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Sony Files Lawsuit Against PS3 Hacker GeoHot
Kayot writes "George Hotz, or, as he is known on the internet, GeoHot, has been served court papers. Shorty after Team fail0verflow discovered faults in the PS3's TPMs, Geohot and others figured out how to extract the long sought after holy grail encryption keys. Apparently Sony is not pleased and is very keen on defending their poorly defended system with the US legal system. The basis is that GeoHot released programs that allow the signing of homebrew which can be used to make PSN-like games out of normal PS3 games. However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it."
Sue that information right off the Internet! It'll work, we promise.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
You should be sure to take down any keys which appear on popular social networking sites.
I mean it worked brilliant with 09 F9
Sony: They're fucking clown shoes. If they were real, I'd beat the shit out of them for being so stupid. I can't believe the US legal system would have anything to do with this shit. I, for one, will be boycotting Sony. Who's with me?
I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
Again, the "enabling" provision of the DMCA pops up. It's like these lawyers have never heard of the phrase "necessary but not sufficient." Yes, GeoHot's tools can be used to enable piracy, but they're not enough on their own. You also need a computer. Maybe Sony should sue computer makers for contributing to the problem. Regardless, the lawsuit is over so far. They weren't seeking damages, just a restraining order over the information. GeoHot decided to put the information back up on his site, so we'll see what happens there.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Sony has filed for various motions and requests to have the material removed, but has not yet filed a lawsuit for damages.
How is publishing information from/about a device you own a legal offence?
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Big corporations are such sore losers when their DRM/lockdown/lock-in systems are broken.
If SONY were a good sport they'd be proud their signing/encryption took this long to crack.
A lawsuit was pretty much inevitable; Sony needs to show its shareholders that it's doing something. To be honest, I find it hard to imagine that they won't succeed in making Mr. Hotz's life very... expensive indeed. Of course, with the cat now well and truly out of the bag on PS3 security, anything they do now can't really be more than a mixture of revenge and deterrence.
The real question for Sony (and other console developers) is how they pitch the longer term response to this. With hindsight, it now appears that the long-legendary PS3 security set-up wasn't so stellar after all. Prior to Sony's removal of OtherOS, there were only tiny cracks in the wall and Sony could reasonably have expected it to last several more years. Following the removal of OtherOS, the demolition of Sony's safeguards was swift and ruthless.
One possible inference, therefore, is that Sony's decision to grant PS3 users a "walled garden" in which they could - to some extent - do what they wanted with the system was what really provided the PS3 with its 5-year immunity from piracy. The commercially-minded piracy people, and the bored teenagers who wanted to play pirated games, just weren't good enough to break a console's security (even if major flaws did exist) and the people who were good enough; they weren't interested, as they could already do what they wanted with the system.
If I were Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft, I would now be urgently investigating the possibility of incorporating a similar "walled garden" OtherOS equivalent into my next generation hardware. Yes, the numbers who might actually use it would probably be small - and yes, said users aren't worth much commercially as they probably don't buy many games, but 5 years of no piracy on the system is a pretty big payback.
Vote with your feet. Don't buy any more games until Sony withdraws the lawsuit.
at least, according to http://www.redmondpie.com/geohot-sued-by-sony-over-ps3-jailbreak/ (sorry, no link due to slashdot/chrome paste bug)
They will release the playstation 4. That will just speed them up into a half-baked solution, as they were expecting the ps3 to last a little longer.
I would hire this people who broke the ps3's security to help me make the new version if I were them. Hotz even talked about it.
"Unless this Court enjoins Defendants' unlawful conduct, hackers will succeed in their attempts to ensure that pirated software can be run on the PS3 System, resulting in the destruction of SCEA's business."
"The explanation was broadcast live through multiple video and audio streams on the Internet [...] including in California"
There's also the bit about Californian jurist. because someone used github. It's like if I would claim jurist. on an american because they use IKEA furniture.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I do not understand the u.s. legal system. Who are the 100 "Does" mentioned in the lawsuit?
Leave it to a MegaCorp to do the wrong thing.
Dear Sony, All you are doing is now causing this information, that you want kept secret, to become mainstream news. Remember DeCSS? It was a minor thing until the Last batch of idiots sued the guy and it became wide spread and copied 800,000 times overnight.
