Microsoft zap the thieves.

Excellent news. Up to a million modded 360s have been zapped by Microsoft because their users were stealing games instead of paying for the work that goes into them.

Whatever you do, don't buy a secondhand 360 now.

 

"although having a non-Xbox hard drive is apparently detected and leads to a ban."

Please enjoy paying 90 pounds for a 120GB hard-drive whilst terrabyte drives are about 60 quid.

But of course hitting the hard core gamer who upgraded their hard-drives is just a minor and completely justifiable side-affect of stopping ze pirates.

 

Or less delicately put:

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/ffi/ffi1.htm

 

Meh, that's just stupid semantics. It may not be stealing in the literal sense, but you are still taking something away in the form of potential earnings.

I know some people argue that pirate wouldn't buy the thing anyway, so there is no potential there in the first place, but that still doesn't justify piracy.

Why the fuck are you guys defending piracy anyway? It affects everyone that makes games, you know.

Oh and as far as this bonehead move by Microsoft goes, yeah, big hammer. Basing being blocked on the HD being changed is stupid, for the reasons previously mentioned.

 

have they actually come out and said that teh basis is purely that the HDD has been changed?

if so... i'm fucked, i'm on my third HDD. (20->60->120).

if by "changed" you mean they hacked the hardware to be able to use larger drives and likely to use a partition to play copied images... and MS have a way to detect exactly this then... its not a huge hammer... its a surgical strike.

 

I believe it's the second one. The first would be blowing up their over-priced add-on market.

They refuse to give the exact details of how they check for obvious reasons.

 

I'm not defending no-one innit I'm just saying trying to redefine piracy as theft is silly and not a good argument. It's not theft, as the little piggies so adequately illustrate.

Why stop at 'piracy is theft'? Why not redefine other transgressions as greater crimes? Illegal parking is rape. Forum trolling is paedophilia. Littering is genocide.

Yeah, see those things seem really bad now don't they! I'm of to lynch a motorist.

 

Jimmy - you've lost the plot lad.

 

Now that's just silly! We all know that littering is inexcusable!

 

I always wondered how you snagged all those debating trophies.

 

Huh, there's appears to be spittle running down my monitor.

 

Um, piracy is theft.
Or false imprisonment.
Usually taking place in the Indian Ocean.

Copyright infringement, on the other hand...

 

_

 

Piracy is irrelevant anyway

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61203