Microsoft has posted a position available for an engineer who will be responsible for researching modification chips that can be used to circumvent security on the Xbox, according to a ZDNet article. It looks like Microsoft is interested in heading off the efforts of the Xbox Linux Project. Currently, it is possible to install Linux on an Xbox and use it like a PC, but you must install a mod chip to circumvent the Xbox’s “feature” that prevents an outside OS from booting from a CD.
This is an old article at slashdot
[ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/08/2223203&mode=thread&tid… ]
Microsoft and Sony are crazy…If I but an XBox, and I modify the hardware, and use legal software on it, there isn’t a damn thing they can do…This is not protecting intellectual property, it is controlling the consumers in a favorable way towards the company…equate thier argument to an automobile…If the courts say you can’t mod the hardware and use LEGAL SOFTWARE (i.e linux or another open source software) on the mod hardware, how long do you think it will be before Ford Motor Co. starts issuing EULA for thier car that say you can’t put a different motor or non-ford wheels on the verhicle…a whole truck load of crap.
I know the article talks about Microsoft threatening legal action, but I think that hiring a mod chip expert to try to build in anti-chipping countermeasures into future Xboxes is exactly what Microsoft should be doing. Using trumped-up laws to protect their business plan is wrong, because it’s a misappropriation of the people’s legislative process to serve the narrow interests of a deep-pocketed corporation. Paying engineers to think up ways to protect your business plan is what free enterprise is all about. I liken it to what DirecTV did to give the pirates a scare, when they installed a piece of coutermeasure software bit by bit on pirates’ modified DirecTV cards. Of course, the DirecTV pirates eventually figued out ways around the new measures, and the game of Spy vs. Spy continues, but I respect DirecTV’s efforts to make everyone pay for the service as long as they do their own dirty work and don’t try to make my government act as their enforcers.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that companies shouldn’t be able to protect thier interests and make money, but after a consumer buys the product why the hell can’t they mod it??? What does it matter to Microsoft (o.k. so it does a little because MS makes OSs) if a consumer has the ability to add functionality to the procudt w/out endangering thier intellectual property. Let me put it this way, I can understand why MS doesn’t allow it’s software to be changed or moded or even viewed, because it would put thier copyrighted OS in danger of being copied, but we are talking hardware here, as long as the consumer doesn’t do anything like load linux and then resell it, the consumer is not infringing any laws…MS cannot realistically expect that a game console will fall under an intellectual property law when the console is not reproduced or sold. Unless the XBox were modified and resold, there is no law that would protect MS. I just used MS as an example, same goes for Sony.
> but after a consumer buys the product why the hell can’t they mod it???
For the same reason you do not have the right to dissasemble and reverse engineer software (not just hardware). You LICENSE it, you do not buy its technology.
Ok. Maybee I didn’t express my concern in a clear manner…It is very difficult to compare Software to Hardware. The first reason is you physically have hardware and can see the components, software (windows for example) you cannot see the source code, which would be needed to modify windows or other non-open source software. Secondly, I am not talking about reverse engineering the hardware, I am talking about adding functionality, like adding the mod chip and putting linux on it…it’s just like an automobile, you can change parts and put mod chips in them, and it is legal unless you reproduce the car and sell it. Also, when you buy an XBox, you are not licenseing the hardware, only the software…you can legally make any hardware change to an XBox, so long as you do not use it in an illeagal manner and it is for personal use only (i.e reverse engineering, playing copied games, watching copied video, etc.)because you own it, you just don’t own the blueprint and design.
I know it’s cool to have a mod chip, but really .. how can you blame MS for this? I am pretty sure that, unlike the high price of their software, they are probably losing money on every Xbox sold. And it’d probably be hard to regain that cost if people are buying the things and not buying games along with it, but instead are using it to play pirated games or to run Linux.
I figure you’d either have to put a stop to the mod chips, or else the game consoles are going to cost $500+ when they come out instead of $300.
Personally, I really do not get the idea of running any other OS, like linux or bsd, on a *game* console… What for?
We recently bought this 55″ rear projection huge TV, and imagining that we run a command line linux, it would just look weird to people entering the house…
Imagine a huge tv, with a black background and some huge letters: 😮
x-box# ls -l
.
