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Connectix Wins Sony Playstation Appeal
In one of the many submissions concerning the recent Connectix victory: Enosson writes, "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the lower court injunction prohibiting Connectix from selling Virtual Game Station or using the Sony BIOS in developing new versions of it. The decision says that its use of the copyrighted BIOS in reverse engineering was "fair use," and that any "shoddiness" in the VGS product did not tarnish Sony's PlayStation trademark. The full text of the decision is available." There is also, as you would expect, mention of the ruling on the Connectix site as well.
i *heart* my ps. can't wait for ps2
Given the quality I saw out of bleem! I wouldn't mind if they got off their collective butts and got to work. It was pretty pathetic, even with a Voodoo3 card (Glide is the only supported 3d option). On the other hand, I played all the way through Final Fantasy VII (about 100 hours) on my Virtual Game Station-equipped Mac with nary a hitch. It was pretty impressive, even with the occasional graphics remnants and the lackluster sound. If bleem! wants to survive, I suggest they fix their product. -Rg
[14] The district court found that"[t]o the extent that such a substitution [of Connectix's Virtual Game Station for Sony PlayStation console] occurs, Sony will lose console sales and profits." Order at 19. We recognize that this may be so. But because the Virtual Game Station is transformative, and does not merely supplant the PlayStation console, the Virtual Game Station is a legitimate competitor in the market for plat- forms on which Sony and Sony-licensed games can be played. See Sega, 977 F.2d at 1522-23. For this reason, some eco- nomic loss by Sony as a result of this competition does not compel a finding of no fair use. Sony understandably seeks control over the market for devices that play games Sony pro-duces or licenses. The copyright law, however, does not con-fer such a monopoly. See id. at 1523-24 ("[A]n attempt to monopolize the market by making it impossible for others to compete runs counter to the statutory purpose of promoting creative expression and cannot constitute a strong equitable basis for resisting the invocation of the fair use doctrine."). This factor favors Connectix. (The emphasis is mine, and not part of the original text)
Everyone keeps saying "I hope the DeCSS case turns out this way." IANAL, but the above segment seems to be just the sort of concrete legal precedent to bring that about. Just replace "Sony" with "The MPAA (and those who control the DVD platform)", replace "Virtual Game Station" with "DeCSS-based DVD software on the Linux platform", etc... and presto, instant legal precedent for fair use in reverse-engineering a closed standard for purposes of making a competing platform for playing that standard.
Or does the fact that PSX games are software and DVD's are strictly media content keep this ruling from being used in this way?
Agreed. If you the java applet is running, netscape will eventually lock up and all you can do is kill -9 it. Java ads suck. Time for a new line in my junkbuster killfile. If this is the sort of immature behaviour that Slashdot will allow their advertisers to engage in, they don't deserve advertising revenue from this, and we should filter out the ads.
People seem to see a resemblance betwix the DeCSS and this Sony case. However there is something a little different. Now I'm not saying SONY is in the right however they have one other concern that the MPAA does not If DeCSS is allowed then people with OSs, other than MS and Apple, will beable to watch thier legaly bought and paid for DVDs on thier OS of choice As well IF PS emulators are allowed then Individuals can play there legal copies of PS games on other platforms besides the PS However, The thing SONY would really be concerned about is the fact that Developers could develope GAMES that do NOT have to be liscenced by SONY. Becuase they could be written for the Emulator Now as it stands most consoles lose money on hardware sony is no exception, they really couldn't give a shit if you buy there console. But what they do care about is that this opens the door for you not to have to BUY their software and for developers not to have to buy a licsence And if it runs on the emulator then it could probably run on the console and SONY is out the money
PS had tried to stop people from copying and using discs illegally. It didn't work. Their method of bad sectors worked until the mod chip came into play. But looking at it from their standpoint, they are out to make money and people writing programs that allows people to run games without buying the console is bad business...for nothing else this lawsuit is something they absolutely had to do. They've learned their lesson, I'm sure PS 2 will have some wierd copy protection that will still probably only take a matter of time to figure out!
Exactly They make money off the software
They make money off of each title that is sold
and off of developer licsence
with a functioning emulator
software can be written that SONY does not get a chunk of
And that is what it is about.
You people are so lame. Does this crap constitute your lives? Sheesh. I bet 90% of you never slept with a man before! And 70% of you probably have never even kissed a boy!
Get a life.
They make money in two places
Each software title that is sold
and each developer liscence that is issued
What pisses SONY off is with a emulator
software could be written that they do not get a piece of
Developers could write without a SONY liscense and the software
could be sold without SONY getting its piece of the pie
>>PS had tried to stop people from copying and using discs illegally
"PS"? You mean Sony? Ok, I rarely comment, but I wish folks would use actual company names, it's irritating to read "MAC did this" or "WINDOWS should have released Win98 earlier", etc.
Ok, I'm done now.
1) Not a single pair of breasts has been modded down
2) Therefore if people want to avoid this, they need to surf at +1
2) If that happens, annon posting is made irrelivent.
I do not belive you have taken the time to consider the results of your actions.
I did not mean to say "man" or "boy". I apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended or any confusion I may have caused. The words that I in fact intended to use are "horse" and "donkey", respectively. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion.
It is a piece of crap. Got it, and regret it. JUNK.
Sony does make a /lot/ more money of the games than they do the hardware. But the Connectix product doesn't (and _can't_) emulate the copy protection, so people with the emulator can play pirate copies. Sony + the game developer + the retailer lose money from that.
This isn't such an issue for say, a Spectrum or C64 emulator - the companies that made those games/hardware aren't around anymore. But Sony is still selling PlayStations and PlayStation games (there are 70 million PS consoles out there!).
One problem.
It's well known (well, at least in my field) that Sony doesn't make any money on the sales of their hardware. In fact they have, on several occasions, sold it at a loss.
Sony primarily makes their money from the sales of games. For each game sold Sony gets a set licensing fee (actual fee is usually negotiated on a per-game basis).
Beyond that you have the money made from developers. Developers have to both pay for a license, pay for certification testing, and, last but certainly not least, pay for development tools (which are unreasonably priced compared to their competitors).
Therefore by you purchasing emulator X and a bunch of games to play, there's a fair chance of Sony actually making more money than if you had bought an actual unit. Worst case? It's a push.
What pisses me off is that no one has bothered to visit the person who wants to deny us free speech. To that person, its just a game.
Dopey question: Can't you turn off Java? How about Javascript?
Dohh!! Then you can't access half the sites on the Web!
Actually your wrong on a few points though the genral feeling of the post is correct....
There is a Modchip+Region unlock of CVGS 1.2 and it does work quite well. The other point is that piracy does not require high bandwith as you can rent a copy of a playstation game from blockbuster and take it home and copy it.... This is actually much easier than news groups, IRC or hotline as you get a KNOWN GOOD Origional disk, time to play it and to look at the game manual. You do not get obscured disk image formats or bad copies.
