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Sony Halts Sales of PS3 Jailbreak Dongle
An anonymous reader tips news that "Online Australian retailer Quantronics has been ordered by the Federal Court of Australia, Victoria District Registry on the 26 August 2010 to halt PS JailBreak PS3 modchip sales and distribution." The court order (.DOC) indicates this injunction will hold until a hearing on August 31. Another reader points out related news that a German website claims to have reverse engineered the hack, finding it to be a newly-developed exploit rather than a clone of Sony's JIG module (original in German). Sony has already been banning users of the modchip when detected.
They should relocate to France. French courts have already ruled circumvention devices legal when there is no other way to run your own software on your machine.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The device has already been reverse engineered. Expect clones very soon from countries whose courts won't kneel before you.
Palm 'gave up' because the USB peeps told them to quit using Apple's IDs, which is against regulations - in response to Palm saying Apple were abusing the USB conformation specs by using portions of it as an access rights mechanism. There's no technical reason Palm couldn't have added whatever Apple ended up checking next to their device and had seamless sync continuing with iTunes; the game of cat & mouse would have left ever-fewer options with ultimately Palm as the winner. But that win would come at the cost of being kicked out of the USB club and then they'd have bigger problems to worry about.
As for the rest of your post.. yes - that's why Company X is quite right to only accept Company X keyboards, mice and webcams, and Microsoft-approved external drives, printers, scanners, etc. to connect to their computers and/or interface with their software. You know.. for security reasons.
Blu-ray discs are TOTALLY scratchable. Worse than DVDs actually. Netflix released their data on it and found that Blu-ray discs are damaged far more often than DVDs suffering the same treatment in their envelopes and by their customers. Other than that, I mostly agree with you. Backups is code for piracy for 99.5% of the people claiming it as fair use. Especially considering Sony has been pretty progressive lately about releasing formerly disc only games as pure download and install versions. It's not much, but it's progress...
Apparently the folks at Penny Arcade believe that buying a used game is actually worse than pirating, because with piracy you are at least not giving money to anybody, but with a used game you are both stealing AND giving money to a leech.
I don't quite know where you got that from.
Oh wait, I get it. I see http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/ what you mean. However, I feel you're not reading it with an open mind.
Tycho states the following.
If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of these ingenious contraptions are produced, I honestly can't figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy. From the perspective of a developer, they are almost certainly synonymous.
I can see why you'd construe that to mean "PENNY ARCADE HAET PIRATE AND U R PIRATE." (Yes, yes, I know mocking his position by portraying him as a braying idiot is infantile. I do it anyhow.) However, if you pay attention to his words he states that "If" you purchase games to reward their creators, then it's synonymous to piracy, *especially* to the developers. He hasn't actually stated that it is or isn't his opinion. He appears to understand, however, that by buying games used you are hurting the developers. This is absolute fact. Or is it? I go over my confusion on this far below. Anyhow.
In his post on the following day (today), he clarifies his position for those who took issue.
People who buy used games are not pirates, by definition. Used games (used everything, really) are and will continue to be a legal and protected form of commerce. Other industries have done what they can to co-opt, destroy, or harvest those markets, but their existence is settled law. What I have said is that the end result of that purchase from a developer perspective must be indistinguishable. Isn't it? That is the question I couldn't answer. I still can't answer it. And because I couldn't, I had to change the way I invested my leisure dollar.
He understands it isn't piracy. He clarifies this for the people who couldn't pick that up from his original post. He understands that, y'know, the market of used games (primarily GameStop) is a powerful machine, voraciously feasting on the blood and leavings of the developers and gamers alike. He knows that it's legal, but he hammers in his assertion that, despite its legality, *this isn't a good thing for the industry* .
selling a used game should be a crime, but lending a friend a game or a book, which they often portray in their comics, is acceptable
He...really, must you take such a polarized view? Tycho didn't say it must be a crime. He's just saying that it negatively impacts the industry. He's saying it's not a good thing. This isn't the same as saying it should be illegal. As for the disparity between the used game market and the lending of books or libraries, I don't know. I'm sure Tycho struggles to codify his beliefs for the masses, but he, and you, must agree on this absolute fact.
Used Games don't give the industry money. (again, I examine this below)
No idea their take on that, but I bet they are contacting their lawyers!
I don't believe working yourself up into a froth over something you have "no idea" about is a good thing.
Their other blazing hypocracy is that their child's play charity donates games and systems to children's wards across the country. Each child doesn't need to pay for their own copy, the developer only gets paid ONCE (a condition they decry as black market theft) and yet, more than one child gets to play. Outrageous.
Gott in himmel, you're calling their charity a hypocrisy? I just... I can't...
It would be very easy to just fall back on ad hominem and wildly polarized attacks, but I'll try to keep this civil.