Justice Department Seizes Isonews

[joepic]

The leading public Internet site dedicated to online copyright piracy was seized by the Justice Department today. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and Paul J. McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia today announced the seizure of www.isonews.com as part of a previous plea agreement entered into by a defendant convicted of violating the criminal copyright laws.

Update by The Electronic Punk

The official forums have been updated with the following:
Yes its true. The DOJ has taken control of the isonews.com DNS which now points to 149.101.1.91

If you link directly to http://66.201.243.170 you can still reach the site. This is a good interim solution as the official DNS may be gone for good.

If you can still reach isonews.com from the old dns its only because your ISP has not updated its cache. Take note of the ip now if you still want to be able to reach isonews
http://66.201.243.170

Hop into efnet #isonews for updates as they arrive. We'll try to keep things running here until the situation becomes clearer.

If you want to post 'goodbye'/'this sux' and any of the thousand other witty comments can you please keep them in this:
http://66.201.243.170/forums/showth...threadid=100834
thread. Thanks. We are trying to keep things going here, so this is not an excuse to trash the place.

[hwoodwar]

It might be good to have in this post, what David Rocci (evidently the primary operator of isonews.com) was indited for.

"David Rocci, a.k.a “krazy8,” pled guilty in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on December 19, 2002, to conspiring with others to violate federal copyright laws by illegally importing, marketing, and selling modification, or "mod," chips. Mod chips illegally circumvent built-in security protections and allow individuals to play pirated games on game consoles, such as the Microsoft Xbox and the Sony Playstation2. Rocci and his co-conspirators used www.iSONEWS.com as the exclusive outlet to market and sell their mod chips to individuals in the illegal warez scene. "

[red lion]

So is modchips illeagle i always thought they were leagle as long as you did not pirate games..there is a big electral company beside me who chips ps2,s and advertises in the press.(im in uk)
so leagle or illeagle

[pacmania_2001]

In Australia, the ACCC ( a consumer watchdog ) recently ruled the sales of modchips to be legal.

They based their ruling apon the fact that the consumer has the right to play a back up of a game they legally purchased.

[mats.hogberg]

The problem with XBox mods is that they use a hacked MS BIOS as a central part of its workings. Until a 100% non MS BIOS has been put together, I can understand that some issues are raised...

/Mats

[WeedVender]

WTF?

The Ps2 Mod Chip If perfectly legal.

[BJ_M]

WTF?

The Ps2 Mod Chip If perfectly legal.

most everywhere in the world but the USofA

[Vejita-sama]

The DMCA is a strange thing. Depending on how you read it it is ILLEGAL to even own technology (or the knowledge) that COULD be used to copy copyrighted material.

Hence, mod chips, dvd ripping software, CDR drives, DVD-R drives, etc. are all illegal.

However, so far the government has sort of picked and choosed how to apply the DMCA. Basically mod chips exists only to play 'pirated games' so they are illegal. CDRs can be used for 'legal' purposes. Pretty much all the P2P programs are illegal, that is the programs themselves (never mind what is or is not being traded).

Take a look at:

http://www.doom9.org/dmca_revealed.htm
http://www.doom9.org/dmca_revisited.htm

DeCSS is a classic example. Reverse engineering is still legal (eg. Compaq) but now there's this element of 'intent' that no one really understands. The DMCA would hold that the act/program itself is illegal. Yet out case law says that it's not only illegal but standard business practice.