[bombcar]

It's a gray area, no matter what you think about it. Modding a console? Paying someone to do the same mod for you?

When it gets to "becoming a company providing similar services" is across the line; if that is legal then there's nothing stopping YouTube from just ripping all content forever and profiting?

What if the company is selling hardware that is obviously used for pirated content? How would this apply to things like the iPod?

In general, what we have is that big players in the piracy profit area get taken down, small to tiny players do not.

[jorvi]

Modding a console is so much different from piracy.

Modchips often enable piracy, but in essence they're just freeing your device. It's like removing the SIM lock from a phone.

[bombcar]

Sure, and using them can enable great things like home-brew games, etc.

But let's not pretend that the vast majority of modchips and such aren't used to play pirated games, which is where charging for them becomes an issue.

Especially when you can still find modded xboxes on eBay today that brag they're coming with lots of "downloaded games".

[jorvi]

Bongs have been freely sold for decades despite being used for something illegal >95% of the time.

You can't make it illegal or restricted to sell something purely because it is primarily used for illegal behavior. Or well, you can, but liberal societies generally don't.

Note that there are good reasons to restrict sales. Enabling dangerous behavior would be one, which is why we restrict or outright ban the sale of some guns, chemicals, cars, etc.

[bombcar]

Agreed; and if you're selling bongs as they normally are, you get a pass. Same with selling mod chips or modded consoles.

It's when the bong is pre-loaded with the goodshit and the console has 2 terabytes of pirated media that you've clearly crossed a line.

The gray area comes when you're doing the first, but "wink wink, nudge nudge" letting people know where to get the second.

Which I don't really think you can effectively stop, but you can at least not be blatant about it. See Dolphin compared to Yuzu - for me, at least, the line is somewhere in between.

Though - to be fair - I could also see a strong argument for full copyright abolition.

[jorvi]

> It's when the bong is pre-loaded with the goodshit and the console has 2 terabytes of pirated media that you've clearly crossed a line.

Definitely. I am very libertarian in that I think bongs should be able to be sold with whatever goodshit, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion :+). Selling a console pre-loaded with pirated content is a no in my book too though.

> The gray area comes when you're doing the first, but "wink wink, nudge nudge" letting people know where to get the second.

AFAIK Yuzu never did this. But they provide a way to decrypt (read: circumvent) Switch software protections in a way that according to Nintendo requires some of their intellectual property. Although I personally suspect that Yuzu became too good too soon, where Nintendo is losing an appreciable amount of both Switch and Switch game sales to Steam Deck + emulators.

> Though - to be fair - I could also see a strong argument for full copyright abolition.

As far as art goes, I’m fine with copyright for.. say.. 25 years. Maybe the natural life of the artist? I feel that 25 years is good enough though. If you haven’t made significant money off of your property by then, its very likely you never will.

Software copyright is another beast entirely, with a lot of complex drawbacks.

[carlosjobim]

Maybe in theory there is a gray zone, but in practice I don't know any examples where you'd be hard pressed to say wether they crossed the line or not.