Why aren't they bricking jtags?

Yes most people don't know it is illegal to do a lot of things. For example you can construe a Federal law I just learned of making it a crime to possess a lobster that is considered "too short" in states that have laws of such a thing. Thus my acquarium with a lobster of say, 4 inches, now makes me guilty of a federal law enforcing a law from another state.

Stupid? Yes. Should I be innocent of it because I didn't know about it until hearing a lecture by a lawyer? Nope. Ignorance is never a defense against guilt. It will however earn you a manslaughter charge over a more serious charge of murder.

The main arguement I have seen time and time again for people who wish to use HDDHAKR to modify retail harddrives to be 360 compatible is that A)360 drives have their own "Apple tax", B)MS won't ban people using duplicated SS data because someone could unknowingly use a drive that has been duplicated.

A friend of mine bought a 120gb 360 hdd sold as legit from eBay. I get it, crack it open and it is an obviously modified retail Western Digital. Should he be banned for this? No, because he didn't set out to violate Microsoft policy. However he should have made sure it was legitimate and gotten a refund but being a mechanic he comes to me for electronic help and I him for cars. I'm sure a similar plot could happen if I were to buy car parts from eBay that he and his friends would be discussing on other forums as well much like we are here. Maybe with faked PCMs or something. I don't believe Microsoft has an official policy on modified retail drives but I sincerely doubt it would be favorable to those who modify those drives.

With a JTAG you can argue that, unless bought on eBay and sold as a retail/stock 360, someone owning a JTAG knows they aren't going to get on XBox Live anytime soon and that they know the capabilities of the unit to some extent. Most of the people I know running iXtreme are doing it for the purpose of playing pirated titles. After some of them got banned they went legit as they were pissed at having dropped cash on DVD+DLs that are now useless and a 360 that they had to bring to me to reverse the HDD crippling that now can't go on Live.

JTAGs do get banned, I've seen idiots go on Live and find it banned the next day. But by using a JTAG you sorta self-ban yourself because you never go on Live again. Bricking it deliberately is a step beyond saying "hey you violated our policies that you agreed to and now must endure the consequences you agreed to". So far bricking the 360 has not been a part of those agreed upon policies. A devkit on the other hand is a licensed unit and is to be considered stolen property which makes the owner as good as a criminal in their eyes. They don't want a devkit capable of PN access getting into the hands of say Sony same as Toyota would not be pleased if Honda had direct access to some part of their network.

 

This is what I would like to discuss. Does anyone have a "lawyer" friend that could explain if a licensed unit that was disposed of by its license holder, and destroyed, then repaired and re-sold would still be considered property of the original owner. Or, if through salvage laws you could legally own such a device.

 

Microsoft and Licenses is always a tricky thing, even more so in the PC world. Judging by their software licenses and how they are applied (p.ex. an OEM license to them always consists of a key and a physical medium containing the data - that can also be the HD you get with a new laptop with a preinstalled Win. If you format that HD you just destroyed your license because you invalidated your medium per Microsoft-thinking) I would not be surprised if they still claim that they own the devkits.

Maybe they would resign ownership if the kits are destroyed in such a way that they can never ever be reverted to work as originally intended, p.ex. if they were shredded.

But shredded Devkits are probably of little interest to anyone except people creating "modern art"