Are console modding discussions suitable for boards.ie?

JDxtra

I would like to know why console modding is allowed to be discussed and have a dedicated forum. There are of course some legal uses in doing this, but surely the vast majority is to allow the modders to play illegal copies of games. The advertising of console modding services is even facilitated - but surely this is asking for trouble?

Compare this to the Cable & Digital TV forum. Any whiff of a discussion about certain cable TV recievers – which could in theory be used to decode premium TV services - is immediately locked.

Why do we appear have two different stances against the discussion of equipment that can be used for piracy?

Many thanks.

DeVore

The entire internet is struggling with the concept of discussion of legal things most probably used for illegal things.

We effectively try and "guess" the probability and make a decision based on that.

You dont mention which you think is the correct approach... do you have an opinion?

DeV.

JDxtra

I understand the difficulty, thanks for the reply.

Personally I prefer the stance adopted by the mods in the Cable & Digital TV forum.

I know there are at least some potential legal uses of a modded console - compared with none that I can think of for a dodgy cable TV receiver! However, I don’t think this fact should be used to allow open discussions of modding when the majority of it is done to facilitate the playing of downloaded / copied games. I don't want to see Boards.ie receiving unwanted attention from the gaming companies when they are becoming more proactive in tacking piracy.

If the console modding forum is deemed acceptable as it is, then how about removing the adverts for console modding services?

Many thanks.

Boston

Because they are different forums with different users talking about different things. Stop thinking of boards.ie as one big forum but rather as a framework for hundreds of smaller one. You suggest that rules should be applied blindly, that just because something of a similar nature cannot be discussed without trouble on one forum that it cannot be discussed without trouble on any forum.

Why do you expect to have the same user experience on every forum of this site. Did someone promise you this when the rest of us weren't looking, was it Zaph? Forgive him, he's new. I understand your predicament, I walked into a pub the other day and was shocked to realise they were'n't playing the same music as my local favourite, the the clientèle weren't hip 20 something year old, and the barman charged me less for my pint. I immediately brought the issue up with the bar manager, demanding to know why I was being challenged to different experiences in different places, did he have some sort of problem with homogeneity? Was he a homo-geneity-aphobe (Note, not a real word) of some form? Didn't he know I have a heart issue and need everything to be just so.

Tomorrow I plan to contact oscarBravo and inform him that discussion of politics is banned on the rant and raving forum, I'll then press him to take steps to close the politics forum.

To answer your question;

Talking about moding dreamboxs/ the box/ cable stealing device isn't illegal. But any forum which allows such discussion inevitably ends up with user on it asking for codes or software to break cable encryption. These users are trouble for the site and boards.ie as a hole since they are asking for something that is illegal. As a result you end up banning all discussions which may lead down that the road to illegality. It's a case of punishing the many for the actions of a few, but if a topic goes down a particular path most of the time, due to moderating difficulties, its understandable that the topic is banned.

How and ever, the xbox modding topics seldom lead to people asking for software or places to get software. If I own a piece of hardware and I want to install a pic microprocessor for whatever reason, thats not illegal. I may very well be breaking Xbox lives terms and conditions, but it isn't the job of the administration here to enforce Microsoft's terms and conditions.

Following this to its logical conclusion, there are several forums on boards dedicated to moding hardware. A user who cracks open their new dell XPS to install a blinking light has just voided his or her warranty. Should we have a "no blinking lights" rule. Hell, say I start a thread tomorrow saying "I want to paint my Xbox purple", thats a mod, and thats something your saying should be banned. It's no more or less illegal then installing a microprocessor.

If boards.ie gets into the business of banning discussions of things which are any bit edgy without merit, then the place collapses. If boards.ie get into the business of enforcing the policies of other companies, then the place collapses.

DeVore

Wouldnt it be hypocritical to ok/support the forum but ban advertising the service?

We block torrents for downloads and remove requests for dodgy disks etc, but you bought the console, you arent breaking laws by altering it any more then you are breaking the law when you install unix on a machine you were sold from Dell with Microsoft Windows on it.

DeV.

DeVore

I totally wrote that response while Boston was writing his.

DeV.

Rev. BlueJeans

Adverts prohibits the sale of modded consoles, dreamboxes and the like. That's something that needs to be taken into account too, I feel.

o1s1n

Rev. BlueJeans wrote: »

Adverts prohibits the sale of modded consoles, dreamboxes and the like. That's something that needs to be taken into account too, I feel.

Adverts.ie also has a ban on the sale of airsoft equipment yet we have an airsoft adverts sub forum on boards.ie.

I wouldn't use adverts.ie as a comparison at all here. Some things which are acceptable within a small community (As in the moderators of that forum have knowledge specific to that area and can keep an eye on things accordingly) might not be as easy to moderate on the grander scale of adverts.ie.

No you'll have to excuse me, I'm off to continue work on modding a Sega Megadrive!

witnessmenow

I dont think I can say alot that hasnt already been said by the guys above.

I'll talk firstly as a modder, later as a mod

Modding consoles as you pointed out by the op isnt just all about playing pirated games. Modding consoles is a hobby of mine, as strange as it may sound to some, I love the satisfaction of making a console do something useful that it wasn't originally intended to. I'd imagine its a similar to someone modifying an engine and getting a few more horseys out of it.