So I suggest you hire some competent people to run your legal department, as they really do not know what that are doing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
... to do illegal things more easily (despite being personally against it). Sony should sue themselves for having such weak protection that it enabled him to enable them.
Would you like a slice of toast?
Sony sues them for distributing circumvention methods and (?) devices. That is illegal in the DCMA
"Pffering to the public, posting online, marketing, advertising, promoting, ....
installing, distributing, providing, or otherwise trafficking in any circumvention technology,
products, services, methods, codes, software tools, devices, component or part thereof,
including but not limited to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (“ECDSA”) Keys,
encryption and/or decryption keys, dePKG firmware decrypter program, Signing Tools,
3.55 Firmware Jailbreak, and/or any other technologies that enable unauthorized access to
and/or copying of PS3 Systems and other co
I would think however that part of the PS3 is not an effective measure since it is not an good implementation of de ecDSA algoritm. Number might not be copyrightable (maybe?) but circumvention devices are.
There are however some circumventions allowed (notice that on that page jailbreaking is legal on phones but not on video game consoles???)
If i was Sony i would scramble now to re-enable other-OS, to take away the "i am only re-enableing otherOS"argument that reverse engineers are now using.
erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70
Sorry Sony, don't know how that happened. My cat jumped on the keyboard.
Look, I don't like Sony or the PS3 but even I can see it'd pretty contradictory to claim the PS3 is a "poorly defended system" while at the same time calling the keys the "long sought-after holy grail". Either they were easy and poorly defended, or all the Nazi's that made you look for it got their heads all sorts of chopped off or turned into crumbly skeletons by the myriad of defenses. Pick one and stick with it.
They've got it coming to them. In a society where we buy new cell phones every few months, new computers every year, and new cars every 3-5 years on leases, it's egotistical of console manufacturers to go about thinking their hardware should have lasted this long to begin with.. They're just squeezing what they can out of a dying market.. I honestly wish there was a stronger focus on a lot less, WAY more impressive game titles, rather than hundreds of POS titles and a handful of winners over a lifetime of a console, drug out 4x5 longer than it ever should have been.
I don't understand why geohot, US citizen, posted all this information with his real name known to everyone? I would thought that he is aware of the DMCA.
What's interesting if you read the complaint is that some of it is predicated on enforcing the EULA that's presented when logging into PSN and when downloading firmware updates. Have these ever been tested before in US courts?
If you're playing a FPS on a console, then everytime you get shot you are the victim of an aimbot.
I stand by my earlier comments. Sony must either enable homebrew or it will be enabled later without their consent. This is not difficult:
First, make a homebrew/hobby developer package and sell it. The SDK and hardware provided ABSOLUTELY MUST be absolutely identical in every way to that supplied to commercial developers. Pricing should be high enough to make a direct profit (Since there will be fewer games sold for these units), but low enough to be obtainable. Say, $1500-2500 or so. There should be no software support entitlement (to control costs), and a non-disclosure agreement on any proprietary technologies in the SDK.
Second, make a homebrew/hobby version of the PSN. There is already a developer version of the PSN, and this would ensure that everyone stays separated. Access to the homebew/hobby PSN must be conditioned upon acceptance of the non-disclosure agreement. Then create some message boards or forums in the PSN. This would enable the hobby/homebrew programmers to communicate with and support one another while being assured they are in compliance with the NDA. Consider allowing commercial developers access to the hobby/homebrew PSN as well, so if we find anything interesting they get access to it too.
The third item is the only item that is really new. There should be some sort of release mechanism where games can be released from the homebrew/hobby community to the rest of the world running retail hardware. This shouldn't be free - Sony needs to pay their bills, and it would discourage releasing crap that sucks. Homebrew releases should be prevented from generating profit for the programmer, to keep commercial developers from using the homebrew SDK as a cheap substitute for the commercial SDK. The homebrew developer would pay Sony's QA costs, and once the QA passes, the release is cryptographically signed and becomes a free item in the PSN online store. If the game has serious commercial potential, perhaps an agreement could be made between Sony and the programmer for a full commercial release, with Sony keeping the majority of the proceeds. This is so there is an incentive for upgrading from the homebrew SDK to the commercial SDK if you are interested in making a profit.
It is of EXCEEDINGLY VITAL importance that the only difference between a commercial SDK and homebrew SDK be the software support entitlement and ability to generate a profit.
