Content developers are always looking for new ways to protect
their creations by preventing illegal copying. Meanwhile,
pirates are equally on the look out for ways to circumvent that
protection. A recent court case brought by Nintendo is one
battle in the ongoing war.
Mod chips are hardware devices that circumvent certain content
protection measures and the basic question at issue here is: is it
illegal to sell mod chips?
Nintendo employs technology on its Wii and DS consoles that only
permits content authorized by Nintendo to be used on such
devices. The defendant PC Box sells mod chips which disable
that technology. Nintendo would very much like to stop the
sale of such chips as people certainly do use them to play
illegally-copied content. On the other hand, PC Box argues
that the content protection system goes too far in locking down the
console and not permitting other software to be run. Thus the
mod chips have perfectly legal uses, such as enabling
