Student Arrested for Jailbreaking Game Consoles

Student Arrested for Jailbreaking Game Consoles

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A Southern California man was taken into custody Monday on accusations of running a home business of jailbreaking videogame consoles so they can play pirated games.

Homeland Security authorities arrested Matthew Crippen, 27, from his Anaheim home following his indictment for allegedly breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. The Cal State Fullerton liberal arts student is accused of hiring himself out to circumvent copyrighted encryption technology on Wii, Playstation and Xbox games.

Prosecutor Mark Krause said in a brief telephone interview that, if the case went to trial

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The jailbreaking of the consoles falls under the same umbrella as jailbreaking iPhones, burning a movie from your favorite movie rental place or downloading music/movies/games from the internet that you didn't rightfully buy. Stealing is stealing whether you are doing it to "fight the system" or to "stop sending money to those greedy recording studios and artists".

I don't believe that this kind of thing will ever be completely stopped but I am curious why ICE got involved with this case. Any ideas?

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reply to post by Roadblockx


Is ICE homeland security?

I have never heard it referred to as "jailbreaking" a console before.

This guy was modding consoles for profit. I can understand why he got caught. I certainly don't agree with the absolutely insane penalty of up to 10 years in prison though.

BTW, this has already been posted.

D@mn.... Already posted? Crap. I did a search for "jailbreaking" and didn't see any results come up. If you know the link, please provide so I can request the post be deleted.

BTW, the "new" term for hacking your game console is jailbreaking. I remember when my friends just called it hacking but I guess that term has been over used so much that a new term was born. Word of mouth can be a dangerous thing.

[edit on 5-8-2009 by Roadblockx]

Just in case there is anyone on here thinking of branching out to do this.

If you make a box and your friend makes a box, both boxes do nothing. But when plugged together they allow the xbox, wii, etc to be hacked, you could sell both boxes separately with a warning to the effect that using said boxes together can be construed as illegal.

If someone puts both together in their home, well thats not your fault is it.

Obviously its more complicated than just a box, but you get the idea.

Please add your thoughts in the existing thread.

Thank you.

Closed.