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Sony Lawsuits Target PS3 Jailbreak Authors
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.'"
While you don't need to jail break your PS3 to hook it up to XBOX live, you (apparently) need to do so to run other applications). The real issue here is how Sony will fight this. _IF_ they plan to use the copyright argument, the surely they will not prevail.
To reiterate a quote from the GP:"The owner’s technological measure must protect the copyrighted material against an infringement of a right that the Copyright Act protects, not from mere use or viewing" If the jailbreaks somehow infringe on copyrighted material, then Sony has a case with respect to copyright. If I'm not mistaken, there were reports that the software used in some of the jailbreaking may have made use of an illegal copy of Sony's SDK.
I would normally prefer the term "the copied-game-loading code", which is more correctly neutral, but sometimes I get so irritated by all the lying smartasses who use the term "backup" as a thin veil (and thus discredit the minority of people actually legitimately backing up their own games) that I feel like using a term that is biased the other way just to make it blatantly obvious what most people end up using the code for.
Specifically, I'm talking about the Blu-Ray redirection patches which are still present in the PSGroove code (which is just a version of the PSJailbreak code hex-edited to trivially break, but not remove, this functionality). In other words, the PSGroove is technically a pirated PSJailbreak (not that I care about commercial game copying products getting copied, but there are legal implications to basing your stuff too much on a piracy device). It's a lot cleaner if you just take the required core concept of the exploit and develop an open product around it that shares nothing more than what is strictly necessary with the original.
Torrenting it and then distributing code compiled with it both are, which is what everyone who is using the Sony SDK did. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. If Sony didn't grant you a license to use the PS3 SDK, then you aren't allowed to legally use it.
Sony made it's initial money off a sliver of non-infringing purpose with the vcr (with its ability to record, not play that is). almost all uses of it were infringing but there was the one case of time shifting that was deemed non-infringing and that sliver was enough that the lawsuits were denied.
Soooo, as long as there's a non-infringing use for it, even if 99% of the capability is infringing, it should be allowed as was allowed by the prior ruling.
Of course, as IANAL and the law rarely does what is right (or even remains self consistent) when faced by big money.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
I'll add a second anecdote: I have a hacked Wii. I have my whole (20-30, 90% used from gamestop) game library loaded on a hard drive. I like the convenience. At this moment, I could pull out any game disc for anything on my hard drive you'd like to see. For me, it's about convenience. The same reason people want a media library of ripped DVDs even through they own all 400 the discs. Heck, it's even easier to FIND the game you want when the count gets high. I first figured out the USBloader process after my 4 year old rendered the Wii sports disc unreadable. (it was able to rip, luckily). could I replace a disc? probably. is there a convenient way for me to avoid needing to replace discs and avoid that hassle? yes. so that's all I need.
Then again, I also don't know you. so you're point stands. maybe you just need friends with a bit more moral fiber.
One of the reasons Sony initially put OtherOS capabilities into the PS3 was so that they could claim that the PS3 was a "General Purpose Computer" and dodge a bunch of European taxes... If I was a citizen of one of those countries I would be asking why they are not now suing Sony for those back taxes and/or the reinstatement of the OtherOS functionality.