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Dark Alex Releases 4.01 M33 Firmware For PSP
Croakyvoice writes "Dark Alex, the PSP hacker
from Spain, and his Team M33 have released a new version of the custom
firmware for the PSP, which now supports the very latest official
firmware from Sony. Benefits for the end user include the ability to play the many
hundreds of games,
demos, applications
and emulators written by the homebrew community for the PSP."
While I do actually follow the PSP homebrew scene, and this is fairly big news in the PSP homebrew scene...this is Slashdot. Maybe 1% of /.ers have a PSP (probably less, but give me the benefit of the doubt here), and of PSP owners, maybe 2% care about that.
At least it wasn't posted as a full frontpage article. But honestly, this shouldn't have made it past the Firehose.
I can understand new releases of major software... a new GIMP, new KDE, new GNOME, new kernel, new release of a distro or operating system being newsworthy... but an announcement of a cracked firmware bin for a portable game system?
Software development != Piracy, thanks!
Did that make you feel better about yourself? Firmware modification == illegal breaking of EULA If you want to get technical then yeah. I used modified firmware in my PSP to play games (that i don't always own) but until the game companies start sueing EB Games/Gamestop and all the other reselling places then me pirating games will never effect them. I guess i am really argueing two issues here but your reply is pathetic to say the least.
Since this story was posted they've already released 4.01-m33-2 update along with a +1.5 addon. For those who care you'll know what this means, everybody else continue not caring...
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
(Firmware modification == illegal breaking) != Piracy
/* No Comment */
looks like Slashdot users don't like reality since i am right about this but i am getting flame baited and trolled.
The reality is your wrong... Sony has the right to sue for modifying there firmware and potentially making them loose millions of billions blah blah blah. I really don't care that sony looses money but i do care that you have lost touch with reality.
Reality == Piracy
Fluff cover up that you call software development == Wrong
just brings me back to the reasoning why i usually only read slashdot so back in the whole i go...
The problem is EULAs are bullshit. If I buy something it is MINE. If I want to take a hammer and smash the shit out of it then I can. If I want to modify the firmware on it then I can.
Anyway when I bought my PSP the guy in Gamestation didn't make me sign a contract saying I wouldn't modify the firmware. Nor did the PSP make me "accept" such a contract when I first turned it on.
Sony can go and fuck right off.
You're displaying a fair amount of ignorance there.
Custom firmwares have many uses that don't involve piracy in any way, shape or form - including legal emulation, VOIP and messenger software and homebrew games and applications.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Firmware modification == illegal breaking of EULA
This is only true if:
1) The person using the custom firmware is old enough to be legally bound by a contract. (This age varies between countries.)
2) They agreed to the EULA.
3) The EULA is considered a legally binding contract in their country.
4) The specific provisions of the EULA forbidding cracking the firmware are legally enforceable in their country.
If any of these conditions are not met, the EULA is irrelevant.
If an EULA is a valid contract, then there is a great profit to be made mailing out envelopes containing contracts with ridiculous terms and that start with "By opening this envelope you have agreed to..."
With regards to this all being about piracy: there are probably some people who just don't want the device phoning home to Microsoft or Adobe when they enable WMV or Flash, or who want to avoid the continuous update cycle Sony insists upon, given that the majority of updates are just to prevent firmware cracks or to update their EULA.
Toe!
So, the question is. will sony continue to bleed themselves dry fighting the impossible, or will they give up?
win/win either way imho.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You're displaying a fair amount of ignorance there.
Custom firmwares have many uses that don't involve piracy in any way, shape or form - including legal emulation, VOIP and messenger software and homebrew games and applications.
.....and you're showing a fair amount of ignorance to the fact that the most popular use, by far, is the running of pirated games.
Now that I can find out when to get new firmware for my PSP. Can Slashdot also tell me where to get all the cool free software to download! Hint hint. Nudge nudge.
bah. start over
You remember, the assholes that gave us rootkitted CDs? Why *NOT* make news that their proprietary junk is easily cracked to make it even more useful? It's still news, even though it's just a minor bugfix for a camera.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
just brings me back to the reasoning why i usually only read slashdot so back in the whole i go...
I guess you're referring to the terrible spelling and grammar, right?
then don't fight Sony on their own turf. Get a gp2x or a gp32 and play games on a portable machine that's open from the get-go.