.
.
Humans want to possess and not to license. It’s a very fundamental thing. Unless a new kind of human is breed more and more people will get criminal because they (naturally) tend to tread things as if they possess them when in reality they only licensed them.
It looks like MS is trying to use the DMCA (once again) to protect its business. If they can use whatever Xbox hacking knowledge someone brings to them to close the gaps in software, then they can hide behind the DMCA to persecute those who want/try to hack the Xbox.
However, I think that this whole mess is just stupid.
It’s a bad, bad precident to set, that you “You LICENSE it, you do not buy its technology” for hardware. When I pay for something — when I [/i]BUY[/i] something, I own it. Period. I like using the car, as well, as the most common analogy for hardware:
What if, for example, you were not allowed to change ANYTHING about your car, because you only license it? You could not change rims/hubcaps, you could not change the color, you could not even open the hood (remember, opening the casing voids the warranty!) You couldn’t even put in what GAS[i] you wanted (kind of like installing [i]what software you wanted, isn’t it?) on it.
Think of the parallels:
– Your car, like your Xbox, depreciates over time.
– Your car, like your Xbox, comes with a limited warranty.
– Your car, like your Xbox, doesn’t run without gas (or softtware)
Now, look at it from a market perspective:
– Car makers, just as console makers, can’t stay in business if they don’t make money
– Console makers, unlike car makers, don’t seem to have a problem NOT making a profit on their products.
– Console makers, unlike car makers, use a “give away the razor and sell the hell out of the blades” technique
Just because console makers choose a different market approach, doesn’t mean that they can put restrictions on what they sell just to ensure that they “will” (as opposed to “may”) make money. We are a capitalist society, and only those who make money will survive. Howerver, nowadays, instead of staying in business by selling the BEST product, and therefore beating the competition, or having the highest margins, and therefore beating the competition, we now just try to eliminate the competition and don’t care about the quality the product sold.
If Microsoft wants to subsidize your Xbox, in order to (a) gain market share, and/or (b) make it affordable, then that’s THEIR problem. If BMW wants to subsidize their cars, then they can, too. It’d be stupid for BMW to discount a new 7-series US$15k, just as I think it’s stupid for Microsoft to have subsidized the Xbox to the levels that they do. They should have aimed for lower-cost hardware in the first place. But then again, if it’s not an x86-based-Intel-inside PC, MS can’t leverage their monopoly, can they?
Just because they choose to “give away” a perfectly good x86-based PC, doesn’t give them the right to tell me what I can, or can not, do with it. Period.
Cheers,
Ken
Forgot to close an italics somewhere — sorry for that!
Cheers,
Ken
Personally, I really do not get the idea of running any other OS, like linux or bsd, on a *game* console… What for?
I don’t have an XBox, but I do have a Playstation. It runs Linux just fine and only cost me half as much as a regular PC.
I don’t know the specs of the XBox, but it is based on the x86 achitecture and if it is a lot cheaper than buying a regular PC, and has the same power, I can fully understand why people want to mod it and use it as a regular computer?
Also, I think if your 50″ TV would do the same resolutions as a regular PC monitor (meaning it had comparable quality to a monitor, just like the power in a Playstation and X-Box are comparable to a PC), there would be hundreds of people buying them to use with their PC regardless of the OS they were running.
Im thinking that they arent really trying to get you to run the box as a desktop when they offer linux and OS’s with the game console. I think they do it ot draw in developers. The easier you and more accessable you make the box you are programming the easier it is to program (in theory anyway
, the more poeple will want to program for it (again, in theory anyway 
. Like linux on the playstation 2. There’s tivo-esk software available that you could make run on the linux install and there you just add value to your system. Some thing you wont be able to do with an MS offering because they locked the hardware. Ergo giving them a another market to look into; media PC, which is what the xbox is gonna become and then they’ll be very happy with their proprietary box,, just like apple 
but that will just lead to IBM releasing the clones again along with Hpaq…. It’s all about developer mindshare……….
