Allright, I'll preface this to make sure that I don't get in trouble.

This thread is specificly about the dmca and if changes should be made to it or added to it. It is not an endorsement of piracy in any form nor a direct attack against the Mpaa or Riaa specificly.

That being said, the DMCA is the most anti consumer law in exsistance and must be repelled or seriously changed. While I can understand the desire to protect IP's, the DMCA goes far far beyond this ideal, instead criminalizing honest people who wish to test or modify technology they personally own. While I'm not a big supporter of Piracy, I do belive that once you have bought a product, you have the right, at the cost of voiding out your warranty, to moddify it as you wish. Its not any different from buying a computer and then adding parts or making upgrades, your simply moddifing an exsisting piece of hardware, which you purchased, to improve it. If you can mod a computer to do things it couldn't do before, why should you not be allowed to do so with an xbox that you payed your hard earned money for.

I myself have using a swap disc/Slide tool combination at home before, because, as a fan of many animated series from japan, I wish to play the games based on them, but many of them never see release over here or are several nutered or altered when they finally do get translated. I legally payed for the games I play on my modded system, I do not pirate games, and any game i've ever played a bootleg off I either threw away or purchased if I liked it. Does that make me a criminal, I dont think so, but the DMCA, as it currently written, might have made it illegal, even though I payed for the games I wanted and disposed of any boot legs I did not wish to own.

There in lies the big issue. Back in the early PC days, it was easy to find demos for almost any game you wanted. And if you liked it, you could by it, no biggie. Now adays, only the biggest names get demos, and then it's rare that you can get them if you live outside that particular games current region encoding.

That brings me to another MAJOR issue I have. Region locking. The only reason I HAVE EVER needed a device to bypass security on a console I owned was to play games that were made OUTSIDE my country. For example, those who know me, know I'm a massive Naruto fan, and some of the best fighting games based on that series never saw release in america. Now, had my console not been region locked, hey, that would have been no biggie, just import but NO! Cause the major manufactures chose to region lock there primary consoles, by which I mean the PS2, The xbox, the 360, although I've heard it's actually region free, there just no japan games you'd want to play, and the WII are all region locked, To play an import game I would HAVE to buy a device to break that region lockout.

it is this that is to blame for the rampant spread of Piracy, the console manufactures own doing. It was importing that first led to the creation of devices to bypass region lockout, which in turn led to piracy when some people found they could play games for free if they modded there system. I never cared about playing games free, I'm a big time industry supporter, but the industry saw fit to make it hard for me to play games I wanted cause they were in a different country.

Anyway, my rant is over. I say, we repeal the whole DMCA, and replace it with something that actually deals with piracy, instead of making consumers criminals for wanted to play legally purchased movies and games on a system they BOUGHT! Anyone else got a better idea, i'm all ears.