If there are ANY technical limitations in the homebrew SDK that are not present in the commercial SDK, people will be motivated to jailbreak, and we will have the present situation all over again.
As long is there is no reason to jailbreak the machine other than piracy, everyone wins. (Except the pirates, and nobody important cares about them.)
In addition, the presence and popularity of this homebrew/hobby SDK would also give Sony more credibility when prosecuting pirates.
Because of the removal of the "OtherOS" option, Geohot can claim he was just restoring functionality that people were already licenced to have. It can be circumvention, if its restoring a feature you paid for. He could claim he was repairing the system.
This is going to throw a serious kink into the case, something that Sony has never had to deal with before in court. They may not even want to see it get to court.
Anyone who is a serious enough PC gamer to look down on consoles should be experienced enough to know that the "aim-assist" console gamers get and an "aim-bot" are two incredibly different animals. Like the difference between getting barked at by a poodle and getting subjugated by Penny Arcade's Dickwolves.
but then that ps phone come outs sony case will be even weaker if they try to use hackers.
"However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it."
Oh sure. Now replace "extracting the key" with "breaking into your house" and replace "don't support piracy" with "leave the door open for others". Hey, i can't be held responsible for what others do after my actions!
Sony is not pleased and is very keen on defending their poorly defended system with the US legal system.
Can we just stop this already? I'm tired of this terminology being used when it comes to PS3's protection schemes. It only took, what, more than 4 years for anyone to break through. I wouldn't call that POORLY DEFENDED.
I am all against DMCA but the stance of geohot is completely irrelevant. It is like RIAA saying that DRM is made to protect the rights of the customers, when we all know what it actually does.
So they will just remember to disclose any future hacks anonymously?
It's easy to trash talk how awful the ps3 security systems are, but let's get real. The general assumption is that if the hacker has full physical access to the machine you can kiss it goodbye. In the ps3's case, all the interested hackers in the world had physical access to the machine and it took them years to break into the machine the way they wanted to. Not only lots of nerds, but lots of serious criminals interested in selling pirated games with real financial resources and something serious to gain from breaking in. So trash sony all you want (and I don't deny that they are d-bags of the first order), but I'd be pretty damn pleased with myself if I could build a system that could withstand years of physical-access break-in attempts.
That's what happens to me everytime i read news about Sony, it makes me happier, happier that i decided to NOT BUY A SINGLE SONY's PRODUCT, they don't sell you the product, they sell you a "PERMISSION FOR USE UNDER THEIR CONDITIONS". Welcome to XXI century, you don't own anything anymore. Sony does the same that other manufacturers do (Smartphones, consoles, etc).
I only own a PS2, and just because my girlfriend bought it for me as a gift.
If it wasn't him then it would have been somebody else.
You know, I play on Steam, with the PC version. I've seen speedhackers and aimbots before. I ban them quickly, by STEAMID, after saving the evidence in a demo file. While it's not perfect, they would have to buy another game on another STEAMID to cheat.
Come on Sony, I'm trying to give you a hint on free money, and how Valve turned cheating into a small cash cow that only hurts the cheaters and everyone else wins.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you have some kind of legal right to reverse engineering the things that you buy, then tell the whole world about it. You do not have such a right in the USA, because we have the DMCA, which makes it illegal to tell the whole world about it. Sure, you can reverse engineer your PS3, in the comfort and privacy of your home, and then use it to do whatever you want...but if you dare tell anyone else what you did, you are breaking the law.
Palm trees and 8
In civil law, anyone can sue anyone else for any reason. It may be determined to be a nuisance lawsuit, but it is still a good way for companies with lots of lawyers to scare individuals in the USA.
It doesn't matter whether what he did is found to have been illegal or not. There are repercussions in publishing things that someone doesn't want known.
In the future, I'd recommend publishing this sort of information anonymously from a 3rd party country and do everything over a VM running TOR. For God's sake, don't use a well-know alias for yourself either, much less your real name. Heck, publishing this from Japan would have been funny to me, assuming you could find a friend there willing (probably not).
Lastly, for your own protection, publish everything on freenode and let some trusted folks in multiple other countries know how to access the data. A security researcher should know this stuff.
