XBOX360 Ban (modded consoles) class action lawsuit - update - I got my stuff back :D

[badinsults]

I think you all are blowing this out of proportion. When did I say I agreed with the Nazis?

The Final Solution was a policy - if it was not followed, the people were punished. What's your point?

There.

[Porksta]

So when did I say I agreed with the Nazis?

[Soviet Conscript]

I'm simply finding your mindless Judge Dredd nonsense frustrating.

lol, i though the exact same thing

So when did I say I agreed with the Nazis?

you didn't. porksta only stated the situation. he never said he agreed with the policy. only that it was in place and those that did not follow it were punished.


being lawful neutral myself (to make a nerdy D&D refrence) i understand and appriciate Porkstas stance. BUT i find it to inflexable and have to disagree to a point.

with microsofts TOS they have the complete right to ban a user from the service for a breach of the TOS. $50 or $1000 they have the right to deny refund as well as far as i'm concerned, BUT the right of microsoft to delete or corrupt saves or damage the acual hardware (if they are) is beyond thier right. there, thats my 2 cents.

[camarotuner]

OK so the official argument is that yes MS can ban your ass from Live but that deleting the guys hard drive was just mean? But the TOS says that MS can screw with the hardware if it feels like it's protecting it's assets? So wouldn't deleting the hard drive count? Unless it made the hard drive unusable the end user didn't really suffer any financial loss or anything. I doubt "losing my save files sucked" is going to work well as the basis for a lawsuit against MS and their billion dollar attorney division.

Yeah it sets a bad social precedent. Yeah I hate the idea of someone screwing with my property. But if we are all dumb enough to sign up for these things without reading the contract? What if Honda decided that if you modify their car while under financing from their financial division they are allowed to make the car inoperable until the car is paid for. Then you could do whatever you wanted with it? Well, I wouldn't buy a Honda. If MS's TOS sucks so much, go buy a PS3, a WII, or an Atari 2600 for all it matters. Just don't buy the Xbox. Eventually MS will alter their policies or lose it's customer base. But people won't. They'll buy it anyways. Bitch and whine, but buy it anyways. Bitch and whine doesn't bother them. They have your money. If you want change, stop giving them the money.

Oh and dude, siding with Nazi's following orders and going along with the Holocaust? Really? REALLY? I've got nothing.

[Porksta]

Oh and dude, siding with Nazi's following orders and going along with the Holocaust? Really? REALLY? I've got nothing.

I'm not siding with anything. I am simply stating that regardless of what the law/rule/policy states and what it does, it is still the law/rule/policy. Being such, you have to follow it. Do I agree with the new health care policy that is taking shape? No, but if it becomes law, I will have no choice but to follow it.

The fact of the matter is that you agreed to follow the rules of Xbox Live by stating "Yes, I have read the TOS and agree with what has been said". If you did not want to follow them and modify your console, then why the hell did you agree to the ruling?

[badinsults]

I'm not siding with anything. I am simply stating that regardless of what the law/rule/policy states and what it does, it is still the law/rule/policy. Being such, you have to follow it. Do I agree with the new health care policy that is taking shape? No, but if it becomes law, I will have no choice but to follow it.

So, what you are saying is that if you were living in Nazi Germany during the early 1940s, you would feel no moral obligation to speak out about torching millions of innocent Jews, just because it was the law?

Ok, I just wanted to throw that out there.

[Zthun]

Of all the people here with the 'MS is right, you're wrong, go fuck yourself' attitude, I can probably bet that not a single one of them read the contract. If the deed happened to them, they would be shouting and crying the 'fuck Microsoft' dance themselves.

Sounds like a bunch of hypocrites to me. Nobody reads those contracts. Seriously, who buys something only to click I disagree on the TOS screen. Now what? You're not getting a refund. You HAVE to click I agree to continue. Don't give MS money? That's kind of hard considering you have to buy their product to actually read the contract.

Banning from Live - OK, that's reasonable.
Destroying saved games - That's just crap, even if it is in the contract. And no, I DIDN'T FUCKING READ IT, I JUST CLICKED AGREE LIKE THE REST OF THE 99% OF THE POPULATION.

