Microsoft Fires Back at Xbox Live Lawsuit

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mayne92

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]The only way they would have liability is if they banned unmodded consoles of legitimate users.[/citation]
Agreed...if seen people say that if you own the xbox360 then you can mod it. Fine. But to play online with it...well that is risk the person is willing to take I guess...
 

AsAnAtheist

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]The only way they would have liability is if they banned unmodded consoles of legitimate users.[/citation]

Agreed.
 

phantastic

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I am wondering if the burden of proof "innocent until proven guilty" rests on MS shoulders... Should they have to prove one actually pirated a game as opposed to using a copy of a legitimately purchased game? Listen I am not condoning piracy or making excuses. In fact I have one modded and one un-modded for online play. However I do have a messed up copy of GOW 2 that only works on the xbox that I had copied to the hard drive. I would definitely prefer to use backups as the xbox did at one point have an affinity to scratch media due to a poorly manufactured drive.
 

Jerky_san

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I dunno why you all are so against moded consoles.. When I was a 15 I had a playstation with a ton of games I loved to play. One day I came home to my suprise my mom let some kids she was watching into my room to "play" my ps.. Low and behold my freaken favorite games were scattered across my room. Thus I bought one of those things to shove in the back and made copies of all my games and put those in the cases and hid my originals.. Yes I agree piracy of games is bad but I also agree that having little kids throw my favorite games around like they were 25 cent cds also makes me very angery..
 

hakesterman

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I think Microsoft has every right to do what they did, and i think these hackers finally got what they had comming. I hope their is more to come, and i hope the Courts throw out the Bogus lawsuit.
 

haricotvert

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]The only way they would have liability is if they banned unmodded consoles of legitimate users.[/citation]

Exactly. Microsoft has repeatedly stated that the detection criteria they use to determine what consoles were modded or not does not generate false positives (obviously this is unverifiable by pretty much everyone except MS employees). So far no one has conclusively disproven that statement - just a few anecdotal stories of people who claim to be innocent but were still banned. And anecdotal evidence is the worst possible kind of evidence, and would not hold up in court.

It's just MS's word versus theirs. Until there are confirmed cases where people are actually permitted to send back their consoles to MS, and then MS gives the O.K. that there were no mods on it and was a legitimate false positive - then there will continue to be a my-word-against-theirs stalemate.

(I don't own an Xbox 360, or any console for that matter)
 

Honis

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[citation][nom]phantastic[/nom]I am wondering if the burden of proof "innocent until proven guilty" rests on MS shoulders...[/citation]When someone is providing a service to you they can deny that service for any reason not mentioned in the constitution (assuming USA here). So basically, if they told you, you can't play because you're *insert race* then yeah sue your heart out. If they ban you from that service because you broke the user agreement of that service (the one you agreed to at least once with a button click), then guess what, sue away and hope your lawyer only collects if you do and the people your suing find it cheaper to settle than take you to court.

MS is within its rights in this case based on my armchair lawyering skills.
 

gerohmygosh

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[citation][nom]Jerky_san[/nom]I dunno why you all are so against moded consoles.. When I was a 15 I had a playstation with a ton of games I loved to play. One day I came home to my suprise my mom let some kids she was watching into my room to "play" my ps.. Low and behold my freaken favorite games were scattered across my room. Thus I bought one of those things to shove in the back and made copies of all my games and put those in the cases and hid my originals.. Yes I agree piracy of games is bad but I also agree that having little kids throw my favorite games around like they were 25 cent cds also makes me very angery..[/citation]
And the answer to that would be Blurays my friend. =]
 

sciggy

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Haven't people lost access to stuff on their hard drive because of the "update" that MS put out when trying to log onto live with a mod'd xbox?

I can certainly understand not allowing people who pirate the ability to access any of the services or to render their units useless, but I'm sure someone will call foul because they lost access to some precious personal data on their hard drive. You can sue for just about anything now adays...
 

timbozero

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Removing XBox Live support for pirated games is fair.

Removing XBox Live support for modified consoles is also fair.

What is a potential issue is that if a user decides to modify their console (which has been shown to be allowable by law now) and has 1 backup (or pirated game) then they get banned from the entire Live service. Why this could be an issue is that from then on all legitimate, original games will no longer receive updates. As some of these updates are 'bug fixes' which are not available from other sources , Microsoft is removing the 'warranty' and support for those legitimate products by association to the modified console.
 

anamaniac

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[citation][nom]Jerky_san[/nom]I dunno why you all are so against moded consoles.. When I was a 15 I had a playstation with a ton of games I loved to play. One day I came home to my suprise my mom let some kids she was watching into my room to "play" my ps.. Low and behold my freaken favorite games were scattered across my room. Thus I bought one of those things to shove in the back and made copies of all my games and put those in the cases and hid my originals.. Yes I agree piracy of games is bad but I also agree that having little kids throw my favorite games around like they were 25 cent cds also makes me very angery..[/citation]
I had a toddler, a dog, and 2 parents to ruin all my discs... along with my Xbox 360 wrecking just as many.

I am not against modding, but legitimate modders get screwed over, within Microsofts rights or not.
Look at the PSP or a iPhone, they turn into somehting actually useful once mod them. (For the PSP, a proper web browser, and many needed applications. For the iPhone, removing Apple's heavy chains)

They should just toss this lawsuit, but yes, I'd be pissed too. We invented fake Windows Live servers for a reason.
 

ch1ckench0wme1n

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Bricking harddrives or deleting data isn't legal.

The spin on the lawsuit will probably be that Microsoft is only allowing people to play online through their service(Monopoly). Its only going to take a few individuals to show that they were innocent and were wrongfully banned, or a couple of people who modded their 360s because Microsoft wouldn't fix a certain problem the system had to get this lawsuit going.
 

will_chellam

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Doesnt matter what justification people use, at the end of the day, the EULA for xbox live is explicit that modified hardware will result in withdrawl or permanent banning from the service. It is their service, they can do what they like. You're lucky you can buy a new console and carry on, they would be within their rights to cancel your account and keep the money as well probably.

Microsoft are keeping quiet on this one, and quite rightly so, the less they have to say about their detection methods the better for them as it will be less likely someone will work out a way around it.

I suspect the outcome is that they will add an addition to the RROD service:

"if you believe your console has been wrongly banned, send it free for us to look at, if the claim is genuine we'll repair or replace the console, if we find a mod, we'll keep it"

I predict zero usage, because I suspect microsofts detection method is accurate.
 

will_chellam

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Oh yeah, in answer to the kids problem - I've got three kids - no scratched CD's ever - because i DONT LET THEM PLAY WITH THE DISCS!.

seriously if you cant teach your kids to look after stuff, they arent old enough to have it in the first place.
 

jalek

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The only alternative to saying you were pirating games would be that the DVD region was altered to play out of region DVD's, which is also in violation of various terms.

I'm usually arguing against DRM and copy protection schemes because they don't work. I have no problem with this approach.

Besides, for $50 you can get a bare console that may have issues but probably has the part(s) needed to appear as a different box without the mods. Many banned consoles on eBay say they've already replaced the modified units in the descriptions, so XBox sales should be pretty good with all these second purchases even if some people are annoyed.
 

the_krasno

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Sanctity of life my ass, Microsoft is the first one to play dirty!! Remember when the programed their soft to sabotage non windows machines?
 
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