Jack Recider

Well, Nintendo was all over these forums, and seeing when new mod chips were announced, didn't like this one bit. And they started doing their own research. They found that Divinio had been getting their chips from Hong Kong. So Nintendo went to Hong Kong and opened up a court case against Divinio, claiming it's an infringement on their intellectual property.

The Hong Kong Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nintendo, which immediately froze all of Divinio's operations in Hong Kong. And the ruling demanded that Max pay Nintendo 44 million euros in damage. 44 million euros, that's a huge fine. But I believe Maximilian just found a different country to get his chips from and kept on doing business without paying any of the fines put on him.

The Hong Kong Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nintendo, which immediately froze all of Divinio's operations in Hong Kong. And the ruling demanded that Max pay Nintendo 44 million euros in damage. 44 million euros, that's a huge fine. But I believe Maximilian just found a different country to get his chips from and kept on doing business without paying any of the fines put on him.

So Nintendo went to his home country, France, to take legal action on him there. They took him to court, and they told the courts, look, we already found this guy guilty in Hong Kong. He's supposed to be paying us 44 million euros in damages. He hasn't paid a cent of it yet, and he keeps violating our intellectual property. Can you please do something?

So Nintendo went to his home country, France, to take legal action on him there. They took him to court, and they told the courts, look, we already found this guy guilty in Hong Kong. He's supposed to be paying us 44 million euros in damages. He hasn't paid a cent of it yet, and he keeps violating our intellectual property. Can you please do something?

But the French courts ruled in favor of Maximilian. Max's defense was that Nintendo was locking out developers from being able to develop on the system, and his mod chip allowed anyone to develop on it and play homebrew games on it. And the courts liked that. They said, yeah, Nintendo, what's up with you putting all these locks on your game system so people can't build on it? Seems rude.

But the French courts ruled in favor of Maximilian. Max's defense was that Nintendo was locking out developers from being able to develop on the system, and his mod chip allowed anyone to develop on it and play homebrew games on it. And the courts liked that. They said, yeah, Nintendo, what's up with you putting all these locks on your game system so people can't build on it? Seems rude.

Leave Max alone. So Nintendo took a bad blow there. I think they tried to appeal that case, but I couldn't find any articles that followed up with it.

Leave Max alone. So Nintendo took a bad blow there. I think they tried to appeal that case, but I couldn't find any articles that followed up with it.

Yeah, so Sony came out with this little PlayStation mini. It had no option to put any game in it of any kind. It had no game disc reader or cartridge reader, and it wasn't online so you could download anything more. It only came with these 20 games that were built into it, and that was it. You can never play anything more, which is kind of weird, isn't it?

Yeah, so Sony came out with this little PlayStation mini. It had no option to put any game in it of any kind. It had no game disc reader or cartridge reader, and it wasn't online so you could download anything more. It only came with these 20 games that were built into it, and that was it. You can never play anything more, which is kind of weird, isn't it?

If you release a mini version of your system that clearly can play PS1 games, why restrict it to just those 20 games? So, of course, the gaming community was like, we need to figure out a way to get this thing to play any PS1 game we want.

If you release a mini version of your system that clearly can play PS1 games, why restrict it to just those 20 games? So, of course, the gaming community was like, we need to figure out a way to get this thing to play any PS1 game we want.

Okay, I had to look this up and research it deeper because this is going to become important later. The mini PlayStation used the PCSX emulator, which, yes, is open source, and it's also under the new public license, the GPL. Now, even though the PCSX emulator is free and open source, Sony took it and put it on the PS1 mini and charged for it. But the GPL clearly states, that's okay.

Okay, I had to look this up and research it deeper because this is going to become important later. The mini PlayStation used the PCSX emulator, which, yes, is open source, and it's also under the new public license, the GPL. Now, even though the PCSX emulator is free and open source, Sony took it and put it on the PS1 mini and charged for it. But the GPL clearly states, that's okay.

You can put this software on some commercial product and charge for it. And there's a few things that are interesting about that. The spirit of free and open source software that's licensed under the GPL is that you shouldn't charge for this. It's free. It's developed by a community of volunteers. And here Sony is lifting it off GitHub and slapping it on their little console.

You can put this software on some commercial product and charge for it. And there's a few things that are interesting about that. The spirit of free and open source software that's licensed under the GPL is that you shouldn't charge for this. It's free. It's developed by a community of volunteers. And here Sony is lifting it off GitHub and slapping it on their little console.

But there is nothing wrong with that according to the letter of the license. It just contradicts the spirit of the GPL license. And it's so strange to me that a video game console maker such as Sony would use an open source emulator on their latest console.

But there is nothing wrong with that according to the letter of the license. It just contradicts the spirit of the GPL license. And it's so strange to me that a video game console maker such as Sony would use an open source emulator on their latest console.

Well, the modding community did manage to get into this little PS1 mini, and they loaded up their own emulator on it, which unlocked the system to be able to play any and all PS1 games on it, not just the 20 that came with it. Now, when Maximilian saw how the community was able to bypass this whole thing, he started manufacturing a little USB drive that you could plug into the PlayStation.