I like the post about Microsoft doing the right thing regarding protecting their own interests by hiring someone themselves instead of whining to government agencies to protect them. But I flatly reject the notion that I am only *licensing* the hardware, or that my mods are only “okay” as long as I don’t resell my property. If *I* buy it, it’s *MY* property. I’m not going to clone it’s underlying technology or reverse-engineer it, but if I take *MY* xbox and put *MY* copy of linux on it and resell it, it isn’t any of Microsoft’s goddamned business. They already got paid for that unit and are not due anything else for it’s use. The day a snivelling worm like Gates tells me what I *can* and *cannot* do WITH MY OWN PROPERTY is the day a revolution and uprising is warranted. THIS GOES TOO FAR.
If anyone had the moral indecency to do this, they should be shot!
Why would someone want to do this? Run Linux on something like the XBox?
There’s the developer angle, but MS isn’t interested in that. I don’t know of a successful game console that actively promotes “free development”, particularly something like the XBox. As has been said before, consoles are Razors-and-Blades. Microsoft et al are completely UNinterested in third party producer/distributors of products. Third party development is fine, but not distribution.
The console folks want you to pay to get in, pay to get on, and pay to play. If they could charge you to quit your license with them, I’m sure they would. They are not at all interested in the real “small time” developers, just like Paramount pictures isn’t interested in the random hack with a digital camera. Since we have the PC et al for “indpenedent” works, show your warez off there and if you’re good, someone big will either pick you up or finance you.
What would *I* use a LinuXBox for? I’d like to use one as a simple, quiet mail/web/file/print server. If the thing had two ethernet ports, turn it into a firewall as well.
It’s cheap, quiet, and has a nice tiny form factor. Of course, who knows if the system will survive being turned on for weeks on end.
I haven’t done it myself because a) I’m not super motivated to do it, b) I’m not sure if it’s a “one way trip” from XBox to LinuXBox (i.e. could I ever use it again as a game console if I wanted to), c) my soldering skills aren’t high up there and the machine is only cheap if you buy one, not buy one, break it, and buy another.
Hmm sounds like the whole audio watermark deal the RIAA was trying to convince someone to do for them a year or two back. Does anyone ever know what happened to that? Anyways, someone will just find a way around the protection like they always have :-).
DUstin: Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that companies shouldn’t be able to protect thier interests and make money, but after a consumer buys the product why the hell can’t they mod it???
Microsoft sells XBOX to you in a cheap price. It bears loss. It wants to get profit from game royalties. Mod chiping XBOXes to play pirated/legitimate games isn’t helping Microsoft, same with installing Linux on it.
…. it just couldn’t protect itself.
What a pity >:-)
I find this article very amusing
I’ll throw two cents:
Who cares what drunk uncle Billy says, if he isn’t going to crawl to your house to hit you because you installed linux in his Precious?
Fud’s right: linuXBoxers will have to try harder for a while but after all they’ll find a way around that as well. It’s only a matter of time.
I know that running linux on Xbox is bad for M$ because its price is artificial and they want to sell games but it is more simple and clever simply to not buy anything from M$. You can buy a Playstation and run linux on it or buy a PC without an OEM license of Winblows and run games made by other software-houses. It will be a never ending run against hardware modifications and copy protections. Don’t feed M$ ganance !
I see no problem with mod chips allowing users to play legal imported games and DVDs from other regions. These games and DVDs were legally purchased SOMEWHERE and thus, all companies involved got their cut.
On other hand, I do understand compainies undertaking SOME anti-piracy measures, as this causes the company to lose money. This is the company’s right and it is understood that most people purchased an XBox/PS2/Gamecube to PLAY GAMES. This is a true thing.
So, region unlocking mod chips are good, pirate-friendly mod chips are bad. Unfortunately, most mod chips INCLUDE the ability to play pirated games, simply because they can’tbe bothered licensing or reverse-engineering the crazy protection schemes built into consoles. With game consoles possessing big fat hard drives going on the internet, companies are afraid of another Napster. Hell, ALL media companies are afraid of another Napster, Regardless of the actual consequences of Napster (one statistic said that music purchases INCREASED among 18-24 year olds during Napster’s peak). BUT if a company releases a region free mod chip ONLY, I’ll happily take that one just so I can play interesting games that only get released in Europe and Asia.
