Lets have a serious debate on chips and piracy!

The reason why they even make multi region DVDs is something that I really understand. The movie is released in the US before it gets to Europe, (most of the times) the DVD is eventually released in US land before it does in PALsville and so... If I could import the DVD from the US, the movie theaters would lose money.

Because I could lend the DVD from a video club, watch it with my 3-4 mates for 1 pound, and then return it. Thus, the cinema would lose a lot of money.

Like I said I understand that and I don\'t moan about it.

But there is absolutely no use making us wait for games that are in the market for a loooooong time. This is really really annoying.
A friend of mine chipped his DC for that reason, to be able to play imports (you could play backups anyway, but he did it for the imports).



Sara....
Try to understand what the guy says. I don\'t know how old you are, how you get your games and stuff. If you mainly get your games through your parents\' wallet, then you are not the most appropriate person to talk.
And even if you DO have your own job and you can afford to buy your own games, just THINK how your views would change if the game cost 300 pounds.

I do not support piracy, but I know exactly what this guy means. Its not his fault, he is not lazy and he DOES work his ass off so he can have a DECENT life. Nobody mentioned Ferraris, Prada shoes, Valentino suits and the like. He is talking about a DECENT life, a life that you might take as granted.
Well, guess what, it is NOT. You and me might live in a country where we get paid 3 and 4 times the money he gets, for the SAME hours of work. But he does not.

I don\'t think Sony (or whoever the crap) is losing because of him, and you know why???
Because ***IF*** there was no other way of him being able to buy original games, he would just NOT buy the console, end of story!

So since Sony got a customer OUT OF THE BLUE, (since they wouldn\'t be counting on Upass buying games and the console , right??) they can quit this pathetic moaning about how chips will make the gaming industry go down the drain and all the rest of this propagandistic crap.


I always buy original games because I\'m lucky enough to be able to afford them. I\'m not a "pirate" trying to pave the way for the rest to follow, but it is really annoying to see attitudes like yours against someone who is in a worse condition than you are.

if you REALLY can not understand what I\'m saying, then you are either way TOO rich and live in a world full of SLKs, Ferraris and Audi TTs (I really envy you, not seeing other ppl that cannot afford this life and you don;t sweat a bit) or the propaganda crap has fully brainwashed you.

EDIT--- I would be very interested to read the opinion of the other users of this forum about this matter.. Can you HONESTLY say that Upass is doing a harm to Sony\'s balance sheet???

Moreover, the fact that Sony replaces you the disk is really ridiculous..

When you buy a car, do you get a replacement if you crash it?
What about a vase, do you get a new one if you break it?
You bought a pepsi, you drop it by accident, will the McDonals guy replace it ?

So why do we expect sony to replace our game anyway?
If you don\'t want your kid to tear off that Versace T-shirt, you simply won\'t buy it for your kid because you know what will happen.

So if your 8year old kid can not be carefull and scratches the disc, why would Sony replace it?

From what I\'ve said above, I don\'t think replacements should be given at a discounted price. And sony does VERY well to protect their machine to play backups.


When you buy a chinese vase, do you expect to be able to make a replica using some clay? NO, because if anyone could make one, they wouldn\'t cost so much. Its the same thing, I do not understand why should replacements be given because of a scratched disk....

DOES ANYONE give a replacement of an AUDIO CD at a reduced price....??? I think not.... And this IS entertainment too!!

I\'d say banning Mod Chips would be taking the Napster problem one step further...

I disagree with getting rid of something that has potential for people to commit illegal actions but is not meant to be used for that purpose...

Originally posted by nikos

You bought a pepsi, you drop it by accident, will the McDonals guy replace it ?

Yeah, or I could just get a refill..

Seriously though, I think they are OK, as long as they aren\'t used for illegal things.. But then again, that\'s not really a possibility because everyone will do it anyway.. So, there\'s really no fair solution to this prob IMO.