That said you can also go for not being a pirate because with renting you can usually beat the game before you have to return it, and renewing is only nominally more expensive than the CD Media.
I wouldn't exactly consider this trick "little known"... at least not anymore anyway.
Five minutes of searching from the moment I read your post and google yield a whole series of hits... Hell, this information doesn't even remotely apply to me, I just like to find out things I'm not supposed to know... ;)
Looks like no one cares what you think, mayonaise.
Anyway, there are to many fucked up things in this world for me to worry about the 'ethics' of copying the software of multi-billion dollar software companies. Is it wrong? maybe, does it matter? no.
Yeah, It also kills Netscape/Mozilla on Linux.
Sony has been harming the consumer by barring a software company from upgrading its product for better compatibility. (Definitely the same could be said in regard to the MPAA and multi-region ability in DVD players, software-based & hardware.)
Somebody suggested we sue the MPAA but nobody could come up with a good reason. Well, me laddo, you just did. Anybody interested in a class action suit against the DVDCCA for harming consumers?
Considering the "reverse engineering" cases that I have heard about (or at least threats of legal action), I get the feeling that the defination of "fair use" can be bent and twisted based on how much money your willing to put into a legal defense team. It is easy for a CEO with the legal resources of Connectix to say "the court has recognized that reverse engineering is a common, legitimate, and valuable development practice, protected under law." But would StarHack have been able to defense it's traffic monitoring (is that even "reverse engineering"??) against Blizzard? How would the case have panned out if it was Playstation 2 that was being cloned and the BIOS contained CSS code? Would the courts still recognize reverse engineering as legitimate or talk about immediate imprisonment like they did with 2600. Can anyone explain what, other than $money$, makes reverse engineering Playstation 1 BIOS legitimate but the results of CSS reverse engineering to be a criminal act? Is it that Sony failed to prove trade secrets and the CCA can? At what point is reverse engineering protected under law and at what point is it criminal? I don't see this case as proving the courts as seeing reverse engineering as black-and-white as the Connectix CEO does.
Hawk wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need some,
see a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Man! I need some legal advice and I need it bad!
I had Natalie Portman over fod dinner the night before last. We had drinks and things got pretty wild. <P>
When I woke up yesterday she was completely turned to stone! She naked and in a very inviting position. I have to admit I never knew I could have that much fun with marble!<P>
Last night I invited Tyra Banks and Sarah M. Gellar over. When I showed them my statue they started making this big fuss about how illegal it was to turn people into stone! Can you believe it? <P>
Anyway, now that I've pertrified them I'm having second thoughts. What do you think the 9th circuit think of this? Have I done something wrong?
Actually the hack was released the same week that the version 1.0 CDR sold at Macworld was released. The swap trick came out first. Then there were region mods for playing UK games then the full blown mod for playing everything.
Way back when, in the olden days.. ;)
Coleco was sued by Atari for releasing the Expansion Module #2 for the ColecoVision... better known as the Atari 2600 adapter.
Atari got rather upset with Coleco, and naturally sued. They were unable to prevent Coleco from shipping the thing, but they WERE able to get around $6 million in damages if memory serves me. The reason cited was because Coleco had reverse engineered a couple of the custom chips that Atari used in the VCS (aka 2600).
That being said, I see no difference between that case and this one. Only this time, the judge is letting the "bad guys" (and I really think that they are the bad guys) get away with it. Usually in NDAs for software development systems and end-user licenses there are clauses which state something to the effect of "you may not reverse engineer this product." Just on that merit, I would think that they broke the license agreement, let alone stealing technology.
Now for the monetary implications. Think about it. The Playstation retails for just under $100 now. Along comes upstart Connectix, offering all of those PC and Mac owners a chance to play Playstation games on their existing hardware for about half the cost of the real playstation. Money that Sony gets off the Playstation consoles now is likely to be just gravy now, since no real development on the PS1 hardware has taken place in a few years. This cuts into Sony's pocketbook.
I don't agree with the judge ruling that Connectix reverse engineering of the PS1's BIOS (admittedly from a Playstation that Connectix engineers bought) constitutes "fair use" since I believe such things are expressly forbidden in the user license. I think that this ruling sets a terrible legal precedent for reverse engineering.
From what I remember, Connectix actually *copied* the PSX BIOS from a unit, and placed the image, intact, into CVGS. That's not reverse engineering, that's blatant piracy, and so I have to side with Sony on this one, but only about the BIOS, not about the emulation... :S
:)
Bleem and DeCSS are different, however. Instead of copying working software from the original source, the *function* of the code in each case was duplicated (i.e. reverse engineered) and so there is no copyrighted Sony/DVD consortium code anywhere in either product. Therefore I support Bleem/DeCSS wholeheartedly.
I'll support CVGS just as much if Connectix write a replacement BIOS image that doesn't copy code directly from a real PSX. Or if someone tells me I'm completely misinformed and Connectix did that from the beginning.
It's actually about a big company trying to control there creations. They spent the money developing the platform, shouldn't they be allowed to reap the benefits on their own terms. If you don't like their terms, don't use the product. Maybe I'm missing something here but I don't see how SONY are the bad guys.
If reverse engineering of a BIOS to allow playback of computer programs is legal, why isn't the reverse engineering of an encryption scheme to play back visual media? Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Sounds like a double-standard to me. Hopefully the DeCSS folks can find some interesting way of using this to their advantage...
I assume the EFF is, at this very moment, submiting the appropriate paperwork to inform the court of this development.
Although you're probably right, please never assume when it comes to something this important. Instead, make sure by informing their legal dept of this. Other contact info is available here.
- > (and no, I won't say what it is)
Ah, yes... Security through obscurity. Gotta love that <g>.Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
... their own emulator.
... this would dilute the feature set of the PSX2 a little, marketing-wise, and thus detract from the launch.
After all, isn't it true that Sony make all of their profits from the Playstation empire from sales of the games, not the consoles? That in fact, the consoles themselves don't make *any* profit?
That sounds like software, to me... seems they'd have to be a pretty damned stupid company to not release their own PSX emulator.
Oh, wait. I just thought of a reason why they wouldn't release an emulator for the PSX: PSX2.
Since the PSX2 is supposed to be fully compatible with the PSX game titles, it would be a poor marketing move to release a software-PSX right around the time of the PSX2 release
Bummer for Sony. Too bad they didn't think of doing the software-PSX thing a year ago, but then that's the breaks in the high tech world, and I guess they were already raking it in anyway with the game title profits...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need some,
.).
see a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.
You are pretty much correct here, but let me extend and comment a bit.
The ninth circuit is indeed the most often reversed, but that tends
to be because of "lefty" decisions where ideology prevailed over the law.
Criminal cases in particular, when judges confuse the rights of the
accused and general population with the rights of criminals.
