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XBox Player Escapes Criminal Charges for Cracking Gaming Codes

By Stephanie Robinson

On December 2, 2010, criminal charges were dismissed against a defendant in California who was facing up to 10 years in prison for running a business circumventing security measures for Xbox gaming systems. Matthew Crippen had been charged with two counts of breaching anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by modifying gaming consoles to play pirated games. The DMCA contains prohibitions against circumventing software security protocols designed to prevent the use of unlicensed software. A person may defend against copyright infringement claims by asserting the ?fair use? defense, which allows the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials under certain limited circumstances, such as writing a news article or parody, or reverse engineering computer technology. However, the judge ruled Crippen could not use the ?fair use? defense in the criminal trial. This might have been a landmark case for DMCA criminal charges having been brought against a person accused of modifying a gaming console to play pirated games. If the court had found Crippen guilty, he faced up to five years for each violation of the DMCA. However, the judge noted serious flaws with the case, and prosecutors ultimately withdrew the charges. This case nevertheless could impact the way the government deals with all software piracy and alleged copyright infringement. Many such allegations currently come in the form of civil claims from the Business Software Alliance (?BSA?) or Software & Information Industry Association (?SIIA?) on behalf of software publishers. It will be interesting to see if the government begins to pursue criminal charges more frequently in cases where the BSA or the SIIA might otherwise have been the main protagonist.

Full post as published by Business and Technology Law on December 10, 2010 (boomark / email).