Actually you are the one that is completely, totally, and absolutely wrong.
It is impossible to perform the act of piracy by installing your own software on a Sony PSP when you BOUGHT THE PSP. You OWN the HARDWARE. It is YOUR HARDWARE. You have the ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO YOUR HARDWARE.
There is no such thing as hardware "piracy". Hardware "piracy" is actually theft of property which is completely different. You also cannot perform the act of piracy as it relates to the official Sony firmware, since you received that with your paid-for PSP in the first place.
Software Piracy would involve "stealing" somebody's software. That is not taking place here.
Modifying your PSP firmware is at best, a violation of an agreement between you and Sony. It is a breach of contract, which is not remotely the same as an infringement on copyrights.
Personally, I would consider it to be a form of civil disobediance. I don't think Sony, or any company, has the right to tell you what to do with hardware that you own. The specific language in the EULA should be deemed improper and unenforceable in court. I actually think it would be too and there is no case precedence that I am aware of.
Would Toyota get away with selling you a car and telling you that you can only drive it to certain locations? At certain speeds? On certain days? With specific radio stations turned on? What about after market modifications on most popular cars? Would those auto manufacturers get away with creating restrictions on the after market industry?
Of course not. You own the car. Well just the same, you own the PSP. The only exception for corporations, is to lease the hardware. That is done ALL the time, and allows those corporations to ethically and morally enforce restrictions upon the use of the hardware.
So the reality is that you are wrong. The flamebait and troll modifier is justified in your case since it is highly offensive to label owners of PSPs as "criminals" simply for wanting to use homebrew applications and custom modified firmwares on their own property.
Software Piracy is a very specific act and has nothing to do with "hacking" your own hardware. I even object to the use of the term, since I strongly believe that you cannot perform the act of "hacking" on your own property.
In the future I would suggest you think about what you want to say a little more carefully.
show me one scientific study that says so (and isn't done by the RIAA) ... rather than spouting numbers from your ass.
Sony can go and fuck right off.
I often feel the same way about the OSS community and their bullshit licences that tell me I can't do exactly what I want with the software that they don't even value enough to ask to be paid for. It's mine. I downloaded it. If you won't want your precious code tweaked and sold, then don't fucking write it. I didn't sign a goddamned thing, and you Unix hippies can go and fuck right off.
Last I heard of the, Dark Alex was bowing out scene?
You are absolutely right that this story shouldn't be posted.
However, just out of curiosity I checked the PSP's sales and read up on on the PSP. The PSP is the eighth best selling console of all time. It's surprisingly successful for a device that is often thought of as a failure compared to the DS.
looks like Slashdot users don't like reality since i am right about this but i am getting flame baited and trolled.
No, you're being corrected because you are FLAT OUT WRONG.
An EULA does not and can not apply unless it is presented to you BEFORE consideration is exchanged (in the case of purchasing a PSP, this would be at point of sale, BEFORE you gave them your cold hard and the title of said PSP transferred to you.)
Consider an analogy: If i sold lawn mowers, for instance, and you bought one off me with the (IMO perfectly reasonable) assumption that you could replace the blades with any compatible brand, and then went to replace them and found that i'd placed an EULA sticker across the nut holding each blade in place saying "ONLY USE MICHAEL HUNT BRANDED BLADES. THIS IS A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT," then you'd be pretty irate.
The fact that Dark Alex's firmware happens to allow playing of warez/backup games/imports/whatever is completely orthogonal to any argument you may or may not make RE: the legality of breaking an EULA. EULAs are not, and can not be retroactively binding. End of line.
You're doing it wrong.
PS, you're an idiot.
You're doing it wrong.
If your only complaint is that the games are nothing more than rehashes of old games, then why are you even bothering to pirate them? Unless, of course, you're lying, and actually believe that they DO have some value, but that you're somehow special from everybody else and shouldn't have to pay for them.
Although a troll, I think the parent post is also incredibly insightful. There is a common opinion in slashdot that EULAs are bullshit, and a common opinion that the GPL is not bullshit, and many here seem to hold both beliefs at once.
Why is one more valid than the other? I don't mean to imply that it isn't or that it is, I'm just honestly curious.
EULAs are generally not considered valid because they try to restrict your usage without there being a valid contract (i.e. you don't sign anything and you don't get to examine it before purchase etc).
