Sony Uses DMCA To Shut Down Aibo Hack Site

Therlin writes: "Victor Matsuda, Vice President of Sony's Entertain Robot America (makers of AIBO), sent a letter to Aibopet.com citing the Digital Mellennium Copyright Act. You can read the letter here. Aibopet is the website of an AIBO owner who enjoys researching AIBO. He also provides free software programs to improve and add features to the robots." I bet Sony won't increase their Aibo sales this way -- don't they like fanatical customers?

Comments

They are not totally wrong

[SevenTowers]

In fact I think it is well within Sony's rights to express concern over the dangerous software this man is writing. Imagine all those little robots going mad and attacking cats and babies... How much money would they lose then?

DCMA

[rbright]

The DCMA makes me embarassed to be a citizen of the UAS.

Reasons why Sony killed the Aibo Lover

[t_allardyce]

+ He programed Aibo to copy dance moves from some crapy boy-band, which sony own thus violating copyrights. Also, Aibo did it so well, that their jobs where at risk

+ He was getting to close to discovering that after dark and when knowone is looking, Aibo finds the nearest phone line, sticks it's ..cough.. plugs itself in and uploads video, audio, and GPS data to Sony HQ.

+ The encryption method they use is actually the same system that will be adopted for the SSSCA, and Sony were just future proofing.

+ He managed to disable the "Aibo kill owner" command that activates when Aibo detects someone pirating Sony material and tries to kill them using a hidden array of deadly weapons.