http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plug ... ve/1372276

Apparently "As many as 600,000 Xbox 360s were banned from the Xbox Live service this week in the latest in a series of crackdowns by Microsoft on illegally modified consoles."

Now here is the thing. These consoles are to my understanding banned from ANY XBOX live activity, even private games. Now I myself don't modify my console so it shouldn't affect me but apparently:

"at least one banned Xbox owner claims to have been targeted by accident, and that Microsoft won't listen to his excuses.

"My console and my fiance's console were caught up in the Mass Banning going on by Microsoft in their latest Pirate Witch Hunt. My fiance is a chef, and plays games like Viva Pinata, Arcade Games, and can't figure out how to remove the battery pack, much less tear apart her system to 'mod' anything," he told The Consumerist.

He's had little luck with Microsoft's customer service, either. "At one point a man who called himself 'Charles' told me that it was my problem and I should learn to follow the rules, then hung up on me," he said."


Now who knows if this is true or not but I do know that it would suck to be in a position like this and not be able to be taken seriously.

A problem with this is that it seems Microsoft is reserving too many rights unnecessarily in the name of control. Like before we talked about how the update prevents you from using larger memory third party memory cards. You cannot choose these updates in part even if you want to just say use your mem card for your own games and browse netflix. To use that mem card you must forever remain offline.

In the case of the modified box, yes it does say this in the rules that we all agree to when creating an online account but the rules are so ridiculously long that many people never read them. Yes the individual gamer is responsible for what they agree to but to cover their legal butt there doesn't seem to be concern by microsoft to recognize that many of these people truly don't know better and it doesn't help that their agreement is the length of a book.. I'm not saying they shouldn't ban them but I am saying they should go way out of their way to explain the seriousness, always take defense of mistaken identity seriously, and maybe not ban them so stringently over live in private games.

For example, why can't I modify my box, it is my box. At best the warranty would be void. Fine. But then there is an unfair adavantage online. OK, I understand, but what if I only want to play private games online or moded games offline and just watcjh netflix or buy clothes for my avatar online. What if I want to play moded games offline and nonmoded games online. Should I really be totally banned?

Again, as someone who read the rules and plays by the rules I am glad to get rid of many of the punks. The question I ask is whether or not the way that Microsoft handles all of it is truly the fairest or is it overcontrol?

microsoft shouldnt be handling this type of mass culling. there has to be grounds to appeal because no system is perfect and errors do happen. i would sue microsoft for breach of contract if they discontinued my service through their error and refused to even entertain the possibility.

ugh, microsoft is so horrible. someone please make their money worthless so they can stop buying out the industry.

Yup. It's overcontrol.

One person out of six hundred thousand and there's arlready a thread about how M$ is just completely in the wrong? Honestly, if he's the only person who had that problem then M$ has done very well for themselves.

Anyway, about the questions:

Let's say you had a car. And it's YOUR car. There are still rules and laws as to what you can do with it. If you can mod it with NOS, uber dark tint, ground effects, ect. And if you break those laws, you can be fined. Yes it's your car, but there are still rules. If you mod your 360, you are doing it so that you can pirate games, simple as that. If M$ wants to stop that, I hardly see any grounds as to why they can't.

And don't give me that TOS being too long stuff either. You know BEFORE you ever got to it that modding the console was going to be aginst TOS. I honestly don't thing a single person would actually read it and be genuinely suprised that modding isn't allowed.

Now, the memory card thing? Yeah, that's kind of retarded, as I can see no conflict with the TOS or any other reason not to use it other than M$ wants people to buy only THEIR cards. But if they started making cards as large as the third party companies, I wouldn't even care that much.

