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Australian High Court Rules on Meaning of Technological Protection Measure 
Posted on Thursday, October 06, 2005 - 12:00 AM

In a landmark decision said to be the first by any superior court anywhere, the High Court of Australia ruled that mod chips to circumvent regional access codes in Sony Playstations is not a circumvention device as the regional access code is not a Technological Protection Measure.

In Singapore, section 261C(10) of the Copyright Act already allows for modification devices to circumvent regional access codes to devices whose sole purpose is to control market segmentation for access to films, eg DVD players. The Australian decision appears to extend this to all regional access code devices.

The decision, Stevens v Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment [2005] HCA 58 (6 October 2005) can be found in Austlii at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2005/58.html .