According to an Italian Court, rules modification of Sony Playstations is legal

Publié le 20/01/2004 par Giovanni Ziccardi

(Bolzano, Italy) In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorized uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), which…

(Bolzano, Italy) In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorized uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), which is modeled on the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

As reported in the January 8, 2004 Italian newspaper, « Alto Adige » the court of Bolzano issued an important decision concerning Italian consumers’ rights and declared illegal the December 12, 2003 seizure of modified media equipment.

The question before the Italian court was simple : Does the producer of a device or computer, such as the Sony Play Station Console, have the right to forbid or prevent consumers from making different uses of the device other than the particular use the manufacturer intends? According to this court’s decision under Italian civil law, the answer is no.

The case was brought under article 171-ter of the Italian copyright law, which implements the EUCD in Italy and was passed in April of 2003.

“The Bolzano Court ruled that the new law does not apply because the modified chips are not primarily intended to circumvent copyright protection measures,” explained University of Milano Law Professor Giovanni Ziccardi. “The court held that the aim of the modified chips is not to create infringing copies, but rather to fight Sony’s monopolistic business practices and to allow consumers to exercise a fuller range of their rights such as reading imported discs, back-up copies of games, and other lawful but unauthorized discs,” said Ziccardi, IP Justice Board Member in Italy.

The operation started in 2003 and involved dozens of searches and seizures throughout Italy. The case began out of an international campaign waged by Sony: the company always contested the rights of the consumer to make the game console function differently from the use intended by the manufacturer. Or in other words, Sony hoped to forbid any “unauthorized” use of the game console by its owner.

The Italian decision of December 31, 2003, signed by the President of the Bolzano Court, Judge Edoardo Mori, declared illegal the equipment seizures ordered by local authorities during a major anti-piracy operation that dealt with the modification of Playstation consoles.

The judge said that Sony put into Playstation consoles “absurd limitations”. For example the consoles can only read discs from one geographical region and can only read discs manufactured by Sony. According to the court’s decision, Sony divided the world into three areas, and the Italian Playstation consoles cannot read discs, for example, intended for the American market, and vice-versa. Besides the region-coding restrictions, Sony’s consoles can only read original discs, so many legitimate copies cannot be read by Sony’s equipment either.

Due to these restrictions, innovators had created a new chip for less than a couple of dollars that restored all the Sony game console’s original functionality, enabling it to read all discs from all markets. The Italian court ruled that the manufacture and use of this type of chip is not illegal.

The Italian law on copyright is not applicable to this case either said the court because one who is the owner of a product, (such as a game console) can use their property in the widest manner possible. According to the Italian judge, one who buys a Sony Playstation console is permitted to make all potential uses of that game console.

The court said that the primary function of Sony’s request to seize modified chips was not to guard against piracy, but to prevent consumers from fighting against Sony’s monopolistic business practices.

The Judge Mori wrote in his decision that consumers have to deal daily with producers that sell worldwide components and machines that limit what the judge considers lawful activity.

« It is similar to the Fiat car company selling cars that forbid extra drivers to use the car, or that forbid the owner to drive outside the city borders, » wrote the Italian judge in his decision.

More Information

Please read the original court order in Italian (by courtesy of IP Justice), or its translation in English (by courtesy of Electronic Frontier Italy – ALCEI)