I think I'm going to go develop some software where you have to click I disagree in order to continue on the license agreement screen. Clicking I agree will give you the middle finger.

[The 1 2 P]

I agree with Microsoft because the majority of people modding their consoles were doing it to A) play pirated software and B) cheat on XBL. Read that again. I said the majority, not everyone. I know for a fact that skaar was playing legit software because he buys alot of it from me. But he knew the consequences of his actions playing a modded console on XBL.

Then we have the corrupting of the hard drive. I'm not really sure what to make of this. I know why they are doing it(to prevent the offending person from doing the same thing again with a different console and the same hd) but if people have legitimate purchased games on their hard drive, then shouldn't they be able to still play them on the same hd? According to Microsoft you void that right when you violate the TOS in anyway and thats exactly where this lawsuit picks up. I honestly don't think they have a chance in hell at beating Microsoft. But if nothing else, they will learn from this to read the fine print the next time they decide to mod a console.

[98PaceCar]

Of all the people here with the 'MS is right, you're wrong, go fuck yourself' attitude, I can probably bet that not a single one of them read the contract. If the deed happened to them, they would be shouting and crying the 'fuck Microsoft' dance themselves.

The OP is the only person that I've seen admit to having been caught in this ban and he has manned up and taken responsibility for his actions. It's just too bad that others don't feel the same level of personal responsibility for their actions and would choose to litigate instead of acting like a rational adult when they breach a contract and get caught.

If you agree to a TOS or any other contract without reading it, you may well get bit and you have nobody to blame but yourself.

I do find it interesting that everybody (myself included, to a degree) is harping on the TOS. I believe that according to the DMCA, it's illegal to use copyrighted code that has been modified without the owners consent (in this case, the firmware needed to mod a 360). Wouldn't this mean that MS did everybody a favor by simply banning them and not trying to go after copyright infringement which would have been a more legally binding punishment? As much as I hate the RIAA, they have proven that it is possible to recover losses due to piracy.

[TonyTheTiger]

I'm not siding with anything. I am simply stating that regardless of what the law/rule/policy states and what it does, it is still the law/rule/policy. Being such, you have to follow it. Do I agree with the new health care policy that is taking shape? No, but if it becomes law, I will have no choice but to follow it.

To assist Porksta, because I actually don't think he "agrees with the Nazis," I think what he is saying is more along the lines of a nihilistic argument. Granted, I find his stance absurd but what it sounds like he's saying isn't "bad law is good law" but rather "even if it is bad law, violating it leads to punishment so you have to follow it to avoid punishment." If we are only concerned with avoiding punishment, rather than arguing over whether or not that punishment is justified, then Porksta's argument would hold water. But since we're arguing whether or not Microsoft's punishment is valid, not whether the people who modded were "asking for it," Porksta is misguided.

While Porksta's argument that "even if it is bad law, violating it leads to punishment so you have to follow it to avoid punishment" in fact may be true; as in, breaking even bad laws can lead to punishments, however unjust they are, I vehemently disagree with Porksta's implication that there is no value in dissent over the punishment itself. Just because a punishment exists and will be enforced doesn't mean it should be.

[Porksta]

You can disagree with the punishment all you want, and voice your opinion, and do whatever you can to get the rule changed, but it is still the rule and in the meantime you still have to follow it. Breaking the rules isn't the way to go to show your displeasure over them.

[TonyTheTiger]

You can disagree with the punishment all you want, and voice your opinion, and do whatever you can to get the rule changed, but it is still the rule and in the meantime you still have to follow it. Breaking the rules isn't the way to go to show your displeasure over them.

But suing after the punishment is levied is a perfectly valid response. What don't you understand about that?

We see this in the criminal field all the time. We have an appeals system in place for a reason. If somebody gets convicted and it turns out the government played games with the evidence or screwed around in some other way, the conviction (ala, the punishment) gets reversed. If a criminal punishment is imposed that turns out is a constitutional violation, probably 8th Amendment, it gets overturned specifically because the punishment is not allowed. If Microsoft levies a punishment that turns out to be tortious behavior then the company cannot be allowed to perform that act.