THis is a technical case, and of a type that the 9th gets a disproportionate
share. It has more experince with this type of case than most of the
otehr circutes, and the case doesn't fall into the categories that give
the 9th its bad reputation (I won't name names, but there's a judge known
as "Judge Certiori" for the near automatic review . .
The decision might also be classified as "pro-commerce," taking it
far out of the type of cases that tend to be reviewd.
As far as the weight outside of the 9th, it's not as dismal as you
paint it. The decision is not *binding* precedent outside of the
9th circuit, but it is *persuasive* evidence. That is, a a federal
judge in another circuit *can* decide it's wrong, but will not do so
lightly.
Finally, the Supreme Court, when possible, waits until conflicting
opinions arise between the circuits before it hears an issue. It is
unlikely to hear this case.
hawk, esq.
These are two different cases. Under the DMCA you're allowed to reverse engineer software for interoperability purposes.
However, the judge in the MPAA case has made it explicitly clear that breaking the CSS encryption was about reverse engineering a -protection mechanism-, not software, and that there are many legal precidents that limit reverse engineering in this regard.
I don't agree completely with the judge's interpretation of the "reverse engineering" clause, but IANAL and we'll have to see how the defense handles it.
For now, I believe that the DMCA isn't going anywhere, and it's a legal long shot to apply the "reverse engineering" clause to the DeCSS case.
-Stu
It can be argued that reverse engineering can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Why go to the trouble to put the R&D budget into innovating something if other people are going to legally reverse-engineer it and sell a workalike for a fraction of the cost, since it's much cheaper to copy than to create?
There are interesting cross-overs here, such as the legality of reverse-engineering (and that even using a commercial product to do that... and the Playstation manual says you are not allowed to reverse engineer it). Likewise, there's a bit about Sony's desire to control all Playstation-capable devices, but that was not protected by copyright.
Looks to me (IANAL) like there could be interesting precedent in this decision for the EFF in their fight to protect the rights of the DeCSS posters. (This should be applicable as it's the same Circuit as the MPAA case so should be usable as precedent.)
Comments from those who are lawyers?
The VGS swap trick isn't one people should be trying, because it has the potential to damage your CD-ROM drive. I'm not saying what it is, not fur security through obscutiry's sake (read my posting history and you'll know I'm against that myth) but because it's dangerous, and not something people should try. And you know that everyone with VGS is going to want to try this one, whether or not they want to actually pirate or not.
You're forgetting that as manufacturing costs dropped, the retail price of the PSX also dropped. It had to, just to stay competitive.
Translation: Sony's still taking a loss on the hardware. They probably will with the PSX2, too.
While, strictly speaking, the Connectix product enables users to play their PlayStation back-ups on their G3, we all know that this is not primarily the use to which it will be put.
Actually, Connectix has been extremely conscientious about antipiracy measures. A "modchip patch" exists for Version 1.0 of the software (which sucked compared to later versions) but no such patch exists for later versions of the software. I'm not even certain it can be done.
Also notable is that CVGS cannot use disk images; you must use CD's. This kills most pirates right there. Those who do have burners are harder to stop, but someone who really wants to pirate software is, simply put, going to do it; you can't stop those people. It's no easier with VGS than a "real" PSX.
Yes, there's still a VERY little-known disk-swap trick (and no, I won't say what it is) that you can do with VGS. You can also do this on a regular PSX, so there's no difference.
So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal.
I think you mean "principle." Last I checked there were no school directors involved here.
But you're wrong about one thing. Sony takes a loss on every console it sells. A rather substantial one at that. This is made up for by game sales, yes. But for every copy of VGS sold, Sony saves money. As much as it makes from more than ten individual non-Sony PSX games, or four Sony-made ones. In other words, each person has to do a lot of pirating before Sony takes a loss. It still earns its justified profits before them.
A quick cruise of Hotline or IRC shows the reality.
Yeah. So you should look at it yourself. PSX games are actually quite hard to get on Hotline or IRC. The process often involves bounces all over the Web, signing oneself up for porn lists and/or ad companies, finding passwords, and downloading obscenely huge files which still take hours to download over even the fastest connections. Of course you might be lucky enough to find a "free" server. In this case each image will take days, as the overwhelming traffic will slow the server to a crawl. These servers don't tend to carry many images (few sites do because of space demands) so you'll be bouncing back and forth between servers, repeating the process multiple times to get all the images you wanted. Oh, and since most PSX backup sites don't actually carry the emulators, once you have the images you need you have to go through the process again to find the emulator, and probably several more times to find a patch that works. And then, of course, the game still has to work with the emu.
My point: this isn't what you're making it out to be. Not at all.
I'm pro reverse engineering, but here is my take on why Sony would be against emulation even if they actually lose money on each box of hardware sold.
1) Due diligence: Sony is a public company so it has a legal obligation to look out for the well being of its investors. Most investors would look at the possibility of a third party developing a work alike solution as a potential for harm. If the stock price were to plummet, even if the actual reason wasn't directly related, investors could go for a class action law suit claiming Sony didn't adhere to due dilligence guidelines.
2) Control: If you can reverse engineer the ROMs in the PlayStation you could probably also reverse engineer a fairly open development environment. Sony is pretty strict about who gets to develop a PlayStation game and who doesn't. This could result in the loss of that control.
3) It's what we've always done!: It's hard for large companies to change with the times. We've seen reported before on Slashdot even with companies that have good intentions such as the various license agreement rumblings or seemingly insane actions by corporate lawyers which are later nullified. Sony hasn't tried to be a nice company, its tried its hardest to destroy its competition so this is even more true here.
4) Piracy: This one will always be present, not everybody plays nice and pays for what they use and from Sony's point of view things like VGS are a weak point in that regard. This in spite of the fact that Connectix has tried hard to make piracy difficult (which is all you EVER can do)
Please check your facts. Connectix tries very hard to prevent piracy but other people have patches available that get around this. You can also purchase 'upgrades' for your PlayStation that will do the same thing.
They're kind of a mush-like concoction favored as a breakfast food in the southern United States. I think it's related to hominy, but I'm not exactly sure.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Considering Sony make virtually no direct money out of console hardware, you do have to question their sanity. Surely spreading the platform would increase their sales. They make no money out of PC versions, yet make ~$8 per disc out of PSX versions being played in an emulator on a PC.
:)
Dumb suits, lose money, get fired. With any luck
Okay, I know this is totally offtopic and a waste of karma, but I agree...at least on the mac, that Java banner wreaks hell on Netscape, confuses the pointer, etc..
Grr.
Driph
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
--
driph
The DMCA, as I understand it, eliminates a lot of reverse engineering, but this Connectix thing happened before it came into effect. I personally think the DMCA has a good chance of eventually being thrown out as unconstitutional, but until then, it will make a mess.
--
Infuriate left and right
In my windows machine I get to drive a car and avoid IT questions,..slowly,..and just in the driveway. Dad let's me drive slow, in the driveway. Time for Judge Wapner, and The People Court,.dum dum dumd um,. The Peoples Court.
