Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates

Sam writes "A former Ubisoft exec believes that Sony will not be able to combat piracy on the PlayStation 3, which was recently hacked. Martin Walfisz, former CEO of Ubisoft subsidiary Ubisoft Massive, was a key player in developing Ubisoft's new DRM technologies. Since playing pirated games doesn't require a modchip, his argument is that Sony won't be able to easily detect hacked consoles. Sony's only possible solution is to revise the PS3 hardware itself, which would be a very costly process. Changing the hardware could possibly work for new console sales, though there would be the problem of backwards compatibility with the already-released games. Furthermore, current users would still be able to run pirated copies on current hardware." An anonymous reader adds commentary from PS3 hacker Mathieu Hervais about Sony's legal posturing.

Comments

Evil commenting on evil

[RogueyWon]

I must say, it does feel like having an Ubisoft exec comment on the chances of Sony being successful in combating piracy feels a bit like having Sauron publish an article on Voldemort's chances of taking over the world.

He's probably right, of course. A software-only hack is very bad news indeed for Sony. It's worse news than such a hack would be for Microsoft. Why? As TFA notes, Sony probably will be able to catch and ban people with custom firmware who connect to the Playstation Network, just as MS can with users on Xbox Live. However, as an owner of both consoles (who has no strong overall preference for either), I can fairly confidently say that Xbox Live is a much more central part of the whole "360 experience" than the PSN is to the PS3. It's not that Sony haven't put a lot of time and effort into improving the PSN - it is certainly far better than it used to be - but it still feels like something that sits off to the side a bit from the PS3's main functionality, while a 360 without Xbox Live feels fundamentally incomplete.

As for a new PS3 hardware iteration to solve this - I just don't see how, short of sending some kind of self-destruct signal to every existing PS3 out there (and I don't think even Sony would go that far) they could plausibly make that one work.

If Sony has one sliver of hope left, it's that the extremely large size of many of the big-name PS3 games (and hence the time and bandwidth needed to download them), combined with the relatively high price of writable blu-ray media, will still act as something of a deterrent. Of course, lots of big-name cross-platform releases like the Call of Duty games are basically identical to the 360 versions and could probably fit on a DVD.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[mprinkey]

Large downloads are a potential impediment to piracy, but with the ability to run unsigned code, it can likely run backup manager with an ftp server that can be used to move games directly onto the PS3 hard drive and run from there, not unlike the current situation with JTAG 360 systems now. Therefore, bluray blank prices aren't going to be an issue.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[RogueyWon]

Yes, true, I hadn't thought of that. Though in that case, hard disk space may well emerge as the alternative constraint.

Still, for a pirate who downloads a couple of games a month, plays through them and then discards them (you almost certainly won't be doing online play on pirated games) this is not going to prove a huge barrier.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

I'm pretty sure everyone who is pirating ps3 games are putting them on hard drives. The cost of dual layer blue ray burners is itself prohibitive to the types of people who are too tight to shell out a reasonable $80 for a good game.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[GrumblyStuff]

A software-only hack is very bad news indeed for Sony. It's worse news than such a hack would be for Microsoft. Why? As TFA notes, Sony probably will be able to catch and ban people with custom firmware who connect to the Playstation Network, just as MS can with users on Xbox Live. However, as an owner of both consoles (who has no strong overall preference for either), I can fairly confidently say that Xbox Live is a much more central part of the whole "360 experience" than the PSN is to the PS3.

I'm sure they're making a note of that for the next console and future PS3 games (as much as PSN allows).

It shall be a sad day when I see console owners having to input serial numbers to play games.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[jools33]

I think Sony will only use this as a learning exercise for the PS4, which cannot be so very far away now - any kind of hardware fix to the PS3 will screw the vast majority of PS3 owners - and would be commercial stupidity.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Raxxon]

Hump the large downloads. Here's how it will go down:

Rent or borrow game.
Go home, load game to external HD via a Backup Manager (see existing Jailbreak configs)
Take external HD to PC, use tools available to modify the backup into a "PSN Download" style software package.
Take external HD back to PS3, install game package to system.

