Tecmo, Inc. has filed a law suit against two people, charging them with violations of U.S. copyright law and the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

What did they do? They created custom skins and mods for a few of Tecmo’s game titles on XBox by decompiling the code for games like Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive 3, then distributed the skins and mods for free over the internet.

The skins gave characters an appearance that was not like the ones built into the game by Tecmo. Several of the skins were design to make characters appear naked!

According to one Tecmo representative:

The harm isn’t just to the wholesome values of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, hinted Tecmo spokesperson Melody Pfeiffer. There’s a principle at stake. “Hackers, if they’re allowed to do this kind of thing, will be allowed to hack into any game, anywhere,” Pfeiffer warns. “We spent millions of dollars to develop these games, and people are coming in and changing the code to their liking, and that’s illegal.”

Nevermind that the two men charged in the lawsuit actually bought the game.

Jason Schultz, an attorney with the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, couldn’t disagree more. “This complaint is absurd,” said Schultz. “The law allows for fair use of other people’s copyrighted works without any permission needed, and one of the key things that you’re allowed to do is make copies in order to reverse engineer and understand how they work.”

This will definitely be an interesting case to watch.

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