Like Philip Morris telling you why smoking doesn't cause cancer or like Ford explaining how automobile transportation is superior to rail, Xbox team member Andre Vrignaud lays out the reasons why mod chips are bad in his Ozymandias blog. Sure, piracy sucks for game makers. That we know. And Vrignaud does an excellent job of explaining what mod chips and modded consoles are. In short, they enable the machines to run unauthorized content or games and enable new functions. It's his arguments against that are hard to swallow:

The desire to play import games is at least a reason I can rationally understand, but cannot condone. Sure, there are games you might want to play that are either released earlier or, quite possibly, not released at all in your region. But sometimes companies have good reasons to either not release a title into a region or release it at different dates. It may be because of the time and cost of localization, marketing plans, ad buys, cultural considerations, or perhaps even because of the impact of piracy in the region. Whatever the case, it's safe to assume the publisher has thought about it. The good news is that most publishers are developing with multiple platforms, regions, and languages in mind up front, so this is becoming less and less of an argument.

From a business point of view, he's dead on. Thing is, most gamers aren't in the gaming business. They are just gamers. To hear tisk, tisk, don't do that, companies need to remain in control, reeks of corporate stick. To his credit, Vrignaud runs his site on his own time and his own dime. But at the end of the day, he's still Microsoft. Am I interested in eventually modding my 360? Not really. Am I happy to pay for software? Sure. Do I need the company giving me reasons why modding is a no-no? Nope. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Ozymandias]