External 1tb+ drives are somewhat cheap, getting 500gb drives for the system itself isn't that hard... When you don't want to play the game anymore nuke it from the Console, but you can still "reinstall" it from the external HD.

Things of course will get really nasty when they work some magic with the custom firmware aspects and actually get it to access CIFS shares. Just dump the images out to network after they're created and install across the wire whenever you need to do a reinstall...

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

... hard disk space may well emerge as the alternative constraint.

Except it costs about $120 to upgrade the HDD to 1tb (the $100 drive doesn't quite fit)

I would think a lot of people knowledgable enough to implement the software hack are knowledgable enough to upgrade the Hard Drive as well.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anss123]

you almost certainly won't be doing online play on pirated games

From the summary: "Sony won't be able to easily detect hacked consoles".

To prevent online play Sony will need to determine if the console is compromised. This isn't entirely trivial. MS manages somehow but I believe it takes about month or so before they catch you.

Note that if you hack a Xbox 360 to play pirated games, and then play a legal game online, you'll still be blocked/banned if discovered.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

It shall be a sad day when I see console owners having to input serial numbers to play games.

Just get rid of the discs and tie all games to an account, Steam style. That gets rid of a lot of the issues. Steam is even more convenient than using discs, while at the same time probably being even more "secure". We're already halfway there, as you can download games tied to your account (and actually can have your account on up to 5 PS3s, so I put my account on my little brother's PS3 so he can share my games) but obviously not everyone has internet, and HDD costs/sizes are still not quite there for being able to store every single game+updates on your console yet, but I hope with the next generation that they'll have a lot more games available for download rather than on disc.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kyz]

Sony could potentially stuff the genie back in the bottle.

The first step is a new firmware update, and make it mandatory to be allowed on the PSN. This will force the hand of most actual gamers. Perhaps there's even an option for Sony to force a firmware upgrade without user acceptance - we'll find out soon enough.

The firmware update will start verifying against a new Sony public key, and will only allow the old key for a whitelist of known past titles. So homebrewers can sign anything they like, but this new firmware won't run it.

Sony will start signing new titles with random numbers as well as the private key, so the private key remains private.

There goes softmodding.

"Ah", you say. "What about hardmodding? Because Sony can't update metldr with a firmware update, we can just rewrite the firmware on the flash chip, and metldr will accept our key, so we can change any stage of loading after bootldr/metldr."

But, you neglect that Sony could update metldr. The fail0verflow people said they couldn't, because they reasoned that as metldr is encrypted with a random key that's burned into the console at the factory, Sony couldn't update it en-masse. However, all Sony need to do is to pull their database of "what key was burned into each PS3 at the factory", and add code to their firmware that gets the PS3's serial number, sends it to Sony, and in return gets a firmware update already encrypted for that console.

metldr is only use to load firmware, which Sony never allows downgrades on, so it only needs to accept the new signature on firmware, not the old one. Now homebrewers and pirates are SOL, there's not even a hardhack that'll work.... unless you avoid Sony's network like the plague from this moment on, until modders come up with a fake update that convinces Sony you've upgraded, but you haven't really.

Meanwhile, in the factory, they keep on making PS3s but they change the firmware signing key. That's all that's needed.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere that when playing online on the 360, the console sends some sort of CD Key unique to that cd, if the cd is used on too many consoles (or more than one at a time) the copy is assumed to be pirated and the console playing the game, modded.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[zero.kalvin]

I have some questions here, and Correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the Xbox hacks so far are hardware ? Isn't this easier to detect than the compromised key of PS3 ? I mean you are not changing anything with the console itself, you just know the specific key that allows you to run your homebrew/pirated code. I can think of some ways to detect pirated games, but i think it would be far fetched. And do they have any legal stand that forbids you from running homebrew ?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[JackOfAllGeeks]

allow the old key for a whitelist of known past titles

Depending on how the whitelist was done, couldn't a softmodder just have his code say, "oh, yeah, I'm [some whitelisted game]. So use the old key for me"?

all Sony need to do is to pull their database...