Of what this sort of thing did to Dreamcast. That system was bomb man, great games internet access comparable to PC for the time (I was introduced to mIRC that way through the DC browser to irc0.dreamcast.net.. I started my online experience that way too through Quake and Unreal Tournament.. but because the DC was largely unprotected and mind you Sony certainly didnt make the same mistake, but the result could be the same. Dreamcast eventually declined after piracy of all their titles ran rampant. The same could happen to PS3 but I think as well it could have the opposite effect and actually increase sales of the PS3 because of its open endedness atm.
When you dislike the human race as much as I do, Karma:Bad is inevitable lol.
"However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it"
REALLY, I love those people who pirate movies, video games, hack systems and release it to the public and say that they do not condone piracy. "Here, take this. I do not condone you doing that. Here, use hacks in that video game. We do not condone you doing it, but we produce this for money so..." You realize that that is not a possibility and he will most likely lose this case. What he does with his PS3 is his right, when he releases that to others it is no longer within his legal rights. You can say all day that you do not support piracy, but if you are a pirate it means nothing, just more hot air coming out of your mouth.
Your confusion seems to arise from the fact that you believe that you own your computer; Sony clearly believes otherwise. Your PS3 is still theirs, in their world view, just like your laptop became theirs the moment you decided to play their music CD. You engage in unauthorized PS3 access by using it in a manner they do not like -- you know, on in which they are not making money.
What's that? The law is supposed to protect citizens from this? Oops, we don't like in the 18th century anymore, this is the 21st century, where we have a long legal tradition of laws that ensure that big businesses remain big and profitable.
I really do hope that Geohot wins this case, I just won't be holding my breath.
Palm trees and 8
I would think however that part of the PS3 is not an effective measure since it is not an good implementation of de ecDSA algoritm
This is not true; the implementation of ECDSA verification on the PS3 appears to be completely correct. The screw up was internal at Sony; it looks like someone just made the easy mistake of confusing a unique, random, secret number with a part of the private key. What I cannot understand is why Sony didn't use the OpenSSL or NSS implementations of ECDSA, which have been reviewed, tested, and attacked by professionals.
Palm trees and 8
Anyone who is a serious enough PC gamer to look down on consoles should be experienced enough to know that the "aim-assist" console gamers get and an "aim-bot" are two incredibly different animals.
So... "Aim-assist" locks on to targets for you, so you don't have to aim, and an "aim-bot" does the same thing...
I don't think they are different animals at all. An aim-bot doesn't require any aiming at all, and aim assist requires you to point your weapon in the general direction of the enemy.
It's the difference between having a machine aim for you, and having a machine aim for you after you aim in the enemy's general direction... Not so much a difference at all considering that any console playing noob can aim in your general direction to enable their "aim-bot". So, basically, it's the same thing.
Once you reach a certain level of skill the aim-assisting aim-bot will actually hinder your aim. It's hard to compensate for lag or projectile travel time when a game changes my aim for me. Additionally, most console games do not let you disable the auto-aim.
Case and point: I'm trying to shoot the strategic target -- an enemy that is carrying a more lethal weapon than the enemy that just charged past him brandishing a knife. The auto-aim decides that I would rather shoot the closer yet harmless moron that is almost in my sights than the enemy sniper that actually is in my sights, thus throwing off my aim by locking onto the less lethal target, and I'm killed by the sniper. The knifer continues to charge towards my dead body exclaiming, "Tea Bag Time, Biach!" and is killed by the trip mine that was protecting my position... WTF is the purpose of securing my position or keeping my cool and choosing the strategic target if the Auto-Aim-Bot won't let me aim where I want?
Auto-aim is why I don't enjoy console FPS games -- that, and the inability to configure my controls the way I want them.
Sony advertised a feature and sold consoles under the guise you'd have that feature, and then removed that feature.
that constitutes false advertising, deception in eu regulations, and eu would shove it up sony's ass.
it shows the decrepitude of american system in that false advertising, deception, bait and switch, are acceptable and 'legal' practices.
Read radical news here
George Hotz's work has been mirrored by Carnegie Mellon professor David Touretzky, known for his excellent work towards freedom of speech on the Internet through his publication of The Secrets of Scientology. Dave Touretzky has repeatedly shown himself willing to accept whatever the MAFIAA et al will throw at him.