C'mon Lantis, I didn't say they were "completely in the wrong". If I am exaggerating the problem by referring to this one person out of 600,000, you are exaggerating the response characterizing it as though I made a post to say they were completely in wrong. I even said that no one knew if it was true or not about this guy, but what this post is about as I said, is that Microsoft is starting to concern me. To be honest it is video gaming in general. With things like the transition to dowloading games where you can't even loan your disc to your cousin or changing code so that you can monopolize memory cards to force out your competition giving the gamer less for their money, these things concern me. My personal experience is with Microsoft via the XBOX 360. One area where they did in fact affect me is that I was banned from XBOX Live for a day I think because my profile violated the terms of use. What pissed me off (other than having to sit out that day) is that they never gave me a chance to appeal AND they never told me what was in violation. They reset the violating material by reseting the whole profile. In other words I think it was my motto where I said, "I ain't no PunkBitch!". But they also reset my bio, name, and location. But it might have been that in my name I put another motto, albeit one with no profanity (if "PunkBitch" can really be considered a profanity. So was it the 'profanity' or the improper name that got me banned for a day. I'll never know because they won't tell me and I'll never get that day of gaming back. Obivously one day isn't so bad (it is the point that really matters) but what happens if it is a week, month, or permanently. I don't know if they bother telling you in those cases what you did wrong. So now I just leave all that stuff alone because I don't want to take any chances. I mean if they are going to ban me the least they can do is tell me what I specifically did wrong, right! Well anyways. It doesn't matter this moment because my red ring problem prevents me from playing their system anyways. So until I get back my system (which I couldn't insure even though their webpage said I could insure) it is all about my older systems which, ironically, haven't broke down on me yet.

I am somewhere in the middle of your posts. Too muddled in my own little place to explain, but I will say this: If I want to mod my xbox for whatever reason (which I HAVE done just to repair the dvd drive- sans the bios flash) then I should be able to without too much hassle or fear. But as soon as I flash the bios, then yes, I should be banned, seeing how the only logical reason would be to play burned games.

Sure, the guy in question may be innocent, but it has to be tough to weed out the modders from the non modders without exposing their methods (which NO tech support jerk would know) to the hacking community that could then, well.... do that hackery magic they do.

Now should I be banned for cracking that two dollar hdd enclosure and putting a larger (250) one in there? I say no. Sure there's a hard drive security sector bin that is necessary and only available from image dumping from already having one, or from some fine googling, that is a bit shady to come by. But I also say its unfair of M$ to lock out third party memory devices entirely and even ban the users. Sure I am going a bit on a tangent here, but I have a point. It is that Datel Memory Max Memory Units (the MSDHC to MemUnit adapter) is readily available online, and worse, at retail stores such as Walmart and GameStop. Joe Consumer won't know that the purchase will potentially and permanently ban his 360, but he sees it as a cost effective alternative to the official ones. He goes home and plugs it in and its a one way ticket to bansville. No warning. No explanation. Just permabanned. His communications with support will go just as the one in the OP or at best as with Bo's example. That's where I get mad. (that and the fact that there are two such MemMax units in my home I can no longer use for fear of bannitude)

What harm ever could come from me using a third party memory unit?! (I guess I should tell you)

Ok- now in M$'s defense, the datel mem units can in fact be used to gamesave to boost gamerscore unfairly, and even alter values in a save file to, for instance, give your character max money, max hp, unlock all skills, etc. or even to simply go in and manually unlock specific achievements in your played game history by altering your profile. But the thing is, you don't NEED a third party mem unit to do any of this. You only need either a M$ transfer cable that comes with hdd upgrades or a third party hdd/memunit reader that plugs into your pc. And of course some software I won't direct you to, but believe me when I say its out there and its everywhere.

So sure M$ sorta, kinda, maybe has a point to eliminate support for the datel brand mem unit for reducing a single step in the process of gamesaving, but it really is too little too late. And there are way WAY too many innocent casualties in this futile war. They clearly don't care about bad talk coming there way with all these tentacles they keep wrapping around our gaming world. Tightening. Constricting. Suffocating.

Ummmmm.... so yeah. Its overcontrol

@insultobot
Excellent post. Well said.