy who tried to make money off something he knew was illegal.

He's no better nor worse than a bootlegger or drug dealer. If it wasn't illegal, he couldn't charge as much as he did. (I don't know how bad he soaked his customers, but if he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, hes an even bigger idiot) Now the butcher's bill has come due. Lets all cry crocodile tears of purple piss. This isn't some guy who did a few chips for friends and family, this guy built a buisness by breaking the law. Agree with the law or disagree with it, its the law, he broke it as a part of his buisness plan. And he commited the cardinal sin...he got caught. If theres any debate its about the law, not this guy. This guy punched his own ticket and will live with the consequences, which is as it should be.