A BACKYARD electronics geek has won a long-running High Court battle against Japanese electronics giant Sony and struck a blow for computer game fanatics around the country.
The High Court of Australia yesterday backed Sydney man Eddy Stevens to insert \\\"mod\\\" chips into Sony PlayStation consoles, allowing cheap games from overseas and pirated games to be played on Australian machines.
\\\"All I want to do is let the world know that Sony had their arse kicked here,\\\" Mr Stevens said yesterday.
\\\"This means everything to consumers.\\\"
Mr Stevens is one of several hundred small-time operators around the country who - for a fee of about $40 - will insert a computer chip designed to override \\\"region-specific\\\" encoding into PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles.
The encoding practice allows Sony to charge what they want in different parts of the world.
Australian PlayStation games can retail for anywhere between $70 and $110, but players can buy them overseas much cheaper or copy them for free.
But regional encoding means a cheaper version of a PlayStation game bought in Asia or South America would probably not work on a PlayStation console in Australia.
A mod chip also enables cheap pirated games, which are usually sold for next to nothing in places like Bali, to be played.
The High Court unanimously allowed an appeal against an earlier finding in the Federal Court that Mr Steven\\'s modifications to Sony PlayStation consoles were illegal.
The court found making a pirate copy of a game was illegal, but the device that allowed a pirated game to be played was not.
In 2002, the Federal Court ruled the \\\"mod chips\\\" did not constitute a breach of copyright under Australian laws, which Sony successfully appealed to the court\\'s Full Bench.
Mr Stevens then took the matter to the High Court, which yesterday upheld the original Federal Court decision.
In a unanimous decision, the High Court accepted the finding of Federal Court Judge Ronald Sackville that the \\\"mod chips\\\" would breach copyright only if they were designed to circumvent systems in the machine which prevented or inhibit copying of games.
Sony had argued that by making imported or copied games unplayable on PlayStation, the unit had included technological protection measures. During the original Federal Court hearing, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission aided Mr Stevens\\'s case as a \\\"friend of the court\\\".
After the initial victory, then ACCC chairman Allan Fels suggested the ruling could have implications for DVD players, which are similarly hampered by regional coding restrictions.
Sony refused to comment.
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