Now, there are the LinuXBoxers wanting to do software development. I think it’s a good thing. Maybe MS should do what Sony did.
What Sony did was to release a special edition region-free PlayStation that was more expensive for hobbyist development. It was sold in order to make a profit, and people found all kind of interesting hacks for it. It was released to a deliberately limited audience (you could only order it directly from Sony) because most game players aren’t coders. Sony largely ignored people who hacked on this “special” Playstation because none of those hacks could be transferred to the consumer Playstation without significant tampering, a Game Shark, and prayer.
MS could release a US $500-$700 region-free Hobbyist developer XBox for coders to play with. Throw in a few extra cables, some basic software, and the Visual Studio compilers (MINUS the IDE, tools, and MSDN) and SDK and I’d save up to buy one. Plus, the price would guarantee them a profit on each one. But they’re not going to do this, and I don’t know why exactly, just that they’re not.
Oh well…
–JM
The comment was made that software is licensed, but hardware shouldn’t be. Of course in order to make a mod chip, someone has to reverse engineer the software in the box. The lines these days between software and hardware are very blurry.
Consumers and users should have the right to reverse-engineer, copy, modify, whatever any hardware or software that they purchase. And to redistribute the modifications. The problem comes when people unethically redistribute whole copies that they do not have the right to give away.
The companies that create and distribute intellectual property, however, want control over every copy made. Even to the detriment of the user.
The way that intellectual property is handled needs to be seriously rethought. We should not starve the creators of intellectual property by forcing them to give away their product, but neither should we restrict consumers or other creators by denying them the right to use products as they see fit.
>>how long do you think it will be before Ford Motor Co. starts issuing EULA for thier car that say you can’t put a different motor or non-ford wheels on the verhicle…a whole truck load of crap.<<
note this looks off topic but does get back to point in the end.
Actully they have at some levels. Things like the computers on all cars have become more and more sealed off. They don’t want people messing with it. People could mess up emmisions controls hardware, or do something unsafe. They also are making it harder to change hardware for the same reasons. A car company is liable for injuries and such caused by that car if they didn’t do something to prevent it. You do not have the right to make your car unsafe since you are driving on public roads with other people who could be hurt by your actions. Next generation computers in cars will notify you that componets have failed and tell you to get them fixed. If you don’t it will broadcast this and you may get pulled over and told to fix it, lets say a catalytic converter, since your lasyness is hurting the earth. Also a very big thing is they don’t want people changing stuff and then having an unreliable car, or unsafe or something and having that reflect on the car company. If many people do some mod that everyone else is doing and in the end it kills the engine in a few thousand miles the car company will look like they make crappy cars. Same deal for MS if people go messing with the Xbox with mods there is a good chance this makes the product more unstable and people blame MS. Doesn’t matter if MS had no part in the mod there are plenty of peopl e who will blame them. Also if they have friends looking at getting an Xbox they may be turned of since they saw their friends break, they might think it was MS fault. Don’t belive me. Ask someone who ever changed something in their car like a mod chip for the engine, and when somehting died did they blame the chip or the car maker 9-10 times they blame the car company. If moding Xboxs was perfect i doubt ms would have to much problem since they would sell more of them. But the odds of this are low.
on a side note, just try changing the engine on a brand new car with something else, especialy not one offered for that car. You will have a hard time ever getting that to work. each part is so depenent on the others and designed not to work with differant parts. alot of it is on the computer side where you can no change it. it’s not the 1960’s your car is more of an imbedded device than a desktop pc, there isn’t much you can change aside from adding some bling.
In the post titled “control” a point is made about everybody should be able to reverse engineer any hardware and software and be able to redistribute these modifications. There are legitamate reasons why many technology companies do not allow the reverse engineering of their products, both software and hardware. Many computer components are not allowed to leave the united states and other countries because of their ability to be reverse engineered and “moded” to be used for weapons components. Japan recently has had to restrict much of it’s technology from being exported to North Korea because much of it was found reverse engineered and rigged as components in korean submarines. This is why many technolgy companies make it so hard to reverse engineer things and why it should stay that way.
