David Rocci of isonews.com (here’s the original site and here’s a working copy) was convicting of 5 months in jail, 5 months home detention, 3 years probation and a $28,500 fine for selling mod chips for the XBox. He was found in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. (Read the full story here.)

It’s a sad day for freedom in the U.S. Essentially this fellow took a piece of circuit board, soldered on a few chips, and sold the resulting doohickey and now he’s in jail for it. Yes, I’m overly simplifying, but the fact is, he wasn’t arrested for copyright infringement or anything…just for making the device that allows end users to modify the hardware that they own. That’s just plain wrong.