Who's on first?
My studio - www.graylands.ca
I got my old Atari and Combat.
I'm happy.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
This is extremely good for the DeCSS case. Notice:
Precisely the same reason for going to court.
Fill in the blank. A precedent has been set. We're going to win this one.
What are grits, anyway???
--
" It's a ligne Maginot-in-the-sky "
"The court has recognized that reverse engineering is a common, legitimate, and valuable development practice, protected under law,"
Justice, what you get in courts depends on how much you pay.
and the RIAA has more money, so this ruling will have NO impact on deCSS.
and people wonder why federal buildings get bombed by crazed individuals... our courts create those crazed individuals.
you have GOT to love this country.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Copyrighted software ordinarily contains both copyrighted and unprotected or functional elements. Sega Enters. Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, 1520 (9th Cir. 1993) (amended opinion); see 17 U.S.C. S 102(b) (Copyright protection does not extend to any "idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery" embodied in the copyrighted work.). Software engineers designing a product that must be compatible with a copyrighted product frequently must "reverse engineer" the copyrighted product to gain access to the functional elements of the copyrighted product. See Andrew Johnson-Laird, Software Reverse Engineering in the Real World, 19 U. Dayton L. Rev. 843, 845-46 (1994).
This spells "kiss my ass" to the DVDCA.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The original 1.0 version of Virtual Playstation did indeed play pirated games which real Playstations didn't play. I think that's what initially irked Sony the most. Shortly thereafter, Connectix issued a patch that stopped that.
But for the short while, VPS definetly stood to increase game piracy.
The DMCA is vague. On one hand, it bans cracking for piracy, but it allows cracking for compatibility.
So, what happens when someone publishes something that allows both (as DeCSS does)? I bet the courts will have to look back, before DMCA, to settle it.
Hawk,
:-) That's a very good point, and does make the picture seem even brighter.
The whole "technical" aspect never occurred to me... Perhaps because I'm not a lawyer.
Hopefully some moderators will give your comment some +'s.
I guess the 9th would see a larger-than-normal number of such cases, thanks in part to a certain region, in northern California... and the Supremes would certainly give more trust to the 9th's experience in technical issues, since seeing so many technical disputes would have to increase one's knowlege of such matters.
Good News: This is the 9th Circuit, so any applicable precedent this sets, would probably be usable in the DeCSS suit (as that suit was filed in California).
Bad News: 9th Circuit decisions are only useful in the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit includes a selection of Western states. While the 9th is the largest, its decisions carry no official weight in the other 8 Court of Appeals jurisdictions.
Really Bad News: The 9th Circuit, in recent years, has been the most liberal, and therefore the most overturned, by the Supreme Court. So, if Sony can get the Supreme Court to accept an appeal, then it just might go Sony's way, after all.
Good News: The Rehnquist Court doesn't accept many cases these days. The 9th circuit's decision will probably stand.
I have a Powerbook G3, I also happen to have a Playstation and a couple games I like to play. My brother plays on the Playstation much more than I do because I'm at school most of the freakin day. I've been waiting for this lawsuit to pan out so I wouldn't buy a product with an injuction on it. But not I probably will end up getting a copy, being able to play my favourite PSX games on the run with my laptop will be a really nice change. I'll finally get the chance to enter the time condensed realm and beat the damn game. I can see the point of Sony's case but I don't think it holds water especially since Connectix isn't doing or suggesting anything illegal. If Sony were smart they would have already released their own PSX emulator for the PC and Mac. When PSX was released it kicked the pants out of all the computers out at the time but the way we work with PC hardware the PSX was so longer cutting edge. The same will happen to the PSX2, PC hardware will eventually catch up and surpass it. If Sony had released a software emulator a year or so ago they could have made a killing, not only do they have every single little spec on the PSX but they also had a user base of millions of people. Bottom line, development would be nearly free which means the price of the program would be all gravy.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Disclaimer: Not only am I not a lawyer, I can't even think of a lawyer who would willingly admit knowing me.
/.ers are liberal when it comes to information and intellectual property - but, I think, no moreso than the founding fathers of the USA. The purpose of intellectual property law is NOT to give giant corporations (or companies of any size) absolute control over their intellectual output, and never has been. The Patent and Trademark Office was created for the purpose of giving the little guys - individual inventors and authors - incentive to share their creations with the rest of the world by assuring them that unscrupulous competitors wouldn't flat-out copy them and steal all the profits without incurring any R&D expenses. There is nothing in there about using IP law to keep information - inventions or artistic works - secret. The whole idea is to encourage sharing and openness and to foster competition that benefits the consumer. The fundamental principle is that consumers benefit by giving the inventor *limited* protections, specifically from outright plagiarism.
I think there are two issues at stake here. The first one is a technicality of patent law. US patent law (thank goodness) still at least pretends to state that you may not patent an idea, only an implementation. This leaves open the possibility of inventing a better mousetrap. Maybe you don't think an inventor should be allowed to replace the coiled spring on a mousetrap with a leaf spring and patent and sell it; I (and the US gov't) do. The right to invent a better way of doing the same thing is fundamental to US IP law.
Another issue at stake is that of interpretation of data. On the one hand, you cannot patent a "language", nor you attempt to prevent anyone else from making an invention that "reads" your language. In other words, you may not use the format of your data as a barrier to competition.
On the other hand is the notion that when you purchase a piece of dead tree containing a copyrighted work, you are able to do whatever you want with that hunk of inert cellulose. You can read it in the living room, you can read it in the dining room. You can give it to a friend. You can throw it away unopened or reread it a thousand times. You can read a book written in a foreign language. You can read it through a magnifying glass. You can give it to a robot and have the robot read it out loud to you. Your friend can read it to you. That one copy is yours alone, to do with whatever you want except distribute copies. There are absolutely no restrictions on when or how you read your book.
Tell me why a CD should be any different. No corporation has any business whatsoever telling me how I may or may not read a book I purchased at a bookstore, listen to a CD from a music store, or eat a sandwich from the deli. I bought it. It's mine and mine alone. My DVDs, Playstation disks, and computer CD-ROMs are no different.
Now let's address the ethical issue. Yes,
The idea of anyone at all - let alone a giga-corp - trying to use IP law to enforce secrecy, restrict information, hinder competition, disenfranchise and nullify the rights of consumers, and speculatively stake out vast expanses of uncharted intellectual space like the greedy companies that founded the American colonies did... not only is this idea abhorrent to those of us who love freedom, it is also against the letter and spirit of US intellectual property law, and we hate scofflaws.
Nobody should be forced to publish their data format (e.g., encryption algorithm). Nobody should be allowed to act in any way to punish or harrass anyone who figures out how to read it once they've lawfully bought it. Period. Even (especially, perhaps) a market competitor. That's my opinion, feel free to disagree.
