“Jissus, passop die rooi gevaar”

The fact that they only banned the consoles and not the user tags (and it happened prior to yet another major games launch) should highlight the fact that the motivation behind the bans has nothing to do with curbing piracy but has a lot more to do with increasing profits on hardware sales.

As for Live subscription, the gamer’s account has NOT been banned, just the console. The user can still access and play on Live, provided it is on a console that does not go against the T&C’s.
Short of it? MS does not owe them jack.

What if you bought a 2nd hand xbox and you did not know it was chipped? This move is anti consumer, and pirating is wrong bla bla bla but its pirates that have forced companies to adapt, and not try and rip the consumer off, these days i dont think piracy is such a huge factor these days, surely must be on the decline with all these teeny boopers who think their holier than thou

Have a look at xbox-scene.com and you will understand.

As fellow consumers, you should actually hope that they win.

And that’s the issue, equating digital piracy (or file sharing) to rape, assault and murder is just ridiculous. At best, it’s more akin to stealing from a retail shop, or pocketing an apple or two from Spar. Obviously, it’s still a crime, and when you’re caught you should either pay a fine, do community service, or if you’re a repeat offender either go into counselling or get a couple months worth of a suspended sentence but to insist that these guys be thrown into jail with the rapists, murderers etc. of the world is just utterly ridiculous. There are bigger fish to fry in this world, like whether or not Bobby Kotick is guilty of insider trading.

For your information, I’m actually not pro-pirate, but I don’t agree with knee jerk responses to piracy. The funniest one I’ve heard in recent years was that piracy promotes terrorism (fortunately the claim was utterly and thoroughly destroyed by an Australian journalist, but yet it’s still out there…).