Exactly. Some people here don't know what the hell modding is about.

So we're saying that those consoles, which just had modded cases, were actually banned from Live?

How on earth could MS remotely tell that the *case* was different?

Surely the banned machines were firmware/hardware modded, not cosmetic modifications?

It's mikeb, everything he says is either trolling sony's market rivals or doing some marketing for sony.

your catching the flaw in everyone argument that modded consoles = pirates. It is way to easy to get a 360 game on a torrent. Only thing I can think of is that games have a special signature that when a game is installed it doesnt get transferred because it was removed when it was ripped for illegal distribution.

I know a friend of my brothers who buys pirated 360 games, and he got banned. I felt like ratting him out, but then I relaized thats not in my nature nor its my buisness. I thought *let himself get caught* and now he did; serves him right.

Yes, back in the day I did download songs and I even downloaded the occassioanl NES and Game Boy rom, but then I realized hey, I was wrong and I'm essentially stealing so I deleted my free songs and my entire 20-ish gigs of music is legal (go go iTunes and CD's).

I firmly believe modders and pirates are absolute scum but I also believe they can change and I'm cool with them if they do.

There are a few key things wrong with this paragraph:

1. I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on you're just backing games up.  It's nice you're honest about being modder but that doesn't mean I believe you for a second about just modding your console for backups.  I'm sure you could have one of those mythical 360's that breaks a disc after playing it one time, but I just really doubt it for some reason.
2. Saying you keep in your original seal means you never open it?  So that means you can sell the game back (and keep your "backup") and get full money or even if it turns out to be a collectors item you get more for it because you're immoral?  If you're a collecter that's fine, but if you buy a game to play it and then months to years down the line want to sell it or whatever, you need to buy your collectors copy and then your play copy.  Hobbies and collectors hobbies aren't cheap, deal with it.
3. This also implies that you download torrents of games.  I'm sure in your magical world of fairies and rainbows that is perfect everyone else downloads torrents for the same reason but in the real world, you are spreading that game to more people and making it more widely available.  You are part of the problem by making that game easier to get even if you do have some noble purpose in your pirating.
4. If you want to test a game do what you're supposed to do-- download the demo or rent it.  There's no reason you get to make yourself special.

Actually, you're the one missing the overall point smart guy but hey, though I guess you realize they have every right to ban people from their network.

It's not up in the air, read the terms of use.  If you don't want to risk the punishment, don't do the crime as they say.  If you just want to play your legitimate game there's absolutely no need to mod your 360 (and yes, that means your above reasons to "backup" your games is bullshit).

So you're mad you have to read a contract before you sign it?  Do you just blindly sign anything?  Anyone who mods their console knows they're doing something wrong, it's their own damn fault for not reading the ToS and modding the console.\

Why would you like to them to fail at the lawsuit? 

And all gamers will lose out by this?  No, again your missing a pretty major point, piracy destroys the games industry bit by bit so gamers win when a major blow like this has been dealt.  The people that poured years of blood, sweat, and tears (even those people at Ubisoft who you seem to hate) get to go on getting payed for their work instead of little snots playing their "backups" because they're too fucking cheap to pay for a game, or they want to stick it to da man, or they want to prove a point, or whatever other bullshit reason pirates use to justify their activity that is destroying the game industry.

Also, this article.

Nobody gets banned for modding their case, that just voids your warranty.  If someone got banned, they did more than just mod their case.

this is one case where i actually defend Microsoft. I'm not a fan, but the game industry needs to be rewarded if people play games.

I buy my nintendo and sony games because I want nintendo and sony to keep making more. I am not a huge 360 fan but pirating games means you are not supporting the people who make them. I do have a few 360 games.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Xbox 360, voiding your warranty is pretty much as bad as getting your console banned - a death sentence :\

Explain this to me, I fail to see any kind of reasoning in this.