1523-24 ("[A]n attempt to monopolize the market by making it impossible for others to compete runs counter to the statutory purpose of promoting
creative expression and cannot constitute a strong equitable basis for resisting the invocation of the fair use doctrine.").
It's cheaper to get a modded PSX to play pirate games than to get the buy a Mac of sufficient power + VGS to play a pirate game; I don't think the reverse engineering effort changed the landscape *except* to broaden the user base, make the pie bigger, so to speak, for the market of PSX games!
Here's the logic:
Without VGS we can already pirate PSX games via Hotline or IRC, burn them, and play them on modded PSXs. Reverse engineering has nothing to do with this situation, because VGS doesn't exist.
With VGS, and the ability to reverse engineer, we can now play PSX games on the Mac(and maybe PC). It enables the user to play a PSX game on the Mac/PC. Whether the game itself is pirate or not is another question; but if even 1/10 of the buyers of Bleem or VGS buy PSX games, than that's more sales to Sony than would otherwise occur; how does this hurt Sony?
As for whether reverse engineering promotes piracy, I don't see how this reasonably or logically(two different threads) falls out of the system.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I'm not sure you make good sense here =)
You buy a console from Sony; they make their money (let's say the market is 10,000 people; at $50 profit a console, they will make $500k)
Sony has now licensed the schematics and libraries and tools for this console to 10 game manufacturers, at $40k each; just to be stupid, let's say they only get $10,000 out of each licensee as profit; that's another $100k for Sony.
Each licensee makes 10 games; each consumer buys 2 games from 3 licensees during the lifetime of the system, at $50 each; 10,000 consumers then buy 6 games; 60,000 games at $50 each is $3,000k right off the bat; if each game only gives $10 profit to Sony and $10 to the licensee, then Sony has made $600k from hardware sales and such, and $600k from the games, while the licensees have each made $560k.
Now, lets say a company makes a clone/emulator/whatever.
A few cases for good measure:
Consumer owns both Sony PSX + Emulator
Consumer owns PSX only
Consumer owns Emulator only
We already show that Sony makes money if the only device on the market were PSXs. A good $1,200k. If there exists an emulator only, should we assume the same profit level, because it would/should/could be a perfect substitute?
So what happens when we get both PSXs and emulators? If the market doubles in size because there is no overlap, and the nature of the consumer stays roughly the same, statistically, doesn't Sony make, instead of $1,200k, $1,800k? And in the case where there is overlap, Sony of course makes less money than $1,800k; lets say that of the consumer market, 1 out of 10 people who own a PSX compatible system own an emulator; That means only 1,111 people own emulators but not a PSX. If they follow similar gaming habits, and buy 6 games each, that means Sony gets an additional $67k a year from them... Which doesn't hurt Sony at all!
And if there is signficantly more people buying the emulator, say 3 out of 10 people who play PSX games... 4,286 buyers, or 25,714 more games, or $257k more profit for Sony... So the more systems out there, it seems, the more money Sony can make. Why doe this hurt them, except that it may slow down the adoption of the PSX2?
And don't forget, if you took that last statement seriously, that the PSX2 outclasses most notebooks, PCs, and Macs, so adopters of the PSX2 would not be substituting it with PCs or Macs in the first place!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
It's scads easier to reverse engineer Connectix's software to create, say, a GPLed Linux/BeOS/whatever version of the PSX than it is to actually reverse engineer a PSX itself...
So when you do you think this will happen, and will Connectix just sit idly by as it happens? And will Sony actually encourage a 'free' version, if it were to pop out, to spite Connectix, especially as their PSX2 rapidly approaches ground zero?
Essentially/especially since after the next reverse engineering session, it will be porting of PSX from platform to platform, much the same way MAME or Ataris or Commodore 64s or Apple IIs have been emulated for years now?
Just a random thought =)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Um, developers can already sidestep Sony, if they wish, and make PC/Mac games, with better graphics, already, without the emulator. The emulator doesn't make the sales of a console less likely, because the console itself offers a different set of advantages than a PC; simplicity, compactness, and guarantee of operation(to a point) and this is true for both the consumer and the developer.
The emulator itself affects none of those points, and just increases the options available for the consumer who don't necessarily value the above three values of a console, else they would buy a console, I think.
To address your points more succintly:
<em>Anyway, this is clearly not about short term financial profits, but future control.</em>
Obviously; I don't disagree this is why Sony objects to CVGS.
<em>If no one were to buy playstations anymore, because they can play the games on there computers, the PSX would becomes irrelevant.</em>
Are you suggesting that the CVGS and emulators will be replacing the PSX, making the PSX irrelevant? The PSX2 would replace the PSX as well, making it irrelevant. Even so, this brings up a question; Why would people stop buying PSXs with the advent of the emulator? A PSX is still cheaper, simpler, and easier to use than a PC/Mac + emulator.
<em>Game companies could sidestep the middleman and just make PC/Mac games. With better graphics to boot.</em>
They can already do this; the presence or lack of an emulator does not prevent them for designing for the PC; the console is just a simpler platform(stable and consistent) to design and release for than a PC or Mac. About the only threat I can really acknowledge and think of is that if the PSX got reverse engineered, then people could start writing games to the console platform and emulator *without* licensing from Sony, diminishing the overall quality perhaps, or profits/royalties to Sony, whatever. But this is only a threat from the Open Source people anyway =)
<em>Without the emulator, Sony controls the market absolutely. With it, they do not.</em>
This I grant. As far as their plans and future, control of the market makes it easier for them to forcast, predict, and rake in profit.
But isn't this an argument about the consumer's rights as well? That we should be able to play the game on an alternative platform if it's available? Isn't this the same argument as DeCSS?
On the corporate side, it's about control, and on the consumer side, it's about freedom. Balancing the two is pretty difficult, I guess.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
There have been some evocative counter-posts about how the emulator hurts Sony from a control standpoint, and this is true. An emulator will be a point of control *not* under Sony's thumb, of it's released by Connectix or something.
The point I'm making though is that as a consumer, I don't care about Sony's control of the market, except if it's hurting me, and only if it actually is a benefit to me. Sure, sucks for Sony, but isn't that what innovation and competition is about? If Sony wants control, using legal tactics and such isn't the best way. Good products, good PR, good technolgy, good sales is the way, no?
Otherwise, isn't it the same argument for why M$ has done nothing wrong? It just wanted control of the market and it's various directions! Consumers have rights too, and corporations making money, no matter how many lobbiests(sp?) or lawyers they have, do not have more fundamental right than the consumer or individual; both are entities under the law, and have some set of rights.
Monopolies are not one of them, except perhaps earned through good business, and even then, if you get *too* good, the DOJ can give you a visit.
2 cents.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
By the way, I think that major sections of the DCMA are going to get slammed by the courts, because AFAICT there is no way to enforce some of the provisions without violating enough Constitutional rights that the ACLU and others would just sit back and ignore it. I just hope that the 9th Circuit's decision is the first sign that the the DCMA wall is coing to crumble as completely as the one in Berlin did 11 yrs ago.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
So as a programmer, my feeling is now this -- the war is over, (which is where I would have personally drawn the ethics line anyway) use the DeCSS code to make players, but don't even bother to extend the code into making it copy the DVD's, even if it's relatively easy to do.
