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| Sony's game's up By NICK BUTTERLY October 07, 2005 A BACKYARD electronics geek yesterday won a long-running court battle against Sony, striking a blow for computer game fanatics around the country. The High Court yesterday backed Sydney man Eddy Stevens to insert "mod" chips into Sony PlayStation consoles – allowing cheaper games from overseas and pirated games to be played on Australian machines. "All I want to do is let the world know that Sony had their a*** kicked here," Mr Stevens said outside court yesterday. "This means everything to consumers." Mr Stevens is one of several hundred small-time operators around the country who, for a $40 fee, will insert a computer chip into PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles, designed to overide "region specific" encoding. Encoding allows Sony to charge what it wants in different parts of the world. Without the chip, a cheaper PlayStation game bought in Asia or South America would probably not work on an Australian console. A mod chip also enables cheap pirated games, sold for next to nothing in places like Bali, to be played. The High Court unanimously upheld an appeal against an earlier Federal Court ruling that Mr Stevens' modifications to PlayStation consoles were illegal. The court found making a pirate copy of a game was illegal, but the device which allowed a pirated game to be played was not. His position was backed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which argued regional coding was detrimental to consumer choice and should not be supported. Mr Stevens' lawyer, Nathan Mattock, admitted the fact pirated games could now be played on chipped machines was an "unfortunate by-product" of the ruling. Mr Stevens was one of about 40 "chippers" in Sydney who received a letter from Sony, warning them they risked a $68,000 fine for continuing the practice. Games in some countries sell for up to a tenth of the price in Australia. A Sony spokeswoman refused to comment yesterday. |