That assumes that such a database exists, which isn't necessarily true. And if Sony is sending that data over the Internet, it's just a matter of poking around the updating code and listening to the netwiork traffic, and then the hackers could have Sony kindly supply them with the factory key of any system they have an identifyer for.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Cruciform]

From what I've heard on forums, every time you turn on the PS3 it tries to connect to PSN and let it know what game IDs have been run.
So if you run some homebrew code they will see an unknown code and from there banning your MAC address on PSN is trivial. If they did remote destructs that would be the end of Sony as a company.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Raxxon]

It would destroy my use of my PS3 as I don't have it connected to the internet. Currently it's sitting at a friend's house because he's addicted to GT5 and doesn't have internet to be addicted to WoW like I am.

It would **WRECK** the use of the consoles in a "game room" environment, such as found at a large number of conventions around the world. Console rooms don't "need" internet access for most of them to hold tournaments and such. Force the issue there and you're going to lose fans across the board.

Metldr is signed with one key. It's a universal. If they 'invalidate' that key it keeps the system from running Metldr which means no firmware loads at all. If no firmware loads at all because of something Sony did I see something really nasty happening... They just destroyed my $300+ game console. Given that the system isn't booted far enough to have network access (or probably even the network hardware initialized) it's pretty well impossible to force a Metldr key change like you suggested for the Software key.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[pspahn]

I don't think it's really ethical to force a firmware update on someone without giving them the chance to accept it or not. For whatever reasons there are, you should always allow the user to avoid a potential brick by letting them choose when to update.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[jonwil]

With the release of the metldr key, every single piece of code that runs on the PS3 CELL CPU (with the exception of a few really low level bits) can be changed in any way you want. This includes every single piece of code that talks to PSN.
No matter what Sony does, it will be possible to make the PS3 answer with the right answers.

This is why the PS3 hacks is far more difficult to detect than the XBOX JTAG hack (on the XBOX, large chunks of the OS and kernel aren't under hacker control AFAIK)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kyz]

This is Sony we're talking about. They don't know the meaning of the word "ethical".

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

The first step is a new firmware update, and make it mandatory to be allowed on the PSN.

You mean the new firmware that hackers can take apart fix and sign at their leisure, the one that need to be signed with known root keys ?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Yvanhoe]

Note that if you hack a Xbox 360 to play pirated games, and then play a legal game online, you'll still be blocked/banned if discovered.

Which may not be legal everywhere. I mean, I doubt they can detect that you hacked your xbox for playing pirated games. They can detect you hacked it, but by itself this is not necessarily a problem.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anss123]

Isn't this easier to detect than the compromised key of PS3 ?

The compromised key is not enough to play pirated games. You will also need modified firmware, and while modified firmware can hide that it's modified, it’s not entirely trivial. Sony will probably be looking into ways of detecting modified firmware.

And do they have any legal stand that forbids you from running homebrew ?

I do not think they can legally disable your console, but they can legally ban you from PSN (whenever you mod your console or not).

I can think of some ways to detect pirated games, but i think it would be far fetched.

Blue-ray disk may have unique serials, if so they can detect if multiple consoles use the same serial.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, the full 360 games available for download from xbox live are all about 2 to 3 times the price it is for a used copy on a disc from just about anywhere (UK) . And if you download the game you can't resell it once you're not playing it anymore. And if you're xbox dies (yeh when does that ever happen? /sarcasm ) and you get a new console, they're tied to the one that downloaded it so will only work while you are online.

does my head in if my internet goes down, all my xbox live arcade games stop working.

yes i could phone up support and get this changed, no i can't be bothered to sit on hold, no you can't fix it online.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Obyron]

The vast majority of 360 hacks are firmware hacks. It's essentially a change to the dvd drive firmware to tell it not to check if the disc is signed or not.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[bryansj]

You are forgetting that Sony has said from the beginning that they have a 10 year plan for the PS3...

