PixlBit

Regarding this whole situation, I think that in some areas it's really ridiculous how Sony is raising all of this commotion, especially how Sony was going as far as subpoenaing people involved with this hack and all the nonsense with Youtube. Plus with all of this rumored talk about with Sony data mining with what peripherals are connected to the PS3, what TV the PS3 it's connected to, and more. If all of this is true, it's quite scary thought!

We all know how fast the Wii got hacked, and while Nintendo tried to thwart it with numerous firmware updates they didn't go out like a raving lunatic like Sony has with all the lawsuits and media attention.I don't mind at all when a company tries to protect their business with ways to prevent piracy, and of course a company will do it for the best interest and this is obviously done by firmware updates since it's the most convient but irritating for us since we have to update in order to access online features for consoles. It shocked me that only Sony was the only company to use a firmware update to actually disable a feature on the "fat" PS3, and how recently in order to simply connect to PSN, I had to agree to an errata of the end user agreement for PSN which informs users that Sony can collect data from you.

While I agree with the motto of, "you paid for the device, do whatever you want with it"; it won't be the case anymore considering how crazy the EULA is for consoles if you actually bother reading it (which no one does!), and also because of how consoles and portables are becoming much more network centric each device is becoming in each generation.

If Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo don't like what you're doing on your console, they can zap that piece of homebrew software or any other unauthorized software that they don't like as they please.

I have to say, I agree with Nick on a lot of these issues. I've mentioned it quite a bit in my podcast that if you buy something, you own it. It stands to reason that I believe the software that the PS3 uses to run its interface and operations is yours to modify how you see fit, as well.

Saying all this, PSN isn't a right for owners of Playstation 3's. If Sony wants to remove the ability to access PSN from players with custom firmware, they absolutely are allowed to do so. I believe that thought process is an erroneous one, given an individual with a hacked PS3 might simply be using it to make his PS3 run h264 encoded videos he ripped from his DVDs. Still, a ban from PSN prevents hackers from legitimately purchasing DLC and downloadable games, which could directly influence a console hacker to pirate the now unavailable titles. While it's a fair move by Sony, I personally think it was a bad choice.

I have to disagree, though, about the "Try it before you buy it" idea of piracy. At this point, there's a large number of free demos up on PSN and Xbox Live. It's true this isn't the case with the Wii, but this "Try before you buy" mentality behind piracy doesn't support the developers who more progressively allow you to demo their games and software of their own volition, and could potentially limit the availability of demos in the future.

That said, I absolutely love the ability to modify saved data and use codes inside a game. It definitely allows me to get the most out of each purchase, and I don't see the harm.

A nice little point in all of this is the main hacker being sued didn't even bother hacking the PS3 until they removed the extra OS functionality of the machine.

That's right. I kind of glazed over that in all of this. Notice that the hackers didn't get their panties in a bunch until Sony removed functionality that shipped with the system.

I had always said how smart Sony was to include that ability because it would keep the hackers away from trying to break the system because they could already get Linux on it without effort.

I'm honestly starting to think that Sony is one of the most mismanaged companies in the industry.

I fully support anything Sony does to fight this. They have done nothing but push gaming forward this generation, even though it wasn't the profitable thing to do at the time. Now piracy threatens to harm the greatest game company in the world.

Fight on, Sony. When George Hotz goes to prison, I hope he gets raped by a big black man with AIDS.

That's racist.

What I find pretty interesting, is that in the case of the iPhone vs. jailbreakers, the Library of Congress ruled that bypassing a phone OS is completely acceptable under Fair Use. Given the precedent in place already, I have to imagine the same exception to the DMCA will apply. In both cases, Hotz simply gained root access to the device and published the key, which would allow others to exercise their Fair Use rights as declared by the DMCA and exempted by the Library of Congress.

It seems like everyone is quick to decry the work of these hackers because it leads to piracy and other potential problems, but the work done by Hotz is no different than his work on the iPhone. Gaining root access doesn't inherently provide the ability to pirate, it merely gives hackers of that variety a starting point.

With Sony involved in two separate cases over the same topic (both as plaintiffs and defendants) it should be interesting to see how everything plays out. Honestly, I think they are going to lose on all fronts. They've been arguing that removing the OtherOS functionality was ok because they didn't have privity with the system owners, and against Hotz, they claim they had privity which prohibits him from violating the EULA (which includes a clause regarding hacking).

Obviously you can't have it both ways, especially when (I believe) the same judge is sitting in on both trials. In my opinion, hacking a console is on shaky ground at worst, and at best, it has already been condoned as an exception to the DMCA by the Library of Congress via the iPhone jailbreaking situation. Anyway, we'll have to wait and see how the judge interprets the law, being that it's his job to do so.

My sources on the topic if anyone is interested, #1 and #2.