That keeps us off the hook in terms of the piracy claim, and really puts the onus back on the MPAA to focus on what is really piracy -- and go after those folks, which is what they should have done anyway, rather than attacking the code itself.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
My question is: where is the line drawn? What protection should companies (or individual software vendors) have with their intellectual property? Should every media format be forced to be public, or just allow it to be "figured out" by whomever wants to?
-davek
LSDVD developer
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Yes, which is why there are things like invention patents, design patents, and copyrights. (For example, circuit board layouts can by copyrighted).
Intellectual property infringement by direct copying or patent infringement is still actionable, but coming up with a different way of accomplishing the same thing by reverse engineering should be allowed -- it helps advance the state of the art, which is why (in the US at least) patents and copyrights exist anyway.
-- Alastair
> So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal.
You might be surprised to learn that a sizable fraction of the species homo sapiens thinks that judges should set principles above profits, as should legislators, lawyers, corporate executives, employees, consumers, etc.
Moreover, not all of us think corporations are endowed by their Creators with any Inalienable Rights, such as Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of Profit. Corporations are a creation of a legal system, and don't hold an Inalienable Entitlement to anything that that legal system doesn't grant them.
If you don't like the rules the legal system offers Sony, you need to get out among the DVD protesters and make your voice heard in the opposite direction. (Appealing to some higher principle that sets aside 'principals' doesn't cut it!)
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's not the applet that sucks, just your browser. Your browser doesn't handle simple java applets very well. I admit that it is a bit strange to advertise with a java applet on a site visited by users of the buggy netscape browser but at least put the blame for the crash on the right party: netscape.
Jilles
This seems to be a reason for emulation.
Issue #2- The Hardware: It is not known that Sony loses any money on the consoles (atleast it's doubtful they do anymore). While Sony would never say for sure, at the beginning, they probably took a hit on the console to get it out the door. Especially with all the problems/revisions they've had. Now, after such a long prouction, they are likely making a decent profit off every unit.
This seems to be a reason against emulation.
So we have a couple of puny reasons, some would to point for, and some against Sony wanting this emulation software. But what are we overlooking?
Issue #3- Control and The Future: This is the one everybody is missing. Look at the PSX2, people. This isn't just a gaming console, there are a lot of expansion possibilities on this baby. They don't want to make a PCI version to play its games with your PC. They want you to hook it up to your Sony TV through your Sony VCR and have all the Sony branded media stream right on through. The CVGS and Bleem! set a bad precedent for them losing control of a major part of this process. Big companies like control. It makes them feel good to have you buy all of the Sony add-on USB controllers and hook up your Sony digicam to the Firewire port. Noone knows exactly where Sony wants to take the PSX2. But they are holding the keys. (unintentional Matrix reference) And the PSX2 is going to be a very powerful machine which a wide variety of people (Newbies and Slashdotters alike) are likely to plunk a few hundred down on. We can poo-poo web access on a TV forever, but it they already own a PSX2, don't have a PC, and can pay $50 to hook it up to the web, what's going to stop people?
I'm not saying PSX2 or Sony is evil. But they want control of their vast dream. Emulators made by other people (or even a theoretical PSX emulator made by Sony for other hardware) takes that control away. Look for them to rigorously oppose the CVGS for as long as they can. Throwing around money at Sony to help further along their larger picture would be nothing new.
-doenermord
Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
check out this article on the register.
the reversal was granted on the basis that Sony should not have
been granted the preliminary injunction, not that Connectix's use of the
PlayStation BIOS isn't an infringement of Sony's intellectual property.
This stops the preliminary injunction, but not the case, as I understand it.
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It seems that every time something that someone created gets copied and reused in an alternate form, that the /.ers get all hyped up about it. Maybe i'm just a die-hard conservative, or i have a lot to learn (which i admit is true), but i always had felt that if someone created something (to market it), that they had every right to sell it how they wanted, without someone else's taking it and selling it (or giving it away) however they want to. /. gets all excited, but they don't actually explain WHY it's a good (and ethical) thing. So i'm asking that someone please explain to me, without using emotional words, what is good and right about all this. I'm just asking so that i'll be better informed. Thanks! =)
And every time one of these cases comes up, whether it be DeCSS, Connectix, or even the much-hated Microsoft, it seems that everyone on
In this day and age, you gotta hire a retarded monkey to lose a law suit if you are mr. big corporation
Like MS? I think the point is that Lawyers get paid whether they win or lose. So it's far likely that Clueless Management Types decided to fight irrespective of legal opionion. In fact I'd go further - imagine I'm a lawyer, and my client says to me "Should we fight this case, which of course will involve us paying you lots of money?". Exactly which way am I motivated to respond?
ben_ the technologist and platform agnostic
Zdnet
CNN
and in case the 9th circuit site gets slashdotted, there's findlaw.
Naturally, Sony's pressreleases are conspicuously absent.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Finally Connectix will be able to distribute updates, which I hear greatly enhance compatibility with current PSX games. I'm glad because I bought Gran Turismo 2 and I have CVGS v1.2. It's a trip to be sitting in a library with a portable PSX on my lap (PowerBook G3/266). The problem with the current software is that the GT2 cars look like they're covered in plastic wrap (understandable though because the last update was March 1999). Hope they fixed problems with InputSprockets so two ADB controllers of the same brand can work properly with the software.
-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I am aware of quite a bit of piracy on the PSX, and with emulators available now the people copying games don't even need to own a chipped PSX to play them, they can use a PC... and a pirated version of an emulator.
I have two opinions on this. I'm pleased that we (the people) are able to reverse engineer software still, and that others (companies) are not able to stop that reverse engineering. I'm not pleased that people continue to pirate software.
In the end, perhaps these are seperate issues, properly addressed seperately, but as piracy continues, the pressure to limit what can be pirated will continue.
I used to think that Sony was stupid for trying to stop emulators, but now I believe that I was being naive. There are a lot of people out there that are willing to pirate any software they get their hands on. I think Sony is smart to try to slow that down, even if the way they are going about it is wrong.
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
And another ready source for games to pirate is your local Blockbuster...
AND, the people we are talking about aren't buying a G3 or P3 just to play playstation games... don't be silly. They are using the systems they already have.
I still agree that this was a good legal victory, AND I believe keeping in line with the spirit of the law.
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
This is good precedent: (IANAL)
If Sony wishes to obtain a lawful monopoly on
the functional concepts in its software, it must satisfy the more stringent standards of the patent laws. See Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U.S. 141, 160-61 (1989); Sega, 977 F.2d at 1526. This Sony has not done. The second statutory factor strongly favors Connectix.
