Government Drops Xbox Modding Trial

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Dec. 03, 2010

Following yesterday's berating at the hands of Judge Philip Gutierrez, the government has decided to drop the charges completely against Matthew Crippen for modding Xboxes. Last night, they had indicated they were going to push forward with a trial, but today they obviously thought better of it. The government is trying to cover up the fact that this case looked bad for them all around by claiming the reason for the dismissal was a more specific screw-up: having the first witness introduce new evidence (a claim that Crippen had put a "pirated" game onto a modded Xbox -- something he hadn't mentioned before, and claims he just recalled it days before the trial started (uh huh...)). Of course, this still leaves some big issues left unsettled -- and the idea that you can get jail time for modifying a product you legally purchased remains tremendously problematic.












All original InformationLiberation articles CC 4.0



About - Privacy Policy