The GPL, on the other hand, gives you the extra right to re-distribute software, providing you comply with it. You're free to ignore it, but then you would have no right to re-distribute it as normal copyright law would apply.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I agree wholeheartedly EdIII , that is one of the most concise posts summarizing the truth about this I've heard , good job!
This comment was laboriously planned and extremely well thought out by Mike Donaghy @ http://mikedonaghy.org
That said, it would sure look a lot more legitimate, to both Sony corporate and the people in this thread, if there was a custom firmware that just ran homemade software without loading pirated isos.
Then again, I don't know much about the PSP, so this may be impossible. I know in the DS scene this is usually the way legitimate homebrew software developers distance themselves from the pirates.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
A restriction on using something you bought has nothing in common with making a copy of something and redistributing it against the will of the author.
The people using the hacked firmware are just breaking a restriction on what they own. However, there's a case to be made that the people releasing hacked firmware are making unauthorized derivative works of Sony's firmware. Depending on how they developed their versions, that might even be true. However, reverse engineering and rewriting from scratch for sake of compatibility has been accepted as a valid, non-infringing activity by US courts and even by the DMCA.
Can a EULA you never signed, and for which you never received any consideration for accepting the terms, really preclude you from doing what is otherwise perfectly allowable? I guess we'll see if there's ever a solid court case that falls one way or another. So far, I think companies like Sony and Apple are content to call this phenomenon a nuisance.
Phoenix, AMD, and many other companies have made major businesses out of reverse-engineering products and offering alternative versions. The developers of StarOffice/Open Office, Pidgin, Samba, and Novell's Evolution reverse engineered data formats for other software, and nobodys sued them out of existence. They're not using code from those other products, but are largely (or in some cases completely) compatible with them.
Intel even offers its own version of extensions AMD made to Intel's CPU instruction set. There's probably no stronger support for the legitimacy of reverse engineering for the sake of compatibility than that, and you cna be pretty sure that Intel and AMD are both careful not to steal each other's actual designs and redistribute them. Who's to say these firmware writers are doing anything different without proof of their processes?
If, and only if, the hacked firmware is based partly on Sony's original and not written from scratch for compatibility with it, then distributing it to third parties could be a breach of copyright.
Car companies do tend to void warranties if they have sufficient reason to believe you have been driving especially fast or have been racing in a street-legal general market car.
Other than those two particulars, I'd agree with your whole post.
And let's not forget, it also lets you play copies of commerical software. Which is, of course, where people's primary interest in the PSP is at.
"Teh Homebrewz". LOL! Everyone already knows that's talking in code.
When I purchase a product, with that purchase come a number of assumed contingent rights to my further use of that product. What a EULA is, essentially, is an attempt to further restrict those rights after the fact of purchase. Sneaking restrictions in through the back door if you will. What's more, as the purchaser, it is often at not inconsiderable inconvenience to me, should I decide to reject that further agreement after the point of purchase (try convincing a vendor not to charge you a "restocking fee" if you should return it). This inconvenience is, largely, unavoidable, because the EULA is not generally publicly available until AFTER the purchase agreement has been made and settled. None of that is the case for the GPL and that is a substantial and meaningful difference.
There is a common opinion in slashdot that EULAs are bullshit, and a common opinion that the GPL is not bullshit, and many here seem to hold both beliefs at once.
Why is one more valid than the other?
The GPL grants you additional rights, which you don't have by default, in exchange for agreeing to its terms. Normally, you have no right to redistribute someone else's copyrighted software; the GPL grants you a license to distribute it, as long as you also include the source code, a copy of the license, etc.
On the other hand, an EULA attempts to take away rights that you already have by default. You don't need permission to install and run a piece of software that you bought, or to make backups: you have those rights by default (see 17 USC 117). An EULA that says "you can install and run this software as long as ___" is trying to offer you a right you already have in exchange for agreeing to terms you don't want.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Because the GPL is not strictly a EULA?
It would have been funnier if your name was just "Mike Hunt". I'd use your blades.
I guess it's because all japanese people already have a DS now so they had to buy something else and well, guess what? ;)
Nah but seriously I think PSP sales have raised quite a bit over in Japan the last year compared to the DS haven't they?
You're a fucking loser. Ha ha, loser. You're not even clever enough to run your little kkkrusade with TWENTY fucking accounts. You just keep making the same retard mistakes over and over again. Fucking loser.