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Sony Lawsuits Target PS3 Jailbreak Authors

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-more-expensive-than-admitting-they-were-stupid dept.

StikyPad writes "PS3News is reporting that Sony's latest legal salvo is targeting the creators of PS JailBreak, PSFreedom and PSGroove-related PS3 hacks, citing numerous court documents for those interested. From one of the documents: 'Having considered the Motion for Expedited Discovery of Plaintiff Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (oeSCEA) [...] the Court hereby grants SCEA's Motion. IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that [...] SCEA has leave to serve similarly targeted subpoenas or deposition notices to any other third party who SCEA learns may be involved in the distribution or sale of the oePS Jailbreak software, known as, for example, "PSGroove," "OpenPSJailbreak," and "PSFreedom," or who may have knowledge of the distribution or sale of this software.'"

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sony should have lost this already. by DragonWriter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wow - using an SDK is piracy?

    Insofar as "piracy" is a common, if somewhat informal, term for acts which violate copyright law, sure. At least, it is if the SDK is protected by copyright, if the work you create is a derivative work under copyright law, and you have neither a license to use the SDK for the purpose nor the protection of an applicable exception to copyright law.

    While, absent litigation on the specific cases, there's may be some room for debate, I'd expect that most uses of a leaked Sony SDK to create homebrew PS3 software, and the copying and distribution of such software after it was created, be "piracy".

  2. Re:Sony should have lost this already. by Schadrach · · Score: 4, Informative

    The jailbreak itself doesn't use Sony's SDK. Pretty much all currently available homebrew (except maybe PSPong?) does use it however, since there isn't a stable open alternative...yet. Building a complete, mature, and stable SDK for a newly accessible system in, what, a month? is frankly an unreasonable demand.

    Sony should be driving legal action to stop the current PSJailbreak scene, but they shouldn't be targeting the creators of PSGroove, PSFreedom, or OpenPSJailbreak -- they should be attacking the people who have released actual homebrew to date using the Sony SDK (which is, admittedly, basically all of it so far and includes the original creators of the PSJailbreak hack). That would protect their copyrights while also encouraging the creation of an open SDK as an alternative to the leaked Sony SDK.