I had more, but knote seems to have eaten them.
back to studying for tomorrow's midterms (yes, that's plural, sucks to be me)
Cyano
Don't like my sig? I don't either.
Patience will pay off with Bleem! though, one day I'm sure they'll have 100% compatibility on their test system, of course that will be less certain on consumer PCs due to configuration issues, hardware differences, etc, but it will probably be close to 100%.
I'm glad to hear this news, here I was thinking that Sony had the law on their side in the Virtual Game Station case, if not the morality. I'm glad they lost, nice when law and morality go hand in hand.
Now we need a native Linux Playstation Emulator, unless there is already one out there. I wonder who out their is up to the task... heh, some one should suggest it to MoRE, it'd be a good way to legally spit in Sony's eye.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
DeCSS is not about reverse engineering, that was done outside the DMCA's jurisdiction.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
While, strictly speaking, the Connectix product enables users to play their PlayStation back-ups on their G3, we all know that this is not primarily the use to which it will be put. Of course, that's what some users will be doing, but not the majority, despite the protestations. So this judge has just made it harder for a company engaged in lawful business to earn its justified profits. And why? To protect a principal. Yes, a very important principal, but shouldn't sometimes the spirit of the law, and not the letter, be enforced? A quick cruise of Hotline or IRC shows the reality.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I've always been puzzled why Sony sued in the first place. All the software did was broaden the audience for Sony's games - you weren't bound to purchasing $100 just for the capability - if you'd already bought a computer, you were fine. Sony doesn't make money on the consoles. They make it on licensing the games.
Perhaps they were concerned that someone offering the software could add extensions to games, much as Microsoft added its own extensions to HTML, Java, whatever. The old "embrace and extend" model of assimilation. This, however, seems like much less of a concern when there are millions and millions of players on the market before the software was released. Of course, Netscape had millions of browsers out when Microsoft started too.
Of course, we know how they did that....
-----
Klactovedestene!
I had a chance to talk to the Bleem guys at CES. Here's one of their points:
Bleem gross income as of Dec 31st 1999: Around $4 million
Amount Sony spent sueing Bleem: approximately $10 Million
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
The way I understand it, Sony doesn't make much if any money off the purchase of a system. It's peripherals, software, and license fees that makes Sony the big bucks. The hardware is a one time expenditure. Software revenue, just goes on and on. Does anyone seriously need 3 or 4 Jet Moto games? Additionally, Sony gets license fees from third party developers, so that they can develop games for the Playstation. All in all, I can't see why Sony would complain about anyone expanding their userbase.
I found this portion of the ruling interesting:
"Sony understandably seeks control over the market for devices that play games Sony produces or licenses. The copyright law, however, does not confer such a monopoly. See id. at 1523-24 ("[A]n attempt to monopolize the market by making it impossible for others to compete runs counter to the statutory purpose of promoting creative expression and cannot constitute a strong equitable basis for resisting the invocation of the fair use doctrine.").
Which is the same with DeCSS.
If you read the legal documents submitted to the court in the DVDCCA case in California, you will see that the DVDCCA lawyers cited the original Sony v. Connectix injunction to support their case. Talk about having the chair pulled out from under you!
I assume the EFF is, at this very moment, submiting the appropriate paperwork to inform the court of this development.
Of course, within a few weeks of it's release on the Mac there was a "mod chip" patch which bypassed the PSX "bad sector" copy protection.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
The Sony-Connectix decision was overturned because Sony only had the resources of one company with which to bribe judges, whereas the MPAA collectively has much more money to wave under the noses of the corrupt court officials.
-- The Brory Stool Co.: We accidentally the best stools from behind seven proxies, since 2009.
I can't really see why Sony is upset over this, for a start, they make more money off the sales of games than the sales of PSX hardware, and secondly, the PS2 comes out in Japan in March, so they have a whole new console to market.
Why not just leave the old hardware alone, or better yet, release the schematics for it, have a whole bunch of PSX hardware/software clones. They'd still make a killing on the games.
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
This software, afterall, does NOT promote pirating Playstation Software. Rather, it allows people to play Playstation games they have purchased legally without having to purchase the Playstation Console.
An excellent decision by the judge, in my opinion.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
...wouldn't it be nice to see a Dreamcast port? That would certainly be a big screw you SOny for all the legal hassles, and give Sega a nice boost.
stty erase ^H
"Sega expressly sanctioned disassembly." (That's the case Sega v. Accolade, not Sega the company.)
"Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 449-50 (1984) (copying of entire work does not preclude fair use)". (*Smile*) -- Sony's own previous case used against it...(That is the Betamax case, isn't it?)
"This innovation affords opportunities for game play in new environments, specifically anywhere a Sony PlayStation console and television are not available, but a computer with a CD-ROM drive is."
Replace game play with movie viewing,"Sony PlayStation console" with "DVD Player," and CD-ROM with DVD-ROM, and DVD-CCA goes down...
Also, note that Connectix asked for help, but Sony refused. (Similarly, a request to make a Linux DVD player was made, but refused by DVD-CCA.) Possible implication: If the licensor doesn't help you, and intellectual property laws don't prevent you, then a lot of leeway in reverse engineering is allowed.
I like it. We needed some good news...
There have been a couple free updates to Connectix VGS for compatibility and performance improvements as well (v1.1 and 1.2). They stopped development when Sony won the temporary injunction.
However, I read elsewhere (MacNN maybe?) that they were planning to announce a release date for a version 1.3 update within a month; this update would address compatibility for games released during the legal process.
Likely their support will be similar for the Windows version.
Here we are in a major rut of the RIAA, MPAA, and the media/corporate conglomerate as well as the justice system...and something like this happens. If only they would have lost, we would have something else to get upset over. /.'er will have a e-mail of some slanderous info encrypted in e-mail encoded with CSS on a pirated DVD he downloaded from his 14.4 modem after he took down half the net with his DoS attacks just so he could clear out his route to mp3.com to download all those pirated and illegal mp3's that the RIAA is telling us about. Did i forget anything?
I mean...sheesh...these last 2 weeks have been "downers" for everything...
But..now that i think about it...
Sony must feel pretty stupid. In this day and age, you gotta hire a retarded monkey to lose a law suit if you are mr. big corporation.
Hell...even O.J. got aquitted.
Maybe if Natalie Portman sued Slashdot for its reader's slanderous comments...then it would really round out this legislative/corporate/media circus. Maybe some UK
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Ok..now to be serious... /.'ers opinions and facts before I give it a final judgement.
I actually think Sony should have won this case. Look at it...Sony makes most of its money off of the systems. The stores don't make crap off selling the systems, thats why everystore sells them for the same price. Thats because they are making little to no profit of the systems.
But if you buy a system at store 'x', you will probably buy another controller, a memory card, and a game or two. But the stores make profit off of those.
The DeCSS was different. He wanted to play DVD movies on his linux machine, but couldnt because they only had players for windoze and crapintosh. But...the PSX games are made for the PSX console.
