Porting to Xbox (a more serious discussion attempt)

rsalerno · Post by **rsalerno** » July 30th, 2006, 12:09 am

Kiba wrote:Why port to Xbox when you can port to Xbox 360?

Because you can't run unsigned code on a 360 yet. Running Wesnoth on an Xbox could be a fairly easy reality. Running on the 360 is still a far off dream at this point.

zaimoni · Post by **zaimoni** » July 30th, 2006, 2:28 am

Regarding the DCMA:
The crux is whether installing Linux to an XBox/XBox 360 requires bypassing DRM hardware/software at all. Intentionality is irrelevant. For sufficiently recent models, it clearly does ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=22 ). You would have to argue that XBoxes are obsolete in the sense proposed by the Librarian of Congress, which is completely indefensible for the XBox 360 and substantially indefensible for the XBox.

So my interest is in a port of Wesnoth to native-XBox, not some alternate OS.
----
And as for

The DMCA doesn't clearly say that this is illegal.

(start flamewar)
The text of the U.S. DMCA is publicly available at http://thomas.loc.gov/. (try searching "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" for the 105th Congress, in bills sent to the President.) Please have on hand when composing further discussion; I most certainly will.

Assuming that the law has not been amended since 1998: the intention for bypassing the DRM is irrelevant.

However, the Librarian of Congress is relevant, and every three years is supposed to publish a report stating what otherwise illegal bypasses are really legal for the next three years. Relevant rulings are currently indexed from http://www.copyright.gov/1201/index.html. Exemption making is in progress for Oct. 28 2006 - Oct 2? 2009. The current exemptions were made in 2003, with last day of effect Oct. 27 2006.

I doubt that the XBox is "obsolete" in this sense:

(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

Post by **irrevenant** » July 30th, 2006, 5:15 am

rsalerno wrote:
Boucman wrote:If you want a technical discussion, please open a topic in Coder's corner...
Sorry if this thread was out of place. I figured it fit better here first, and if the idea is well enough received, then would warrant direct attention from Coders. I can see how it would go either way, but the last time it came up someone suggested making it an "Idea" and trying to sell it harder, so that's what I'm trying.

I agree that this forum is the place to propose ideas and hash out the pros and cons before someone goes ahead with it (or not).

Note that the Wesnoth community has already made it clear that it will not be supporting any illegal activities (see the thread on the proposed "Lord of the Rings" mod). Discussion on whether Wesnoth can or can't be legally implemented on Wesnoth is fine. Discussion on why Wesnoth should be illegally implemented isn't.

P.S. To further muddy the waters, some of us live in countries that don't have the DMCA...

scott · Post by **scott** » July 30th, 2006, 11:58 am

zaimoni wrote:Regarding the DCMA:
The crux is whether installing Linux to an XBox/XBox 360 requires bypassing DRM hardware/software at all. Intentionality is irrelevant. For sufficiently recent models, it clearly does ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=22 ).

I agree that's the crux, but that article says exactly zero about defeating copy-protection. What part in there did you intend for us to see? I followed one of the links to the x-box/linux modification group's page, and they seem pretty certain their method is legal because they took steps to prevent their exploit from being used to run illegally copied games. Is intentionality irrelevant? I'll take a look.

rsalerno · Post by **rsalerno** » July 30th, 2006, 7:33 pm

scott wrote:Is intentionality irrelevant? I'll take a look.

The DMCA denies Fair Use rights. Under its blanket terms, just thinking about doing something to defeat DRM is technically illegal. The bigger deal I think is that there's no history of Microsoft taking real offense.

News shows and magazines have run spots on how to soft-mod an Xbox in ten minutes (G4, Make Magazine, etc.) without getting in trouble. Xbox-linux.org exists without much hassle. Xbox-scene runs news and articles about doing all the things you can do with an Xbox, good intentioned or not. These are major sources of concern, should Microsoft want a target to point the DMCA at. Porting Wesnoth, and original, open-source, free game to play more efficiently on an Xbox wouldn't hit the radar. Especially since the Wesnoth servers don't have to make mention of it if the consensus/decision-maker doesn't want to.

Wesnoth isn't going to help people mod their Xbox so they can play the game. Wesnoth isn't going to give away copied commercial games along with the source to an Xbox version of the game.

Wouldn't it be neat if there was work done on allowing more seamless gamepad integration? Wouldn't it be neat if there was a 640x480 mode that worked well enough? Wouldn't it be super neat to play Wesnoth on a console, on your sofa, with a big TV and nice speakers?

