While Sony is boasting about PlayStation sales breaking the 70-million barrier, the Japanese giant has suffered its first significant legal defeat in Europe. On 31 December, a court in Bolzano, Italy, ruled that the authorities' seizure a few days earlier of mod-chipped PlayStation 2s was illegal - officially landing chipped PlayStation 2s on the right side of Italian law.

The ruling could create complications for other manufacturers, notably Microsoft, which gives access to certain services - for example, Xbox Live online games - only on condition that the console's components aren't tampered with.

The Bolzano court decided that the purpose of converter chips is to "avoid monopolistic positions and improve the possibilities for use of the PlayStation". Moreover, when considering if the Italian civil code permitted a company to prohibit a specific use of one of its products, the court decided: "The response is negative; the product's owner can use it as they see fit." The court also labelled "absurd" the limits that Sony puts on its console's disc-reading ability. It noted that as well as acting as an antipiracy measure, the limits disable any homemade copies of games, restricting players to those published by the Japanese manufacturer; and that even then, only titles from the specific geographical regions unlocked on the machine will work.