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French Mod-chip Maker Divineo Ordered to Pay $9 Million in Fines for Violating DMCA

October 5, 2006 at 11:14 pm - by Dale Dietrich

Categories: DMCA-TPM Cases • Decisions • Modding Cases • Piracy Cases

On September 11, 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken assessed more than $9 million in penalties against France-based mod-chip maker Divineo for trafficking in mod chips and the associated HDLoader software. HDLoader allows users to copy their games from CD/DVD disks to their hard drive. Despite legitimate use by legions of honest gamers, this mod-chip/software bundle works by circumventing copy protection measures contained on the game CD/DVD and thereby contravenes the controversial DMCA.

Dale’s Comment: Mod-chips and software like HDLoader is hated by game developers/publishers because they are commonly used to distribute pirated video games on PS2 consoles. For honest gamers, they are a terrific way to install all purchased games on a hard drive so that they can be quickly and conveniently served up like records in a jukebox. Without it gamers must manually flip game disks each time they want to change the current game.

Sources: Gamasutra | Digital Trends | GameDaily.biz | Businesswire | ars technica | Next Generation | Engadget | ESA Press Release

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3 comments

1  scrapy { 04.30.07 at 2:03 pm }

wow thats sad well big companies have to get money somehow…?????

2  anon { 08.17.07 at 12:02 am }

esa had a giant crack down considering this sort of technology in there announcements as piracy technicaly none of the technology is pirated and many honest people use this for example me i find it rediculus how they feal they have the right to use our constitution as toilet paper i hate the esa because of all this crap they pull

3  crazy { 09.16.08 at 11:40 am }

what??????????? this is wrong

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