Video game pirate headed to slammer

A Maryland man has been sentenced to four months behind bars for helping to organize a software and hardware piracy scheme out of a chain of video game stores.

Hitesh Patel, one of a group of employees and managers from the three-store Pandora's Cube chain in Maryland, pled guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison, said Rick Hirsch, senior vice president for intellectual property enforcement at the Entertainment Software Association. According to the ESA, Patel was charged with conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement and for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Hirsch said that Patel and several colleagues, including Pandora's Cube owner Biren Amin, had been selling modified Xboxes that let players use pirated console games. Hirsch said Pandora's Cube was also selling modified Xboxes preloaded with pirated games.

Amin, who was also convicted and faces his own sentencing in the coming weeks, would not comment about his case or Patel's.

But a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland confirmed that Patel had been sentenced on July 19, though the judge in the case, Peter Messitte, had yet to formally put through the sentencing papers.

Hirsch said the ESA, a Washington, D.C.-based group that lobbies for the video game industry, complained about the piracy to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. That agency, along with the U.S. Department of Justice's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section, or CCIPS, then conducted a months-long investigation for raiding Pandora's Cube stores in December, Hirsch said.

A CCIPS employee contacted on Wednesday declined to comment on the case.

Hirsch said he wasn't surprised that Patel had pleaded guilty.

"They pretty much were caught red-handed," he said. "I don't think there was any dispute of the facts of what they were doing."

Hirsch said that the Pandora's Cube defendants were hardly the only ones in the United States selling Xboxes modified to allow the storage or playing of pirated games.

"I think there are a number of similar operations around the country, most of them doing it on a more covert basis than Pandora's Cube," he said. "But I think this creates a message for people engaged in these operations who think they are not really vulnerable to having anybody do anything about this."

[wazzledoozle]

So..

Adding more hard drive space to an xbox is a crime?

Yes he did preload some with games which is bad, but tha part about selling xbox's capable of playing copyrighted games!?! Thats like saying were arresting you because you sold your dell with linux on it which could potentially could be used for hacking and pirating.

[Had_to_be_said]

Yes, you are exactly right...

There IS a concerted effort to intentionally blur the line between "Piracy" (illegally stealing media-content) and modifying your own property, ...in this case an "X-Box" (which is Microsofts prototype for its vision of the future "Trusted-PC", by the way).

The reason that this type of thing is being done (using the "DMCA", in this case) is clearly so that, shortly, you as a consumer will have no real ownership-rights with regards to the products that you buy, ...unless the company that sells you the product, grants them to you (probably a much higher price, ...if at all).

Frankly, in todays political-climate, I seriously doubt that "Fair-use", or even basic "personal property-rights" are going to exist at all, for much longer.

Yep, and CNET is only making it worse

"Maryland man gets jail time for selling modified Xboxes that store and play pirated video games." ? Seriously you guys are only part of the problem with headlines like that.

How about you say "Maryland man gets jail time for selling pirated video games stored on an XBOX" ?

Get some integrity. Thanks.

[R. U. Sirius]

Illegal to store games on an XBox

Hey now, I don't own an Xbox, but I thought it was basically a specialized PC. Huh? Well, why is it illegal to store games on a specialized PC?

"Well Prof. Sirius, that's because this dude pirated games" you say to me. I reply, "okay, so why not arrest him for selling pirated games? What does the XBox have to do with the price of the Yuan in China?"

Answer: nothing. It's a red herring meant to get us all to agree that we can't store programs that we buy (and games are programs) on "specialized" PCs. And watch, down the road ALL PC's will be labeled as "specialized".

I WAS AN EX EMPLOYEE HERE IS THE INFO!

I had worked at Pandora's Cube during the summer of 2004. yes Pandora's Cube did install larger harddrives, modchips and other sorts. THEY EVEN INSTALLED HARD DRIVES ONTO PS2's! when I had gotten fired for allegedly leaking information i went straight to Sony Computer Entertainment of America and geuss what they said? some stupid guy couldnt take my seriously and just said "dont use the software it will void your ps2" what the **** is that? so then i proceded to go to Microsoft, oh did they care. they took my information and a month later, december, they raided the place.. i also had gotten a couple of my friends to call in also so it sounded credable because i wanted to get the upmost revenge.

ABOUT THE XBOX!!!!!!

certain xbox's had certain hard drive sizes. like for instance a regular black xbox could be upgraded with an 80-250 gig hd with mod chip for a price between 300-600 bucks. Now those "limited edition" silver xbox's could be sold for upwards of a grand with built in lights on the xbox and also on the controller. i had the job of installing games on the xbox, some of the limited edition crystal xboxs had up to 50 GAMES ON THEM! and we sold atleast one a day at each of the 3 stores and boy did they make a hell of a profit while me being 15 was paid a sucky 5 bucks an hour, not even minimum wage but he was paying me in cash so i didnt have taxes taken.

ABOUT THE PS2!

The ps2's could only support hard drives of up to 120 gigs and he would get the software disc off the net for 15 bucks a pop and would sell them to my friends and such for 80 bucks a freaking pop! not even employee's got the discount and yes, once agian they installed a bunch of games onto the hard drive.

Pandora's cube in corrupt! they even sell boot leg anime and video games. People can come and trade in their games for cash, but he'll give you pennies you'd be lucky to even get a dollar if you brought in 5 ps2 games and then he'd repackage them and sell them as FULLY NEW GAMES. and also he (hitesh) would let customers pick out any game they wanted, used or new and upload it to their system for 5 bucks a pop and then he'd repackage it to make it look like a brand new game and sell it at the MSRP.

in all, pandora's is horrible!

CONTACT THEM AND MAKE FUN OF THEM HERE IS THEIR SITE

www.pandorascube.com