The UK government has ruled that the creation and sale of modchips are infact legal, overturning a past ruling by a lower court.
The UK Court of Appeals ruled in favor of vendor Neil Higgs, whom had been arrested on 26 charges of selling modification kits for consoles, most notably the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360. For those unaware, modchips allow gamers to play pirated games, usually downloaded from the Internet. The ruling subsequently invalidates the lower courts ruling and Higgs is free to go. He will also be re-compensated for all his legal costs.
The appeal was based on the point that modchips do not circumvent copyright protection even though they are key to piracy on consoles. According to the ruling, "while modchips are integral to the piracy of console games, any act of copyright infringement has been already committed before modchip use or installation."
