Extra-region exportation is a licensing violation (civil crime) but not a criminal issue.
No, mod chips modify your console to play COPIED games. Stolen (shoplifted, burgled, etc) games play just fine. 
Sorry to be a nitpicker but I’m annoyed by the incorrect and inflammatory use of the word “stolen”.
Don’t the console manufacturers want the mod chips outlawed? It just seems that way to me b/c the original PS came with a slot on the side (or was it the back) for the chip to plug into. Later ones had no slot and the shops that sold the chips needed to integrate them for the customers who bought foreign games. They physically had to take the console apart and perhaps solder the chip to the board.
Yes, because it lets them control what gets released where. More importantly for them, this lets them charge more for certain games in certain areas.
A typical PS2 game in Sweden retails for 599 SEK. That is 77 USD according to today’s exchange rate. 25% VAT here does not turn the 50 USD standard price (in the US) into 77 USD. They simply charge more in Sweden as they know they can get away with it. In my opinion these tactics are pretty much against the free trade concepts so loved by modern corporations.
Can you see why people might want Mod Chips to allow them to buy games cheaper abroad AS WELL AS letting them buy games that were never released in their region? Isn’t free trade supposed to allow customers to buy products from where ever they want in an effort to find the best price?
An even more interesting proposition is the Gamecube. The Japanese and US cubes are the same except for one small jumper setting inside. It is therefore trivial (for someone who knows how to solder small points) to add a switch to a Gamecube to allow it to play both Japanese and North American games. I have a Japanese cube that is switched like this, although all my games are from North America.
Additionally there exists a piece of software called “Freeloader” that lets any machine play games from any other region, thus allowing my US games to play on a European cube.
Neither of these two methods allow you to play copied games. There currently is no way of playing copied games on a standard Gamecube (there may be if using a development cube that was only released to developers).
Thus there is no argument on the Gamecube against these devices due to them letting you play copied games. This hasn’t stopped Nintendo threatening people with legal action in the UK. Unfortunately, as the people they have been threatening don’t have anywhere near the resources of Nintendo (generally being small 2 or 3 man import stores) to fight the legal action, they have simply caved in.
That slot is the parallel I/O port. The devices that plug into it, like the GameShark, Action Replay, and clones, aren’t mod chips, they’re cheat devices (a.k.a. “game enhancers”) - some of which also let you play backups and imports, but most don’t. I think the PlayStation VCD player plugs into that slot too. (There’s also a serial I/O port which mainly seems to be used for debugging.)
Real mod chips are the ones that have to be soldered to the console’s motherboard.
I never used the swap trick to play copied games, or for any other reason. My PSX STILL had to be turned on its side to play games at the end of its days. It probably still works, but since I got my PS2 I’ve pretty much retired it from gaming. I still use it (the PSX) as a CD player on occasion.
Most of my knowledge of mod chips is based on what I read from the Acts of Gord. According to Gord, mod chips come in two main flavors. One flavor lets you play copied games, and the other flavor lets you play games from other regions. There might be a “twist” flavor which lets you play both types of games, but I don’t know.
Since many games are released in only one country or area and not world-wide, I am rather ambivalent about modifying consoles in order to play other-region games. However, now we’re veering into GD territory.
That is true as, basically, the chip manufacturers managed to get chips working that played copies much quicker than all-region games. THe first chips to come out could only play copies IIRC.
These days it is quite hard to find a chip that only plays copies, they almost always offer the playing of both copied and other-region games.
Anyway, as has also been said, the playign of copied games shouldn’t (and in some parts of the world probably isn’t) illegal due to the right of backing up. This used to be the case in the US before DMCA appeared on the horizon. Now having the backup may still be legal in the US, for example, but the mod chip may be considered illegal as it is a device to bypass encryption.
And that definitely is one for GD.
“They don’t have copy protection until you put them in a PS2, which detects the copy protection? What are you trying to say?”
The ps2 looks for the copy protection on the disk, if it’s not there it won’t load the disk. Far as I know a ps2 is the only machine that can see the copy protection pressed on the disk.
What do you mean by “see the copy protection on the disc”?
If someone has broken the copy protection and then transcribed the disk, it won’t play. Some people do this for mass copying. I think this is illegal in and of itself, but no one’s taken them to court over it.
Sorry I still don’t follow. Are you saying that the discs are pressed with or without the copy protection intact?
It just doesn’t make sense.
The copy protection used for playstation and playstation 2 is not entirely understood (except by Sony) and there is a lot of conflicting information out there about it.
Basically, when the console starts to load the disc, it looks for a ‘country code’, e.g. “SCEA” for America. This code is pressed on the game cd (or dvd) in a way that a PC cd-rom cannot detect it. (it is either in a disc location that the computer cannot read, or it is stored in a manner that the computer cannot read, or both. It is not “normal data” that you can burn to a recordable medium)
Typically, modchips bypass this by sending all of the ‘country codes’ in a row directly to the chip that is looking for them.
And, as for the illegal part, software is still legally spposed to be copiable - you are allowed one backup.
“And, as for the illegal part, software is still legally spposed to be copiable - you are allowed one backup.”
Well, I don’t know about that. But if you look at the top of MS software, it usually says, ‘do not make illegal copies of this disk’, that seems to imply there are legal copies, eh?
If I understand correctly, the first chips could play both copies and imports due to they way they worked, and it took extra effort to make them only play imports.
Basically, there’s a chip that reads the country code off the disc, which is a sequence of letters like SCEA, SCEE, or SCEJ indicating the branch of Sony that licensed the game. The mod chip watches the communications going in and out of that chip, and when the PSX asks it to read the copy protection, the mod chip spits out “SCEASCEESCEJSCEASCEESCEJ” over and over, making the PSX think the disc is licensed in all regions - even if the disc is really only licensed in one region, or if it has no valid country code at all.
A mod chip that doesn’t play backups has to wait for a valid code (either SCEE, SCEA, or SCEJ), and only begin spitting out the fake codes after a valid one has already been read off the disc.
If I understand correctly, the code is readable by a PC, it just isn’t writable by a CD burner. The copy protection on many (most?) protected PC games also relies on data that can be read correctly, but that a CD burner will write incorrectly.
Original PSX games have a few sectors with bad error correction/detection codes (ECC/EDC) - codes that should never occur in a valid burned CD. When the PSX checks the disc’s copy protection, it expects to find that bad ECC/EDC. Your CD burner doesn’t like writing bad sectors, so when you try to copy a PSX disc, it “corrects” the ECC/EDC in those sectors. When you try to play a copied game, the PSX doesn’t find a bad ECC/EDC, so it refuses to give up the country code - that’s where the mod chip steps in.
We are nwo getting into confusing PS and PS2 country. My understanding is that the SCEASCEJSCEE thingie was on the PSX.
It was the PS2 I was referring to regarding the initial mod chip sonly being able to play copies. Sorry, I should have been more clear. The OP was regarding the PS2 but the thread has evolved into a more general discussion of mod chips and thus required a bit of extra information that I didn’t provide.
As I understand it, Xbox has various defences against modding - eg if you use the broadband internet service, and it can detect modifications, you can’t get an account.
I haven’t modded my Xbox (wouldn’t trust my crappy techie skills 
) But it is disappointing that despite the Xbox having a big hard drive, you can’t officially install player-made game expansions, that are easily available (and legit?) for PC versions of the game. With a mod chip, you can install some of these expansions.
Correct. I don’t know a thing about the PS2’s copy protection and I can’t find much information about it. (I’ve modded my PSX, but the thought of soldering dozens of points inside my $300 PS2 turns me off.)