"The Highlander Defense!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The difference between aim assist and an aimbot is that aim assist doesn't lead properly, as you suggest, while a sufficiently good aimbot does. Although truly, the fashion in aimbotting is to use weapons that you don't have to do ballistics tracking on, because it's easier to do and harder to defend against even with another bot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Remember back when the US government made it legal to jailbreak your iphone?
I'm going to laugh my butt off when the government rules it legal to use these keys for the same reason.
Sony can still easily PSN ban anyone using the hacks and aimbots you're so worried about. Just like Microsoft can on LIVE. Now please stop whining and ranting against the hardware being opened up for people who bought it to actually use it as they wish.
Section 1201(f) of the DMCA grants an exemption to the anti-circumvention provisions for interoperability.
Would that apply in this case? Does anything released by Fail0verflow or GeoHot allow piracy of game titles?
IANAL, can anyone who knows more about this stuff than me see a reason why a S1201(f) defence wouldn't apply here?
...or the kitchen knife? Because they help to facilitate crimes every day. Maybe they should be sued too!
Actually, Sony had announced they were removing OtherOS from the slim in August/September '09.
It angered hackers who didn't see why it needed to be removed, since it added no extra cost (as a software feature) to the console. In fact, it was only present on the "Fat" PS3 consoles when GeoHot announced his memory glitch exploit.
Another interesting fact in all of this is that GeoHot **HAD** the master key from that exploit. He didn't reveal it and pretty much left the scene at that point, only to return in full force when the Failoverflow guys made their big splash at the CCC over Christmas break.
I have some suspicions about some goings on behind the scene, but I'd prefer not to voice them and give Sony hearsay evidence of questionable veracity; nonetheless, GeoHot's exploit did allow hackers more access to the inner workings of the system. The release of the Jailbreak Exploit gave an unprecedented level of access to hackers, who were free to explore and map syscalls deep into the hypervisor. The Jailbreak dongle was a fairly clever combination of an entirely new exploit accessable with Sony's Service Jig mode. It is reasonable to assume, though not for sure, that GeoHot's exploit allowed the Jailbreak engineers to find that exploit.
GeoHot's stand against piracy is well known in the scene, and for Sony to pursue him like this is a bit ridiculous, but I expected this from the moment I first saw the CCC vids and the keys started getting published. Sony is no longer run by "hardware guys" - it's run by the people who came up from the ranks of the movie and recording industry arms of Sony. Their mindset is to sue first, ask questions later. Their case against George Hotz is full of holes that nay competent defense lawyer will drive bulldozers through and clean up.
Not to mention this is going before Judge Seeborg, previously heard of in these circles for his Facebook case - where the little guy won against the big guy. If he understands the technical issues at hand (as he seems to), and isn't bought off by Sony (which they WILL try and do), Sony doesn't stand a chance.
I am not a lawyer (yet... hopefully next week, though,) so this isn't legal advice as much as a deconstruction of their complaint. In terms of mistakes, their first mistake was to sue the members of fail0verflow. It's true that one of them lives in the US, but three of them live in Europe, where the courts are extremely protective of their own citizens. They're gonna have problems with the fact they are trying to sue them under the DMCA (not applicable in Europe), service of process (to serve process on them will literally take months, and if they mess it up, the foreign court could ignore the judgment), proper forum (they say that the EU members have signed a TOS with SCEA, when logic would dictate, seeing as they live in Europe, that they signed one with SCEE, and so they should technically be sued in London or somewhere like that), and personal jurisdiction. They also have to contend with the DMCA exceptions.
The first claim for relief involves the DMCA, which I never studied in law school, and so I'll defer to people who actually know that to explain why that claim wouldn't work. The second claim is where things start to slide into the realm of insanity. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was a law designed to make it illegal to break into systems that the person DOESN'T OWN. Breaking into your own system (just like breaking into own house), is not supposed to be illegal. So, the only way that this claim would work is if Sony had an ownership interest in the PS3 that they sold you. The fourth claim is rather similar, just based on California state law. The seventh claim for relief is where they go into some strange parallel universe. There, they claim trespass. Trespass is when you invade someone else's property. But how could it be their "property" when they sold you the system? After all, the UCC's implied warranty of title gives any good-faith purchaser for value a clean title to the goods they have purchased. They did access the system, but they bought the system. This means that once you buy the system, you own what's in the system. Well, not everything, mind you, seeing as Sony still owns the actual copyright to the software on the system, but you get the point. What they are essentially claiming here is that the EULA that they require to sign before using your PS3 gives them back an ownership interest in the system sufficient for them to be able to raise trespass claims.