Certain aspects of modding an Xbox are illegal under the strictest interpretations of the DMCA. But we're not really talking about modding an Xbox, we're talking about modifying code to a free and open-source game. Eventually, on a personal level, people could choose to run this source on their Xbox they mod for their own personal, arguably legal reasons.

I'm not interested in trying to harm the project or the community. I understand that this is a slightly gray area, and I also understand if that makes it an uviable project. But as a community, maybe some members are less intimidated, or as irrevenant said, completely unaffected. I see it very straightforwardly as a tweak to the code that allows the game to run on a special version of linux with enough improvements/variances to the game to be interesting enough to talk about. And if my vision about it is out of line with the rest of the community, then that's valuable information to have.

zaimoni · Post by **zaimoni** » July 30th, 2006, 11:32 pm

What part in there did you intend for us to see?

Scott, you saw what I needed from that article. But there are two others that should be read to get the point. (one accessible only by the thomas.loc.gov search engine (direct link would die in 20 minutes or so), the other link chosen so it wouldn't go out of date.)

A U.S. law that is so draconian that special exceptions for invalidating it are delegated to the Library of Congress, has problems. As it is, it is a direct contradiction of the general EU precedents for fair use (cf. the DeCSS lawsuit in Norway, which most certainly would have gone the other way in the U.S.) -- and the hardware it protects has general legality problems in the EU.

A recent example is how every DVD player now sold in the EU is shipped with instructions for outright defeating the country code restrictions in the DVD player. These instructions are a crime under the DMCA in the U.S. -- but not providing them is a crime in the EU. [Both country code 2 and country code 5 DVDs must be able to play in an EU DVD player due to trade treaties, but the hardware DRM explicitly prevents this. And has not been redesigned otherwise by the MPAA.]

zaimoni · Post by **zaimoni** » July 30th, 2006, 11:45 pm

I see no reference to intention in the following quotation (as passed in 1998):

`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

`(B) The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).

`(C) During the 2-year period described in subparagraph (A), and during each succeeding 3-year period, the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, ....

All possible fair uses are prohibited, except for exceptions denotated by the committee process.

zaimoni · Post by **zaimoni** » July 30th, 2006, 11:52 pm

and they seem pretty certain their method is legal

The DNS for the website says the registering address is in France.

What they did should be legal in most of the EU (and was clearly legal in France until the French Congress passed DMCA-like legislation last month).

I didn't see any special effort to consider international law questions, so I assume the problems with the U.S. DMCA slipped past their attention.

Prometheus · Post by **Prometheus** » July 31st, 2006, 11:11 am

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

I read this as saying INTENDING to circumvent is not enough, one has to ACTUALLY SUCCEED in circumventing to be in violation.

I'm unclear on this, what exactly is the protected work? It can't be the Xbox hardware itself, which is not copyrightable. Does installing Linux somehow automatically enable pirating of games?

scott · Post by **scott** » July 31st, 2006, 11:18 am

Prometheus wrote:
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
I read this as saying INTENDING to circumvent is not enough, one has to ACTUALLY SUCCEED in circumventing to be in violation.

I'm unclear on this, what exactly is the protected work? It can't be the Xbox hardware itself, which is not copyrightable. Does installing Linux somehow automatically enable pirating of games?

As I understand it from reading their site, you trick the XBox into loading code that causes it to not care about running unsigned software. The default refusal of the XBox to do that prevents it from running both Linux and copied XBox games. The linux people supposedly built in a limitation to the exploit that actually causes it to not care about running unsigned Linux software, that is, it checks for Linux somehow and still won't run copied games.

zaimoni · Post by **zaimoni** » July 31st, 2006, 1:33 pm

Prometheus,

one has to ACTUALLY SUCCEED in circumventing to be in violation.

Yes. The problem is, as Scott mentioned, that to run Linux at all the DRM has to be circumvented. The restriction of the exploit to Linux software renders the bypass of the DRM strictly an enabling of EU fair use, which is generally legal under EU law. [I am getting conflicting news reporting of what the French court system has done to the DMCA-like law that was passed last month.]

That the DRM is intended to protect XBox games is less than relevant, to the U.S. DMCA.

Post by **torangan** » July 31st, 2006, 3:20 pm

Why are you all talking about legal matters so much? The interesting part for Wesnoth would be to support TV resolutions and gamepad type controllers. Well, AFAIK you can have your computer send its output to the TV and plug in some gamepads on the gameport. So if somebody provides the code, why not include it (the first should already work with --enable-tinygui).
Wheter or not somebody makes a package which then works on the X-Box and wheter it's legal for somebody to run it, doesn't target Wesnoth. What will most likely not happen is a direct link from wesnoth.org to a X-Box version.