The latest Xbox 360 Dashboard update didn't just make the Avatars taller and give you the ability to navigate its menus with your mind -- it also made the illicit enterprise of pirates just a little bit more difficult. According to Digital Foundry, the hardware now institutes a series of checks, which hackers refer to as "AP 2.5," that work in conjunction with "security sectors" embedded in the disc. If the checks come back negative, the player receives a "dirty disc" error and his or her console is flagged for permaban.

Pirates can hypothetically avoid these checks by not updating to the new firmware, though this will prevent them from playing on Xbox Live ... which kind of defeats the purpose of avoiding the permaban. Man, it's hard out there for a buccaneer.