Normally, this kind of thing is dealt with through an EULA (meaning, hacking is a breach of contract), but here they seems to be claiming that the EULA grants them an actual ownership interest in what they sold you. If they were to get relief on those claims, what's to stop others from including contracts included with what they sell you from saying that to use what they have sold you, that you must acknowledge them as the owner of what they just sold you? I dunno, this just seems like another chink in the very concept of private property. Oh well, discuss.
Sony should just open source the sucker!
"However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it."
Did you know that Frank Castle takes a constant stance against murder? Just sayin'
I'm that mad. I'd been disgusted with Sony since they started infecting people with malware on purpose but this is over the top.
If somebody wanted to organize a destruction of Sony products which they legally own and paid for, I'd donate a few pieces of classic early-70's Sony hifi gear. I'd also throw in a 2 week old purchased PS3. The games themselves might be better simply dumped in used game stores.
A 'burning' probably wouldn't be very good to the environment friendly with all the plastic. You could burn cardboard boxes that the products came in, or perhaps there's some industrial-strength trash compactor that makes a dramatic image to get the point across.
Clearly PR is the only language these people understand.
They'd get VAC banned in a few weeks either way. The only problem is false positives, like steam detecting something like HLDJ or some other mod that isn't used to cheat.
This is going to turn out the same as the Xbox Mod Chip lawsuit. The guy did not know what others did with the keys. Extracting them is not illegal because they were in the system. As long as he wasn't using them to create fake signed games then he did nothing wrong. In the AV community these are the people that find flaws or viruses and get paid by the companies because they helped identify a problem. In the video gaming industry people who find was to break the security of the console are considered pirates. Somehow I see a problem with this view.
homebrew enabling your Wii lead to mostly homebrew being used, as opposed to the homebrew enabling exploits being used mostly for piracy (there was of course some piracy, but most had Homebrew Channel and a handful of games/emulators before tracking down pirated channels)
According to someone I spoke with on fedora-legal, the vast majority of ROMs run in an NES emulator are pirated.
Here's a real-world analogy to the world as Sony sees it:
Sony will sell you an automobile, however, you are only licensed to drive it on certain roads. In the future Sony will sell you new Road Packs at an additional charge. You may not purchase road non-Sony approved Road Packs. Also you are not allowed to modify the engine, tires, or any other aspect of your car except with Sony Authorized Replacement Parts at Sony Service Centers. Sony may, at its discretion, provide new engine firmware with proffered "improvements" along the way which you must accept or lose access to all Sony service. They may also download additional restrictions to disable your car if you attempt to drive on unapproved roads. Finally, although your car was originally certified for off-road driving and you may have purchased it in part based on that ability not offered by other cars, that ability has now suddenly been removed with no compensation for this loss by Sony. Now have nice day or we'll sue your pants off.
Would you buy that car? Would you feel bound to those terms after you "owned" that car?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They have not sued either George Hotz or Fail0verflow members. What they have done is file a motion for a TRO -- a Temporary Restraining Order -- which means most of the comments here are way off point and off target. None of the claims are things that will necessarily be added to a lawsuit, rather it's the kitchen sink approach, which is the standard MO for almost any legal accusations. In the event of an actual lawsuit, Sony will likely pick and choose its charges a bit more carefully to prevent anything from being potentially invalidated, including its EULA and/or the DMCA.
Here's what I'm wondering:
1) What is the function of a restraining order, and should they be used to allow companies to gag the public ex post facto? The damage has already been done here, and nothing George Hotz will do in the future will make it any worse than it is right now. While he *could* release a Custom Firmware (CFW) that enabled wholesale piracy, his first release deliberately excluded the requisite system calls. Further, he's stated that he won't facilitate piracy , and there's no reason to believe he actually will. IMO, this is a frivilous request, which makes it an abuse of the court.