Sure, i can agree its grey area to its legality, but i don't see it near the scope of anything like MP3 or DeCSS.
Especially when DeCSS is free...no profit involved. But Connectix is making money off its reverse engineer of the Sony Bios. I wouldnt say that it is fair. Maybe if Sony made their own PC PSX software emulator it would be different and easier to judge.
I don't really see a tyranny here. Maybe if some nobody would have done it and released it GPL, it would be easier to defend. But, if that would have happened, Sony would have probably won the case.
I definently have to evaluate this situation a little bit more and get more
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
At last some good news. I was worried that fair use and reverse engineering had gone the way of the dodo. Maybe we'll see a virtual dreamcast.
Any way it is good news for the emulator scene. And good news for computer users. It means that maybe we won't have to invest in the latest console to get to play the newest console games if more companies will create products like this.
I've tried several emulators and most are decent quality have any of you tried connectix. How does it compare to other emulators?
I just wish that all console makers would go to cd's so that you could have emulators for any console without the need for roms. At least with cds people are buying the games instead of just downloading the rom files.
Most console game manufacturers don't make money off of the hardware anyway they make money off of the software liscences.
Kind of disjointed and unfocused I know but I need sleep. Later and good night.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
This makes me very, very happy. You'll notice that this case is almost identical to the DeCSS case, and a good precedent has been set. Sony wants to control the players not the media, just like DVDCCA wants to control their players not the media itself. Connectix's product will introduce competition into the Playstation console market, and if DVD technology is ever made open, hopefully other people will be able to offer DVD players not made by the DVDCCA collective monopoly.
The same Sony is suing over DeCSS.
But as a pres. of a software company I won't say that it doesn't go on. I think the practice quashes originality. It is too distracting to constantly keep up with other people, kind of like playing golf by watching someone elses game instead of your own..
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
I've always wondered why Sony never came out with a Playstation that had a faster CD rom. I've been led to believe that Playstation sports a 2x CD rom, which wasn't bad when first introduced, but one of Playstation's big weaknesses was always the slow loading time. Would it have been a simple matter to relase a faster Playstation every few years, or is there some inherent factor in the rest of the hardware that would make a faster CD rom unworkable or irrelevant? Will the So Cal natives playing PSX games on a Mac have to wait as long for a game to load as someone playing on a regular old Playstation?
....
--Hey Doctor Jones! No time for love!
It just seems wrong for laws to be passed to prevent reverse-engineering. It's like saying "this stuff sucks, but since its patented, you can't make a better one" *shudder* I'm glad to see news like this.
*** Penguins are so sensitive to my needs. --Lyle Lovett
Sony understandably seeks control over the market for devices that play games Sony produces or licenses. The copyright law, however, does not confer such a monopoly. See Sega, 977 F.2d at 1523-24 ("[A]n attempt to monopolize the market by making it impossible for others to compete runs counter to the statutory purpose of promoting creative expression and cannot constitute a strong equitable basis for resisting the invocation of the fair use doctrine.").
The court has squarely rejected the concept that copyright law can be used to enforce a monopoly on devices which play content. This is a good ruling, and it's consistent with precedent. Sega tried something like this a few years back, and the courts wouldn't buy that either. Unless another circuit decides otherwise, it's effectively the law in the US.
Regarding the DeCSS issue, it would be a step forward if someone created a straightforward Linux player for video DVDs and distributed it. That would create a situation very similar to this one, which might be an easier case to win than the DeCSS case.
"Linux is a registered trademark of Linux Torvalds" A kind of off topic copywrite notice on the press release about Virtual Linux. http://www.connectix.com/company/press_mw2k_jan050 0.html
-wang
A lawyer may not want to take too many bad cases even if it makes him or her money in the short run. Doesn't look too good to prospective clients if you lose over half your cases in court. They do want to keep their "stats" respectable.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I'm sorry, but arguing with numbers that you pulled out of your ass proves nothing. Sony knows what the real numbers are, and I doubt they would have done something to seriously harm there business.
Anyway, this is clearly not about short term financial profits, but future control. If no one were to buy playstations anymore, because they can play the games on there computers, the PSX would becomes irrelevant. Game companies could sidestep the middleman and just make PC/Mac games. With better graphics to boot. Without the emulator, Sony controls the market absolutely. With it, they do not.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
The thing is, this case, dealing with reverse engineering, is about events that took place before the DMCA was passed (right?). So the DMCA's draconian anti-revEng measures would have no meaning.
This DeCSS stuff is a whole different issue.
Although, I would personally say that both fall under the inoperability clause. (as well as DeCSS falling under the cryptography stuff)
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
There is really a big difference between the two situations that most people are overlooking. Yes, there are a lot of parallels, but I think a more accurate comparison would be with Bleem, the PC playstation emulator. Remember bleem hasn't had any trouble with the law, because they did a 'clean room' implementation of the BIOS. On the other hand, Connetix did not.
Now, DeCSS wasn't even made in the US, but it was a cleanroom, perfectly legal, implementation of CSS, just like bleem was a cleanroom implementation of the Playstation. So, the people at Connetix would be on shakier ground if it weren't for one thing, the DMCA.
The DMCA gets rid of a lot of kinds of reverse engineering, specifically the kinds that let you get around anti-piracy issues. Bleem, and the VGS were created in a time where the DMCA didn't apply, whereas DeCSS did not. Both help inoperability, but both also make piracy easier.
I don't think any of this is wrong, but we'll still have to see what a court thinks
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
It's a control issue. Think about it, they arn't being stupid
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
You think Connectix had more money then Sony?
Sony is one of the largest companies in the world, and Although it itself is a member of RIAA, Sony makes far, far, more money from video games then it does from music. Sony would spend a lot more to protect it's Video game empire then its music empire (Just look at all the equipment Sony makes to support recording of music, minidisks, etc. They even make their own mp3 player.)
The RIAA has pretty much given up anyway, SMDI looks to be a failure, and they are not going to stop MP3.
What does the RIAA have to do with DeCSS? (hint - nothing)
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
What if Sony had used a patented subsystem to deny access unless certain patented code was copied? The patent could be so narrow that it was a "picture patent" but anyone who wanted access would have to make and use the specific patented material to be able to play the game.
There is no fair use defense in patent law. Would the case now come out the opposite way?
Something like this happened in the Sega-Accolade case. Accolade won the copyright round against Sega's access-denial system that used copyright law. But Accolade stumbled over Sega's second line of defense, a patented access-denial system. (Note that Connectix here has the same lawyer Accolade had in its case against Sega.)
Do you suppose Sega has a patent up its sleeve in this case too? (If so, it should have used it the first time around. Didn't it learn anything from the Sega-Accolade case?) If Sega has some patented scheme, will this victory turn out to be a charade?
More generally, is reverse engineering still vulnerable to being squashed? Just that you need a patent to squash it rather than a copyright?