Re:Mod Chips != copyright infringement? (Score 1)

I dunno, it seems like much of the "legal technicalities" in these sort of grey market areas are simply speculation by people without much legal perspective. After all, you often hear that it is considered legitamite to play ROMS for which you have an original cartridge, disk, or PCB, but has this ever been tested legally? Is there a difference if you dumped it yourself? What if your emulator's rom is a slightly different FW revision from the one you own, but the functionality is the same? So, imagine this thought experiment. 1) Alice buys an XBOX, which always has a preexisting BIOS. 2) by desodering or whatever, she reads out the code on the eeprom or flash using a programmer board. 3) she applies something like an .IPS, which patches the code she has downloaded from the BIOS. 4) uploads the modified code to the XBOX, and it is "chipped" I think most people would agree that there is no copyright violation here, there was no warezing, etc of bios code, etc. at what point does it change? A) suppose she buys a commercial blank modchip. this is just a piece of hardware, no copyright issues here, prolly. B) suppose the modchip comes with a patch file described above. these is only modifications to the original FW, nothing MS. C) suppose it comes fully programmed. by emulator logic, she already has an original copy of the firmware, and only one is being used at a time. D) suppose she buys a fully chipped XBOX, and has not done any modifications herself. It seems like maybe the distinction is academic enough that anyone may be prosecuted if they make themselves too prominent. Being careful and discreet, I suppose, is the right thing to do.