You're acting as if every punishment levied, regardless of what it is, must always stand no matter what and there's never any recourse whatsoever. I stand firm. Your argument is absurd. Perhaps not "agreeing with the Nazis" absurd but some level of absurd below that.

[Porksta]

It is perfectly okay to sue. I can't really understand why they are suing when they knowingly broke the laws. I just don't understand why they are pissing and moaning now that Microsoft has chosen to enforce the rules. The people weren't complaining while they were allowed to knowingly break the rules.

It is like if I smoked marijuana every day. If one day I get arrested for it should I sue because it is a stupid and unjust rule?

[skaar]

Porksta, I think you missed the (well many) points here. The issue wasn't banning consoles from their service, the issue was them toasting data on the hard drive that had nothing to do with their service. This has been clarified several times before for you.

Nothing wrong with banning the console, all's fair. My point (like 3 pages back at this point) was that I had a beef with them breaking saved games and XBLA games I'd paid good money for. I figured this would have particular relevance to a collector's forum as people are already concerned about intangible game ownership.

Also, very not cool on the Nazi thing. You might want to have that looked at.

[Porksta]

Again, there is nothing Nazi related about me. I was discussing it on a strictly policy related level.

My point (like in the whole thread) is that you knowingly used an illegal harddrive to play games. People in your situation have no right to complain about losing data you gained on a fraudulent storage system. Do people have the right to sue? Yes, but I don't know why they are.

[TonyTheTiger]

It is like if I smoked marijuana every day. If one day I get arrested for it should I sue because it is a stupid and unjust rule?

If the penalty were death for that offense you damn well better.

That's what this is about and that is what you don't seem to be understanding. The simple fact that there is a general "punishment," whatever that may be, is not what matters here. The context of the actual real punishment enforced, on the other hand, matters quite a bit. You regularly have failed to understand that. The lawsuit is not "Microsoft punished me." The lawsuit is "Microsoft's punishment went too far and ventured into tortious activity." Are you really not seeing that?

[Ed Oscuro]

If the penalty were death for that offense you damn well better.

If we lived in Florida and were minors, we could pretty much have equivalent sentences thrown at us for non-capital crimes. (For folks who aren't aware, see this, this, or for some commentary and expansion, this about recent news about the Supreme Court and Florida.

Anyway, Porksta (or somebody, I don't know who started it) seems to be carelessly tripping over Godwin's Law to the max, for shame. And I'm doing something similar talking about juvies in Florida instead of the topic.

But yeah, it's good to know that Microsoft isn't being given leeway to toast your data. The rest is OK, those stipulations about using their services are in the contract.

Also, I don't know if this has been brought up before, but Microsoft says it wasn't a million consoles banned.

[j_factor]

You can disagree with the punishment all you want, and voice your opinion, and do whatever you can to get the rule changed, but it is still the rule and in the meantime you still have to follow it. Breaking the rules isn't the way to go to show your displeasure over them.

Not a fan of Gandhi, eh?

[Icarus Moonsight]

The real problem is Porksta has elevated MS company policy up to the level of law, or perhaps beyond it. MS can not create law.... Jeez. MS Deified: God-in-a-Box Edition.

[Buyatari]

Again, there is nothing Nazi related about me. I was discussing it on a strictly policy related level.

My point (like in the whole thread) is that you knowingly used an illegal harddrive to play games. People in your situation have no right to complain about losing data you gained on a fraudulent storage system. Do people have the right to sue? Yes, but I don't know why they are.

Anyone who plays online legit hates those that 13yr old punks who curse up a storm and show up with modded systems destroying the game for everyone with all the cheating. I stopped playing Halo 2 for this reason. If this happened to you you might want to go over and break the 13 yr olds Xbox yourself.

However, Porksta these guys have a point. If this is really about rules then the rule of the land is the US goverment not Microsoft. While I agree these guys had it coming (and in many cases I'm glad they did get banned) I am not a lawer and do not know the real rules (aka laws) well enough to know if Microsoft followed the rules. So now we have a lawsuit. If Microsoft wins then yes those were the rules and honestly anyone who was banned really should have known better.

What if Microsoft loses? What if Microsoft hasn't been following the rules of the goverment? Well then THEY should have known better and with a lawsuit that is what we will find out.