Mod the new Xbox and pay the piper! Personally, I don’t see an issue with it just so long as no commercial gain is being made. Then again, perhaps I’m just being too lenient. To be fair however, the folks in the article below ventured way beyond common sense…

Three Los Angeles area men including two game store owners were charged Monday with copyright infringement for selling modified Xbox game consoles that allowed the machines to play pirated video games copied onto a hard drive installed in the game console, authorities said.

A complaint filed in the federal court in Los Angeles alleges the men “conspired” to traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Authorities said the owners of ACME Game Store in Los Angeles, Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, sold Xbox game systems that had been modified by a third man, Pei “Patrick” Cai, 32. According to the complaint, Mr. Cai allegedly picked up the consoles from the store, installed modification chips and large hard drives into them, and then returned them to the store for sale. [Read the rest]