The High Court in Australia today ruled unanimously that chips used for modifying the Sony PlayStation so that it plays cheaper overseas Sony games is not against copyright laws in the country. The ruling is the end of a 4-year battle.

It began when Sydney-based Eddy Stevens supplied and installed the "mod chips" onto the Sony consoles, making the company's regional coding obsolete. The regional coding on a PlayStation works similarly to the coding on DVD players.

Stevens's lawyer, Nathan Mattock, said of the ruling: It's a victory for consumers, but also business people as well. It will likely increase competition in the market and possibly reduce prices in the market for gaming." Sony did not comment.

Source

It shouldn't have been "illegal" in the first place, Region Encoding is just a way to increase proffit in various areas... worthless...

I don't really understand the purpose of modding a PS2 anyway. The best people can do is copy games. Xbox should have been the ones worried. Hell, being able to modify the OS and installing larger hard drives is the way to go. Did M$ go through a similar debate?

I like being able to backup my games; I have bought every FF title and several others and they can get really expensive, especially when one disk gets scratched too much to play... My PS1 is modded, so I have every game I have backed up and have the originals put away so that I don't have to worry about children (including my 29 year old brother) scratching the disks...