The lights are on
You’ve probably heard by now (especially if you are one of the potential million Gold users banned) that Microsoft has been culling out undesirable subscribers from their Gold service who willingly modded their Xbox 360 consoles. The bans have encompassed individuals who modified their Xbox in order to play pirated software, as well as those who added extra hard drive space via non-Microsoft storage devices. The ramifications of being banned is that all subscribers on that particular console will indefinitely be unable to connect to Xbox Live. Last week, Xbox Live’s Major Nelson issued the following reminder:“All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them.”
The widespread banning hasn’t gone unnoticed by gamers, and evidently caught the eye of those in the legal sphere. Abinton IP, a firm that specializes in Intellectual Property Law & Consumer Class Actions, recently posted a form on their website asking users to share their banning experience. Via GamePolitics we learned that the firm may be digging around in order to build a case for future litigation.
From Abinton IP’s Web site:
“An investigation is currently being conducted regarding business practices of Microsoft with respect to its recent cancellation of certain modified Xbox consoles for use with Xbox Live. As has been reported widely in the media, tens of thousands of Xbox owners have had their modified Xbox consoles banned from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live. Although modification of Xbox consoles is *arguably* against the terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft "conveniently" timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game.”
Abinton IP goes on to argue that the “convenient” timing of the bans – in proximity of two of the largest releases of the year – forced banned users to purchase new consoles and new subscriptions. They also argue that sales of Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST would have been greatly diminished if not for the banning spree.
Although Abinton acknowledges Piracy is a legitimate concern for Microsoft, they still argue that the massive banning spree affected many people who have nothing to do with piracy. If you are one of the recently banned subscribers and want to share your experience, you can submit your info to Abinton here.So what do you think? Is the issue black and white? Do you think Abinton has a case?
stupid. illegally modify and now you want to sue?
the banning may be rediculous in a few instances. ive read people that add those fans to their 360 and they got booted. that seems unlikely to me but if they are telling the truth then microsoft is going overboard.
Good for MS. Thieves should be banned. Devs live or die by game sales.
IMO i think modding the xbox for use for adding more or better fans to take the heat down, make the xbox have a door to easy clean it out of all the dust so it wont crash or adding more space to the xbox HDD to hold all more stuff like movies should not get them banned, but to pirate games just so your broke *** doesn't have to buy them i think should get the banned for "stealing" a game. Cause its true "The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services" if they allow for people to pirate game then the industry would slowly go down hill then no one will have games to play
i think they are trying to make a arugument for those who has modded their xboxes for more memory than trying to justify any one who modded for piracy
Typical victim mentality. If you broke the terms of service and modded your Xbox to play pirated games, it doesn't matter when MS chooses to ban you, convenient or not; you had it coming.
I do feel for people like Brad described though. It would suck to get banned for using a 3rd party fan to prevent Red-Ringing.
I find it hard to believe that sales were "greatly" affected because people were re-buying new consoles and subscriptions. Personally, if my account got sniped I wouldn't go out and buy another xbox, I'd get a ps3. But then again I buy my games like a normal person and am too dumb to modify anything let alone a console.
Brad, I honestly doubt anybody is being chosen as "guilty by association". Sigh. Lawyers lawyers lawyers. If you want to build a case against xbox try to get something on knowingly shipping out a faulty system, though I doubt there will ever be a strong case for that. I'm glad that they are getting rid of those *** who get free games, and it sucks that people are being banned for modding in the name of storage, but rules are rules, and Microsoft is trying to run a business. You purposely have to buy smaller increments of storage from Microsoft (and Microsoft only) because at the end of the day they need to turn a profit, so certain rules and regulations are set in place to see to that.
People like Abinton are out there for one thing: money. Who do you think comes out on top regarding a class action lawsuit? The class? No. Answer: The attorney(s). If anything comes of this, the average person included in the class would receive a few MS points and/or nothing more than 30-40 bucks for being "wronged", or whatever have you. While Abinton and his fellow attorneys working on the case are likely to receive hundreds of thousands in attorney fees, all paid by Microsoft.
People like Abinton are scum. They're not in it to "protect" the class or help people out. They look for an opportunity, and jump to exploit it when they can. Lawyers like him shame the legal realm.
that sucks a lot because i got the halo edition xbox and it only has a stupid 20gig hd and i was seriously trying to figure out if i could connect an external hd for more space and i'm glad this happened before i did try it out because i would be very upset if i got banned for something like that. xbox has started to suck a lot, i'm still mad it doesn't have wifi and the accessory is so expensive, not to mention live itself. wtf that kind of stuff may have worked well for microsoft in the PC market but i really don't want to have to deal with this just for a videogame console
I like it. Finally a company that takes a firm step against piracy. And those of you who were modding for more hard drive space, what do you need all of that space for anyway? The thing is a primarily a gaming console, if you want to use it like a computer just use a computer.
Why should they have a case? If you modify your xbox, and pirate games, you should be happy they only banned your IP. If you get caught doing that with music you could be sewed more than a hefty chunk of change. Copyright laws. People shouldn't be modifying anything.
Lawyers can go to hell.
You modify your product, you face the consequences.
M$ is greedy. hard drive space is an elastic good that is also virtual, therefore actual pricing can be ridiculous. it takes about 20 dollars to produce a hard drive with 100 gigs. to make an 80% profit is just plain greedy.
I agree with Microsoft. Piracy for any reason can't be tolerated. Its part of the reason games are up to $60 bucks a piece. This keeps up by this time next year they could be up to $100. It hurts everyone and the lawyers aren't helping with that.
I can't say I feel too bad for the people that got banned. Regardless of the exact reason they decided to mod their consoles, they should have known well in advance that modding the console was against the terms of use.
Yeah, M$ is greedy as heck with the prices of their hard drives, wireless adapters, and online services, but rules are still rules, and if you break the rules there are consequences.
The main reason Microsoft is able to get away with price gouging all of their consumers, is because of the massive amount of 360 apologists. They charge ridiculous prices for their HDDs and all of their other peripherals.
Something tells me Microsoft isn't going to to be hurt by a few people adding custom HDDs to their console.
Good, maybe if nothing else MS will have to at least fully disclose how they know which consoles have been modded. So far they have been tight lipped about that. I do agree with the majority on here though, if you modded your Xbox to play pirated software then enjoy your ban, you deserve it. If you modded it is improve it's performance however, ie cooling fan, more storage capacity, well that's ridiculous.
Hopefully this will be beneficial to those wrongfully banned and not just a vehicle for the pirates to make money.
Well.... they're hardrives and memory cards are ridiculously overpriced. I cant see why someone should be banned because they wanted a little more space to purchase content from xbox live, and decided to look for a cheaper hard drive/memory card. Regarding these instances anyway.