You can buy an Super Universal PS2. It will cost more then a normal PS2..... but will play EVERYTHING. All regions DVD, Japense,US and European PS1 & PS2 games.... cdr etc..

nikos - I\'m not a yuppie, nor am I the child of yuppie parents.  I support myself just like most of the other adults on this board.  (And no, I do not own, and probably will never own a Ferrari)

I\'m willing to look at the situation from different perspectives, but I still do not see a legitimate use for bootleg games.  Did you read his post?  He makes $180 a month.  His PS2 alone probably cost him 6 weeks salary!  Yeah, we all have our priorities, but that doesn\'t make supporting bootleg vendors excusable.  His small country is probably one of those places where a good chunk of their economy is based on breaking copyright laws.

The guy deserves to spend his money however he sees fit, but I will never support mod chips for the purpose of playing burned PS2 games.

You might have guessed from my original post that I support m0dchips but not for the reason of piracy but more for the reason of import originals, dvd multiregion, being able to make a backup of a DVD to VHS without macrovision etc. However as I don\'t have my PS2 chipped I haven\'t even done any of these things yet although I do follow the m0dchip scene closely.

KOPKING

i would like to import games, as i hate waiting ages for them,

You and me both, I know what you mean about blowing up your PS2 but providing you can get someone else to fit a m0dchip then these import originals will become reality very soon.

UPASS / SARA / NIKOS

Upass\'s situation is not the norm. I happen to agree with Sara that piracy is wrong but in Upass\'s sitation I would do the same thing. If Upass can\'t afford the games and piracy wasn\'t an option then Sony wouldn\'t have got a sale from him so the fact that piracy is availible has actually benefitted Sony in this instance as they have got a sale of a PS2 from Upass. Although I don\'t think everyone can use this "oh I can\'t afford games so ill pirate them excuse" as Upass clearly is an exception.

NIKOS

When you buy a car, do you get a replacement if you crash it?

Well no you don\'t however these are different. Cars and vases are both expensive and generally rare. However in McDonalds i\'ve seen people get replacement drinks. HMV and Electronic Boutique take games back if you like (although I personnally disgaree with this but thats another story). Anotherwords its not all clear cut that Sony is the only company with this warrentee. The actual warrentee is with the games firms I think but Sony honour it.

Ok I know what you mean, if its your fault its damaged then why should Sony offer this warrentee. However you got to remember that Sony don\'t allow you to use your legal backup of your software and therefore they SHOULD offer you this warrentee. If Sony allowed you to use a legal backup (what I would prefer as a disc costs £1 and DVDr is only a little more) then they wouldn\'t have to give this rip off £20 replacement disc warrentee service.

00seven

Sony was rumoured to be making an offical PAL / NTSC converter for us lot in PALSVILLE where you could LEAGLY UPGRADE your PAL PS2 to play US and JAPANESE PS2 games.

Yeah likes that is ever going to happen. I know its only a rumour but a stupid one at that. I mean if Sony really cared about their customers they wouldn\'t do things like add greenscreen to RGB scart DVD playback.

JM

In responce to Sony making developers pay to develop, it\'s really just a more specific term of the company paying royalities for developing software for their product. Even if Sony never made developers pay for discs, the company would have to pay Sony a percentage of whatever profit they make.

Well prehaps. However you don\'t hear of PC developers paying royalities to the operating system they use or the hardware devices inside the PC. More so if free devlopment was allowed think about all the cool things we would have seen on the PS2 now, MP3 players, better memory managers etc.

Sara, I agree with you that m0dchips should not be used for backups. like I said, I do not support piracy, and I honestly believe that if you can not afford something, you simply don\'t buy it.

But Upass and everybody in Upass\' position is an exception, in the sense that its his country\'s economy that does not allow him to play originals..

RichG, I agree with you about the thing with Sony not allowing backups of original games bought, even if the law does not prohibit it, and this is the reason why nobody can touch CloneCD and other copying programs (as well as CDRW who allow RAW write etc). 20quid is a rip off however!!!!! Surely, Sony got their money from me buying GT3. Why would they get an extra 20quid for the same game? If I have the legal right to use MY backup (hence the word backup), and Sony doesn\'t allow me to do so, then someone\'s making a huge profit!!

The thing with vases being expensive etc, ok lets consider a desk lamp you got for 5 quid (argos). If that breaks, even if it is so much cheeper than the vase and the game, they still do not replace it..

NEWS JUST IN.