2) Will Sony actually sue George Hotz, or anyone else? I think that's extremely doubtful. The case they have is extremely tenuous. First, the system has been unlocked, but nobody has actually created a circumvention device (other than the unrelated "PS Jailbreak" USB sticks) to allow piracy, which makes all of this one step removed. Second, it could be a public relations problem if a giant corporation seen to be abusive. Third, actually bringing this case to court could, as described above, put their EULA and the DMCA in jeopardy. Are software-based circumvention devices free speech? What about "homebrew" software, which is all that these efforts have allowed so far? I don't think Sony really wants these questions answered. What they want is to use intimidation tactics to try to frighten people into compliance.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
5 years of effort to crack it doesn't seem like it was that 'poorly defended'
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Well we have FPS with mouse and keyboard. The last bastion of superior PC gaming :).
the PS3's security barriers changed dramatically following the removal of OtherOS
If this can be shown, perhaps the game vendors, which in theory stand to suffer from illegal duplication, have cause against Sony.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
GeoHot's stand against piracy is well known in the scene
Yes, it is. He is in full support of it.
Here's just one choice quote from his blog, which he has now made private. You can google the full quote if you don't believe me.
"If you are willing to open up your system, learn some electronics, and solder, perhaps you deserve free games."
Every time I start to remember how good they were once upon a time they do something like this!
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Pedantically speaking, most homebrew for hacked consoles is GPL and thus 'free'.
"Free games" should not be construed to mean "Pirated commercial games."
The way I read that statement is as follows: "If you are willing to learn about how that console works, spend time trying to modify it so that you can write and your own software, perhaps you are deserving of the free games that others who have gone that route have made."
Is it now?
I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I am an expert in this field. And you're missing something vitally important. It does not decrypt a copyrighted work: it's a code-signing key.
It is not a device to circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work, but a very small number that is quite explicitly and directly the key that lets you sign software for the purposes of interoperability with the PS3 hardware platform, and something that actually lets you sign your own software. The DMCA has an exception for this. The Library of Congress acknowledged as such when they explicitly enumerated that exception in the case of jailbreaking a mobile phone.
Geohot hasn't published anything that directly allows piracy. You'd have to write/distribute a backup game loader. He hasn't.
The key is too short to copyright, and there is no creative work in a crypto key. It is not patented, and cannot be patented. It has not been claimed as a trade secret, and in any case is not protected as one as it was not stolen or leaked from Sony, but was calculated using published techniques using a well-known attack on all DSA algorithms that anyone could replicate.
I don't think there is actually any post-DMCA caselaw on a case directly analogous to this one: because on the previous occasions I know of that code-signing keys have been published to open closed systems, nobody has bothered, or dared, to bring a case.
Were it an encryption key rather than a signing key, then the AACS key (09 F9 et al) would be the closest analog. They did not do very well.
But this is a signing key, explicitly something which is the exact thing you need for platform interoperability. If anything is intended to fall within the exceptions in the DMCA, if the exceptions are to have any legislative meaning whatsoever, then they apply to this. If they do not apply to this, then I would be very interested to know of any scenario whatsoever under which the exceptions would apply: and would be very interested to know the Library of Congress' reasoning for stating that the same scenario on another closed platform, the iPhone, is somehow any different.
Plus, of course, Geohot's well-known and unquestionable motivation was not, and never has been, piracy, but the reintroduction of features which were removed from later versions of the console (which, ironically, prompted Sony to become more aggressive and try to retroactively remove the features from future software versions).
I may be a layperson but I think Sony is desperate, hasn't thought this through, and may well be opening itself up to counterattack - not to mention pissing off all the hackers even more, which is likely to make the situation rapidly even worse for them.
In other words, entirely what I expected: Sony are reacting in blind panic.
So, the response is as expected: "This lawsuit is stupid", "Sony caused this to themselves", "They are an evil megacorp and should be hated"
What is Sony supposed to do?
Congratulate him? Send him a cake? Thank him for unlocking to true potential of their property? Obviously those ideas do not make money, which if memory serves, is the point of businesses. Suing seems very logical in my opinion, if you owned a company you would want to protect your interests too.
Geohot did nothing wrong, all he did was alter HIS hardware. This fact in my opinion should be and I believe is legal. The problem is that he shared it with the world. A proper analogy would be buying a gun, leaving it in a public area. Later that day someone is killed with the misplaced gun. Is the person that bought the gun liable? Yes, that is called gross negligence. While he may be against piracy he has enabled the world to do as such. If he was sued for each individual instance that his code was found on an offending system then so be it, he didn't commit the crime but he enabled it.