MS’s actions however I think have more to do with software piracy than fear that the Xbox might turn up as someone’s radar array. Be honest with yourself did you chip your playstation one so you could run linux on it, or did you do it so it would read burned CD-R’s of your favorite games?
I agree with the hacking mentality of “I want to see if I can make an Xbox run linux” that’s what hacking is all about, seeing if you can push the limits and make things work (hopefully better).
But I’d say a healthy 99% of ALL, not just the people here at OS news. Use mod chips to play pirated games. And as such Microsoft, Sony, and when they were making consoles Sega all have a legitamate beef with mod chips.
I think the Bad Guys(tm) have proved that they don’t need to drop modded xboxen-driven missiles on our head, or even old Linux machines running pgp driving submarines. Not that your concern isn’t well placed. I have thought that with all of the computing power that is going to landfills that someone would have made an effective small nuke by now.
I don’t actually have a problem with MS taking hardware measures to prevent hacking the XBox. I mean, I would prefer they went the open route. Like other readers here have mentioned I would prefer they didn’t use the heavy hand of government to prevent what I see as legitimate activity.
It would be very nice to see a major player like MS take the open route, I think it would be very good for the development of future hardware and software. Unfortunatly it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen anytime soon. It’s sad to see how some of the founders of the technology boom have decided to close some of the doors of the open science part of computer technology. And more than just Bill Gates is to blame. Hopefully the Linux community does not end up the same way. Unless you have a broad band connection, don’t even bother trying to download iso images to burn cd’s. You’re stuck paying as much as $80.00 for cd’s at your local retailer (a paultry ten dollars cheeper than windows) But unfortunatly anything worth having costs something I guess.
There are cheaper alternatives than buying a boxed distribution or standing hours behind your modem while the telephone bills endlessly grows. For example you can order CDs from Ikarios (http://ikarios.com/) ; it’s very cheap and moreover some of the revenues are given to the FSF. I bet there are others like that in the world.
1. Reverse engineering is a good and useful tool. Tools can be used for good and evil.
2. Many people who get mod chips really do so ONLY to get over the region barrier. There are obscure and interesting foreign games that I like to play that I would not have been able to without mod chips. I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t play pirated games, I just don’t want to have 3 XBoxes or PS2’s stacked around the house for certain games.
3. A company has a right to protect a viable source of income. It will do things to piss consumers off because it must be seen as protecting its IP and shareholders’ money. BUT they can and do go TOO far, going after things that are either NO threat to its assets (importing) or so negligible as to waste more resources in pursuing than in letting it exist (LinuXBox hacking). Thus, they should be stopped.
Know what’s neat? Nintendo systems are legendarily EASY for getting around import restrictions. Game Boys (original, Color, and Advance) have NO region protecion and never have. But they crack down HARD on pirates and even emulator authors, though they found out that emulation is still (barely) legal — just not possessing ROM or ISO images of the games unless you legally own the original game on an original authorized piece of media (CD, DVD, cartridge, arcade). Of course, the DMCA may have killed this, but the game companies aren’t invoking it for now.
–JM
“With game consoles possessing big fat hard drives going on the internet, companies are afraid of another Napster. Hell, ALL media companies are afraid of another Napster, Regardless of the actual consequences of Napster (one statistic said that music purchases INCREASED among 18-24 year olds during Napster’s peak). ”
YOU EVER HEAR OF LIMEWIRE, BEARSHARE, WINMX, KAZZA…..IDIOT
MS could release a US $500-$700 region-free Hobbyist developer XBox for coders to play with
People are only insterested when it’s cheap, they can buy a real pc for those $500-$700.
For the same reason you do not have the right to dissasemble and reverse engineer software (not just hardware). You LICENSE it, you do not buy its technology.
I have the right to disassemble software, but then I don’t live in “the land of the free”.
I’m extremely bored so I shall pet the troll.
I was unclear, as I meant to use Napster as a catch-all reference for all the peer-to-peer data sharing solutions. Napster was the first widely popular one and still easily remembered by many, including the troll. It is also the one the media companies first (and arguably most successfully) beat down. The game companies are afraid of the existence of a program tailored specifically for finding quality pirated versions of games from others in a peer-to-peer networking model. Like Napster did for music.
–JM
And now the troll has his cookie.