Reminds me of all those guys that were arrested for selling modified modems to give speed boosts to internet subscribers. The ISPs run the same pipes to everyone's house, they then check the device you're renting and tighten the spigot.
I'm fine with this as a business necessity, but I really wish someone would pitch a service that only throttles me during peak times. I feel like we're tossing a bunch of idle capacity down the drain.
The big difference between the graphics card modification and the modification of those modems is that unlike the Internet connection, you're stealing from nobody when you modify the card.
If you're going to spend the effort to modify the card to behave as what is described in the hack, then it is really no loss to the manufacturer as they had already made a sale to you and you're forgoing your warranty in the process, so they will unlikely need to spend any further money on you.
Contrast this to a cable modem modification where you modify the uploaded file to allow for faster speeds, to the detriment of others. People who legitimately pay for those speeds you've effectively stolen could be hindered as a result. You're stealing from a service in this case.
So I don't think your comparison is fair here.
A better example would be those who have older video game consoles and are tapping into the RGB lines to produce a video signal superior to of what is offered out of the box. The manufacturer never intended for this but physically it allowed for it due to different markets or how the video was processed to begin with.
Tangent: To anyone wondering about the "RGB lines" comment, apparently it has something to do with SCART cables ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART ).
I'm fine with this as a business necessity, but I really wish someone would pitch a service that only throttles me during peak times. I feel like we're tossing a bunch of idle capacity down the drain.