I'm tired of people expecting the ability to play hacked games is a right, its not. So for every one of you that says I want to run legal home brews, there are 100s of people who want the ability to play hacked games. I'm one of those weirdos who think people should be paid for the art they produce.
Finally, you all have the ability to never buy another Sony product ever again, and that is the most powerful weapon you have, because a corporation cannot survive without people purchasing their goods.
It worked already, the http://geohot.com/Motion%20For%20TRO.pdf and http://geohot.com/Proposed%20Order.pdf links are currently returning 404 (;-))
--dave
The *last* thing I want to get is Goatse experience points!!!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Unfortunately, it's not on the box. I searched every inch of my PS3 box looking for some mention of OtherOS or the ability to run other operating systems. It's not there. :(
However, it did come out of the mouth of many key executives over the years.
Erm, no. These are complex systems. Even early systems like the ZX Spectrum (or Timex as it was in the USA) had a long production life - from 1982 to 1990. This was powered by a piddly little Z80 processor. Later software on these systems was significantly improved compared to earlier releases, eventually doing things that you wouldn't really expect from a computer that had less transistors in it than the clock generator on a modern motherboard (Z80 - 8500 transistors. CY2292 clock generator - 9271). It should be possible to wring more performance out of a modern console every year for quite a span of years.
The real reason for the dearth of titles? Content production costs. Major game titles are now easily up there with movies in terms of production budgets. Voice recording, motion capture, artwork, storyboarding, modelling. A major title is a multimillion dollar investment. A far cry from the times when a couple of kids working in their bedroom could produce something as addictive as crack in their spare time and make their fortune. It's all very well to say "focus on fewer, better titles", but the risk is already sky high, which is why you get an endless parade of sequels and formula games ; I'm sure developers want to be working on better content, but it's what they can get an advance for. The only developers innovating are the indies, and to a lesser extent, the PC developers - and they don't have the budget for "impressive".
All other consoles - Playstation, PS2, Gamecube, Wii, etc, were cracked and modchiped to play pirated games. And now we have first ever console cracked to install Linux. Bullshit.
Does the recent jailbreaking exemption (made by the librarian of congress) apply here? It's conceptually the same thing, a device that GeoHot et al owned that they in turn uncrippled... Was the exemption broad-based or only meant to apply to mobile devices?
What if the EFF or another firm helps him pay legal costs to fight this?
What the geek wants when he goes into court is a brass band, a calliope -- and the pro bono attorney who will tell him what he wants to hear.
Which the EFF will be more than willing to provide.
Sony asked for an ex parte decision on the part of the court, and got one. That is, they asked for the restraining order without giving Geohot a chance to respond, claiming irrepairable harm. This is often done in cases where secrets (ie "trade secrets") are involved, or when the target of the injunction could damage the assets while the court mulls the issue over.
In the internet age, secrets are the first against the wall. Even so, the defense "money cures all harm" doesn't correct "continued damages". Aye, "the damage has already been done", but it's still *being* done, by their lights.
I don't agree that their asking for an injunction will help Sony, but absent that they don't have a lot of recourse other than smiling sheepishly and saying, "we lose".
What kind of mindset do you have if you equate "free games" with "non-free games without paying"?
There are tonnes of free games out there, but Sony won't let you play them (anymore). In this case, fuck Sony -- if you bought the console and can manage to mod it to play the free games instead of those that Sony makes money on, more power to you.
You write well sir, and hope you enjoy working with our law.
I think we'll see the introduction of leased consoles with hardware authentication, encrypted filesystems including separate distributed filesystems, game capability synchronized with the cloud, and the whole lot replaceable by courier in half a day. Ninety-nine quid* a year, fiver* a week for the games, rolling hardware upgrades for free! Roll in TV/Movie rental (and if they were clever a payment/banking system) and rent the platform like a drug. One to five years away?
I wouldn't use it, but then I read /.
*I'm Irish, but I do enjoy the English language.
science in government
So... "Aim-assist" locks on to targets for you, so you don't have to aim, and an "aim-bot" does the same thing...
rabble rabble rabble yuck yuck yuck
FYI, your whole post is retarded bullshit!
K thnx bai
I only play FPS on the PS3 which have a hardcore(without aimbot) mode.
Because of the bad analog sticks and the stupid thumb control, I am looking forward to Move FPS like Modern Combat and Killzone 3.
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/SonyvHotz-19.pdf
Geohot's fighting back.