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[bryansj]

IIt's not that Sony haven't put a lot of time and effort into improving the PSN - it is certainly far better than it used to be - but it still feels like something that sits off to the side a bit from the PS3's main functionality, while a 360 without Xbox Live feels fundamentally incomplete.

You mean you don't fire up the PS3 and go straight to PS Home? (Does that even still exist?)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kyz]

allow the old key for a whitelist of known past titles

Depending on how the whitelist was done, couldn't a softmodder just have his code say, "oh, yeah, I'm [some whitelisted game]. So use the old key for me"?

No. The signature verification stars by SHA-1 hash of the executable itself. This is what is "signed".

The whitelist would be a list of SHA-1 hashes.

SHA-1 is still secure, in that it's not possible in any reasonable time to work out which few bytes you would add to the end of your homebrew that would transform your homebrew's SHA-1 hash into one of the hashes on the list.

all Sony need to do is to pull their database...

That assumes that such a database exists, which isn't necessarily true. And if Sony is sending that data over the Internet, it's just a matter of poking around the updating code and listening to the netwiork traffic, and then the hackers could have Sony kindly supply them with the factory key of any system they have an identifyer for.

Not quite. This is what's called a collusion attack, and we don't know if it's possible with the encryption algorithm Sony used, because we don't know what algorithm they used (yet) - we haven't seen bootldr.

It would be nice to have a plaintext of metldr, but we don't have that - only George Hotz does, and even then I suspect he only has some of it, not all of it.

If Sony pre-encrypt all metldrs handed out, and all console-specific keys were random (i.e. not generated based on the serial number), there's no way to map serial number to console-specific key without Sony's database (presuming it exists).

If we can't work out the encryption used on metldr, and we can't get a plaintext of the updated metldr Sony hands out, then we can't reverse their encryption mechanism and therefore work out the console-specific key for any given console.

So, our only hope is to find out where the console specific key is stored, and to become able to extract it in future. Once we have that, we can encrypt our own metldr, which is easily accessible on the flash chip.

Furthermore, if we try and work out the encryption based on large numbers of requests to Sony's update servers, they potentially could detect us and start serving us phony updates, which would scupper our attempts (and would also entirely brick a PS3 if they mistook a genuine PS3 updating)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Schadrach]

The current PS3 hack consists of being able to sign software to appear legitimate to the PS3, and a small firmware hack that enables a dev console option to allow installing signed code to the HDD from USB media.

This can only be used for piracy in a manner similar to PC game rips -- you have to rip the game to HDD then crack it's executable. It would be easy to detect the use of a pirate game for online play, at least for new games -- require some hash of the executable be sent ot the game server.

Technically they could detect the hacked firmware by doing the same with the FW itself, but since all the hacked FW does is enable the option to install packages and has nothing to do with actually running them once installed, all one would have to do is upgrade to the jailbroken firmware, install whatever you want to install, then go to the recovery menu and reinstall the official firmware. Homebrew/pirated games still run under OFW, they only require the hack to be installed in the first place (and then only because the "install properly signed program from USB device" device is disabled on retail consoles).

Really, I don't think this will lead to as rampant piracy as everyone thinks -- the jailbreak dongle allows easy piracy, the 3.55 FW hack requires actually cracking the game executable to remove disc checks and redirect IO from /dev_bdvd to /dev_hdd0 (which frankly any multiplayer game should do a hash check on it's executables anyways, which would catch that).

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[bryansj]

Most of the downloads aren't even huge. Most cross console ports are on par with the 360 games, about 8 GB. I saw a download for GT4 and it was only 23 GB. Still, they would most likely be stored on HDD and not Blu-ray discs. It is just that the download size isn't going to be much of an issue with a decent internet connection.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely

having a unique CD key for each CD means that you can't mass produce them, which would massively increase the costs
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Compact_Disc_manufacturing

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Tomun]

It shall be a sad day when I see console owners having to input serial numbers to play games.