Well the reason for this debate was to coincide with the actual summary judgement taking place between Sony and ChannelTechnology (people responsible for a ground breaking m0dchip which performs all the legal m0difications that gamers, esp of the PAL terriotory have been after).

This is what the judge had to say about importing games.

Judge Jacob stated that Sony licensed games for the territory that they were issued, the licensing of these games did not allow for their use in other territories, therefore whether they were imported for private and domestic use by personal purchase for instance via the internet, or purchased abroad on holiday, they were not allowed by Sony to be played outside of the licensed territory, this argument should be upheld. The technical reason for the decision being based upon the fact that a game that is run without permission makes a copy of copyright material in memory, this copy is \'infringing\' because it is an unauthorized copy argued Sony. Basically, this \'controversial\' statement made it illegal to play games purchased from abroad.

Nice loop hole. Seems the actual copy of the game in the PS2\'s memory is classed a copy. In reality this is stupid as the law which states that your allowed one backup will become incorrect as this backup will hold information in the PS2s memory when it is run and thus two backups will for prehaps a breif period will exist and thus this law in itself goes against the same theory the judge used against import originals.

This is what the judge had to say about legal backups.

The Messiah defeated the Copy-Protection mechanism, and this part of the design SPECIFICALLY was dealing with the use of backup material as a function. The judge acknowledged that indeed it may be useful to have a backup of software as allowed under the CDPA 1988, and there could possibly be cases of \'where necessary\', but also the aspect of \'swapping\' of backup disks between people would be uncontrollable, and damaging to Sony as nobody would obviously pay £25-45 for a game, therefore \'piracy\' becomes the main factor for consideration above all other.

So although you can have one backup where necessary, the judge simply thinks that on the whole humans will pirate!

Read more the articule at.

http://www.channeltechnology.com.

Originally posted by ooseven
Sony was rumoured to be making an offical PAL / NTSC converter for us lot in PALSVILLE where you could LEAGLY UPGRADE your PAL PS2 to play US and JAPANESE PS2 games.

But sadly it seams like it was a rumor asno more information was reveled about this.

WOULD be nice if it was so though

Sega rocks cause they\'ve been making their PAL games NTSC compatible.

:fro: :fro: :fro:

Note to other developers: Learn from an industry leader...

Yea..... too bad Sega Dreamcast went the way it did The PAL version of every single game I played on DC was 60Hz

Well not quite. A load of Sega games supported 50 / 60, but it wasn\'t like every game did.

doesn\'t the PAL PS2 support 60Hz anyway?????

nikos - I\'m not a yuppie, nor am I the child of yuppie parents. I support myself just like most of the other adults on this board. (And no, I do not own, and probably will never own a Ferrari)

I\'m willing to look at the situation from different perspectives, but I still do not see a legitimate use for bootleg games. Did you read his post? He makes $180 a month. His PS2 alone probably cost him 6 weeks salary! Yeah, we all have our priorities, but that doesn\'t make supporting bootleg vendors excusable. His small country is probably one of those places where a good chunk of their economy is based on breaking copyright laws.

I agreed with nikos opinion. You still don\'t see problem. Look at it this way, you keep arguing that by buying pirated software, your\'re robbing from the owner. But have you thought how much are these rich and powerful country robbing from the poor countries if everyone buy your original software at the price MEANT FOR the country of origin?

We have legitimate software to sell at decent price(base on your cost of living) in US, Europe and Japan.  But what about the rest of the world??? They have to pay the same price when they\'re only earning a fraction of your salary! Do you know why big companies like Intel,AMD ,Sony etc etc, have factories in South America, Malaysia, China etc etc?? Cheap labor!!! Basically, they made the same product at a cheap price and sell it back to those countries at a high price!!! For example, Intel makes their Pentium chips mostly in Malaysia or South America(Costa Rica  is what I last heard). Once the chips are manufactured, it\'s send back to US for stamping and sell back to the country of origin at many times the original price!! So who\'s robbing who?

And this is only videogames. It\'s the same for other stuff and perhaps you can imagine why the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. So if you\'re lucky enough to live in a country with good economy and high currency value, just be thankful and stop stepping on the small hardworking people elsewhere.

They too deserve the respect for making everything else so cheap for you!!

great comment!
lol