Judge recommends ban on XBox 360 from US shelves

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Long story short, the XBox 360 could be taken off of American shelves before year's end. While Microsoft has vowed to keep business as usual during the ITC's ruling process, this could result in a massive loss to the gaming industry not seen since the 1983 VG Crash. No, it won't be that dramatic in the big picture, but no major system has had their support cut in the middle of its run since then.

Personally I think it'll stop at the ITC and that'll be the end of it, but stranger things have happened. Any other opinions or thoughts on the issue?

Last edited by crmoore on 24 May 2012, 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Will anyone of us that own PS3s be effected in any way? I can't really believe any of this will come to fruition, I just heard of it now.

Woah, what morons.

I don't like Micro$oft products or use them very often, but I believe for a judge to order X-box off the market is totally unfair. However, Microsoft is doing the same thing with some of Motorola's Android phones. This and other such bans prove that the U.S. intellectual property laws are out of date and stifle creativity rather than encourage it. The U.S. Constitution sanction intellectual property laws in order to encourage creation in useful arts and sciences. It intended to allow people exclusive right to their discovery and writings for A LIMITED period of time. The current "law" extends the copyright to I believe 70 years after the death of the creator of the work. Rather than helping encourage creativity, this puts the brakes on it. There is little wonder why people have come to disrespect intellectual property laws.

I once spent two months writing an application, I debugged it and was in the process of getting ready to release a beta version. However, when someone on a forum told me that he had filed a patent on the process I was using and was willing to "work with me" on licensing, I decided to scrap the entire project. I came up with he process he was talking about on my own and without any help. However, since he filed for a patent, I didn't want to spend all my time and money fighting the patent or risk legal trouble. Instead, a great program that I intended to release to the public domain got scrapped. Maybe, I'll release the program anonymously in the future.

In today's society, the golden rule has become, "He who has the gold makes the rule." This has helped keep smaller competitors out of the big markets. However, the Free Software movement as well as file sharing is putting and end to these draconian laws. It is hard to collect money from someone who doesn't have any, and it is also hard to collect money from a foreign or anonymous software coder. Big companies are now slugging it out with each other in the courts while many of the creative "little people" continue to write code and innovate. Hopefully, these draconian intellectual property rules will go into the dustbin of history much like prohibition.

If you read the judge's recommendation it wouldn't take Xboxes off the shelves, it would prevent them from being imported. If I was Microsoft and the judgement happened I'd simply import parts and assemble them in the US to circumvent the ruling. There are plenty of assembly lines not moving right now that could be used.

That would work temporarily until Motorola decides to purchase an injunction forbidding the manufacture of X-boxes in addition to the importing of them. However, there is a loophole that would work very well. Microsoft can manufacture or import the X-box without the patented feature and help or encourage an outsider to come up with an easy way for the consumer to add the desired feature. Such is the case with Microsoft Windows 8 not including the ability to play Hollywood DVD movies (which Linux, by the way, can play). Microsoft cannot add this ability to computers without having to pay a licensing tax to those who created the encryption algorithm for the Hollywood studios. Microsoft, however, says that users can purchase a codec that will allow the playing of these DVD. Another option given on a few discussion forums is for people to download VLC Media Player.

In order for an average user without a huge amount of technical knowledge to be able to add such a capability to their X-box, Microsoft will have to incorporate that ability to easily add third party software to the console. I doubt that Microsoft will do this because it would then allow competitors to create software and features for which Microsoft will have no control over nor be able to tax. Again, the draconian intellectual property laws that the big companies purchased are coming back to bite them in the a$$.

Microsoft has lots of money to pay lots of lawyers, I don't see this ending in a loss for them. Furthermore, look at the last few companies that tried to beat them in IP shenanigans... Netscape and Sun. Pyrrhic victories.

Hmm strange timing for this as the 360 only has around 2 years left in its current life cycle. Seems like another example of corporal greed to me by Motorola. Even if they won the case and got some sort of compensation it would probably be less that what they have paid in lawyer fees.

This corporate greed goes both ways, actually. Consider the patent lawsuits Microsoft has against Motorola. This could be a lawsuit in retaliation to Microsoft's patent lawsuit against Motorola. It still boils down to the blow back big companies suffer when they have lobbied for increased ability to patent and copyright everything under the sun. Intellectual property rules have become too complex.

If Microsoft did assemble in the US to circumvent the ruling and Motorola did file for an injunction to stop them it would make for some good headlines.

First: "Microsoft moves Xbox manufacture to US, generates 2000 jobs."
Then: "Motorola wants newly employed to lose jobs making Xbox 360's."

I agree, it sure would

Last time I checked the PS3 didn't violate any copyright infringements. I think the PS3 will be alright.

As for the Xbox 360, they're clearly over-reacting. I don't see any reason to ban the Xbox 360.

I recomend banning all consoles. Ordinarily I wouldn't care but in the last few years many really good formerly PC titles have been "dumbed down" to appeal to the console market.