Just to give you an idea of how much of a hobby it is, lets talk original xboxs

I have 3 in use as media centres:

1 in my mams house with a 500gb HD
1 in my dads house with a 500gb HD(this is second one, first is in the bottom of Lough ree :pac:)
1 in my girlfriends house with a 320gb HD

I own 7 spare xboxs. I picked them up cheap whenever I could. I have the 3 "commonly" available colours of the xbox that was released in Ireland: Black, Crystal and Green. I have every revision of motherboard available, because some things work slightly different on different revisions.

Im pretty sure i invented a solution to getting larger Sata hard drives to work with xboxs

I just today met up with docentore, a regular contributer to the forum. I collected a xbox motherboard off him. Both of us shipped motherboards to China to get faster CPUs and more RAM installed. An xbox originally has a 700mhz cpu and 64mb of ram, this xbox motherboards has 128mb of Ram and a 1.4 Ghz Cpu. Another thing that is special about these boards are one of, if not, the first "homemade" 1.4Ghz xbox in the world! After this mod it is almost unusable as a game console as games run too fast, so its only really useful for media/linux purposes

I'll stop boring people now

I got into modding consoles thanks to boards. Although its not a very active forum I think it would be disappointing not to have a place to discuss modding with other Irish modders or to give advice to potential modders.

Now, where's that mod suit

We don't discuss anything illegal in the forum. Anybody asking for illegal links etc are banned immediately. I feel the other mods and myself do a pretty decent job of keeping discussions clean, with it has to be said, unfortunately, with not alot of aid from its posters. Since i became a mod only one regular user (and by that i mean anyone who is not a mod of the forum itself) has reported a post.

As for the console modding ads, well what was happening before Kinetic took control of the place was every week there was a thread: "Xbox modding in Dublin" or whatever, followed by a flurry of: "I can do it, pm me" style posts

There was pretty good reason for allowing people to ask where/who could mod their console, because it was their console, they could do what they liked with it.

There was also good reasons for changing the way its done to the current system:

1) Its a lot tidier
2) Feedback can be left for the modder, i.e thanks button
3) It lets people see mods for consoles that they didn't even know existed, maybe turn an old console into something useful
4) It made it easier for mods to keep an eye on what modders were offering with their service. It was harder to check individual thread to see if a modder was saying that they'd throw in a few games. This way its easy to keep an eye on it

I can understand that its harder to kind of comprehend why the modder list is allowed but when you put it in the above context it makes sense, well to me anyways!

It should be pointed out that the majority of people who have console modding ads contribute alot to the forum. They are the people with the most knowledge on the subjects and it may suprise some how generous they are at sharing the info with other people.

Why do we appear have two different stances against the discussion of equipment that can be used for piracy?

Say the console modding forum was closed, would that mean we'd have to close the PC forums too?

DeVore

Adverts is its own beast really, and pretty soon will be getting a considerable overhaul and a rewrite of the rules and its own team. i'm not opening that can of worms before then

There are, no doubt, many different illogicallities to be found around this topic, these arent specific to Boards, its just we are the coal face.

If we start following the logic, we will start to constrain the advertising or discussion of forks because they can be used to stab people to death. There is a point where it becomes ludacris, in fact its a logical arguing technique called Reductio Ad Absurdum and generally indicates that one of the premises you have accepted to begin with, are wrong.

DeV.

Steve

It's always been the consensus on adverts that if something is *mostly* modded for the purposes of facilitating piracy then we don't allow it.

It's a case of if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then etc..

If the site owners want to say different then we'll happily oblige .

BTW, the umbrellas are already up for the deluge of bricked 360's because MS can now detect them and have banned them all from live. :cool:

On a similar note, discussions of jailbreaking are fully allowed in the "Apple Media Devices" forum..

The same logic as witnessmenow stated applies I guess.. Modding isn't always about piracy.

Kinetic^

Apologies, only seeing this now. OP, I questioned the very extistence of the forum about 6 months ago. It had been ignored for quite some time and I put in to place a few rules that have it where it is today and thankfullly witnessmenow has taken it on and kept it alive. While the modding potential of current generation consoles is limited atm, breakthroughs in installing linux to the xbox 360 and a few other small things have revived the scene somewhat.

As mentioned by Boston, modding a console is a breach of Xbox Live/PSN/Wii/whatever online T&C's but if you're using it for something like XBMC, is it really illegal? There's also quite a lot of discussion on R4 cards about as well but outside of the illegal use, they're quite handy for the likes of ebooks. There is more to just piracy involved in console modding.

The forum requires a bit of work to maintain and I still lend a hand when it's needed, particularly with the recent ban wave from Microsoft. The rules on the forum are quite strict and could be seen as harsh by many but they are that way to prevent the discussion of illegal activity. 99% of the bans issued on the forums are for new signups who haven't bothered to read the rules whereas the regular users tend to just get on with it and discuss the big world of modding consoles.

Boston

Boston wrote: »

....was it Zaph? Forgive him, he's new...

Absolutely epic post, this part being the highlight.