A court allows mod chips for Playstation 2,Business.com is sold for a record fee and San Francisco releases passwords for its wireless network. All on today’s On This Day from TestHuddle.
2002 – Mod Chips for Playstation 2 legal
In Australia, a Federal Court judge ruled that mod chips for the PlayStation do not violate copyright rules that outlaw devices that bypass copyright-protection technology. Mod chips became common for Playstation 2 as they allowed users to play games on the console from other regions such as the U.S. and Japan which would otherwise not work without the mod chip.
2007 – Business.com means business
On this day in 2007, the domain name business.com is sold for $345 million making it the most expensive domain name in history.
2008 – Government release a statement
On July 26th 2008, the District Attorney Office in San Francisco published a document that contained all passwords for the city’s FiberWAN network. The reason for this goes back to Terry Childs. As the city’s most experienced and advanced network administrator, he was almost solely responsible for building FiberWAN, a city-wide network built on fibre interconnects and MPLS, a complex network that formed the core of all city services. Following the completion of the FiberWAN, Childs applied for and was was granted a copyright for the network design as technical artistry. Childs became the sole administrator of the FiberWAN (on call 365 days a years, 24 hours a day.), and the only person with the passwords to the routers and switches that comprised the network.
Having been cautioned at work and fearing he might get fired, Terry Childs changed the passwords for the network and denied the city access to the network. He was arrested and charged with computer tampering. In releasing documents that it claimed showed Childs was a threat to others and the city network, the San Francisco D.A office released a document titled Exhibit A, which was an unredacted list of 150 VPN groupnames and password from the network. Terry Childs was sentenced to four years for the offence.
If you would like to add anything to these events, or know of other significant technology events that happened on this day in history, feel free to comment below.
Images: Wikipedia/O’Reilly Media
