TV judge holds court over Wii modchip case

Piracy isn't the problem, though

Here's a video clip of a televised court case about a pay dispute between a man and his neighbour over the modification of a Wii console.

Amusing as all this 'he didn't pay me' stuff is, The People's Court judge appears to express no concern that the act of modifying a console to "play free games" is illegal.

The 1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was enacted to prevent hardware being hacked to gain access to copyrighted material.

This was brought up in court in December 2010, when a Californian man was arrested for modifying Xbox consoles. He escaped punishment, due to mistakes made by the prosecution when presenting its evidence.

The fact that nobody picks up on the piracy element is rather comical. Even the crowd seem zombified throughout. How they refrained from smiling, let alone cracking up in full-blown laughter at such a case is beyond me. What do they put in the water? Or in the words of the presenter - who offers a series of meaningless pop vox in the middle of the programme - "What Wii're they smoking?" ®