That day is already here. I had to type in a serial number when I installed Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit on PS3.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[JackOfAllGeeks]

Sorry, ignore me: not enough coffee this morning. Somehow read your first comment to be saying that Sony would be sending keys, not pre-encrypted metldr's. Which, of course, would be really stupid for Sony.

Still, it assumes that the factory-key database exists; it's possible that those unique keys were never meant to be refreshed or recovered, in which case having the database would be a waste. I guess we'll find out, if Sony decides it's worth it to try and fix this that way.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[bryansj]

The games would be on external drives and copied to whatever internal drive you currently have. Once you start filling up the internal drive you start deleting ones you don't play as often, but they still reside on the external drive. External drive space is cheaper.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Many people, including myself, like to own what we buy.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[bryansj]

Really, I don't think this will lead to as rampant piracy as everyone thinks -- the jailbreak dongle allows easy piracy, the 3.55 FW hack requires actually cracking the game executable to remove disc checks and redirect IO from /dev_bdvd to /dev_hdd0 (which frankly any multiplayer game should do a hash check on it's executables anyways, which would catch that).

That just means the 3.55+ game downloads/torrents will already be cracked. Not everyone will have actual disc in hand trying to make a "backup".

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Raxxon]

Until you get to nasty little gems like FF13, where basically half of the disc is high rez video. Yeah, they dropped from 1080 to 720 to make the 360 version and then further compressed it (which is why it was 3 DVDs instead of more) but "if it's out there, people will use it". That and Sony is wanting to hump HARD for 3d gaming and movies. That's going to double the video density by itself when they start shipping.

Also, not everyone is "blessed" enough to have unmetered access for the 'net. Add on top of that ISP's suddenly seeing a OMGWTF upswing in a few specific users data volume to grab these 8+gb monsters...

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[quintin3265]

This whole situation could work out in the best way possible. If Sony is going to release a new hardware update, it will probably cost close to what it would cost to simply move up the Playstation 4. Releasing a Playstation 4 with backwards compatibility and a new DRM scheme both moves Sony ahead of the competition, and eliminates this piracy problem in the long term. The opportunity cost of reassigning all the engineers who are surely investigating the next generation right now into attempting to fix this problem could be devastating, and hiring new engineers unfamiliar with a system that needs to be fixed immediately is unlikely to succeed.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

That's an example of a bad way of doing things.

With Steam, you can choose for certain games to run in "offline mode". I haven't used Steam for a few years so I don't know if this has changed recently.

On the PS3 and Wii, you can play all your downloaded games while offline.

I recently bought an Xbox too, though I've only bought one Arcade game so far, and thankfully my net connection is fairly reliable. I wasn't aware they wouldn't work without a net connection, it's definitely a situation where cracking games starts to become morally acceptable. For example on PC I used to buy my games legally but then download the NoCD crack so that I didn't need to have the disc in the drive despite all the content already being on the HDD.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, good point, I picked up Portal from steam recently and that does indeed work offline, which is awesome. Never bought anything on my wii or ps3 so I didn't realize the games would still work offline.

The 360 downloads will work if they're on the same console you downloaded the games on.
I have been through a number of xboxes (RROD) and eventually got an elite so had to transfer my content from old drive to new one in elite. This means it isn't the same console that downloaded the games, and therefore needs to be online to play them. Its fair enough and completely understandable, but the failure rate means it's still very annoying.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[MemoryDragon]

Hey, this guy knows what he is talking about he has pissed off more legal customers in the history of gaming than everyone else. No one has done more successfully to implement a customers playing your game prevention scheme then he did. So give this guy some credit he definitely has something worthwhile to say :-)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Truekaiser]

the reason xbl is so central is the games are purposefully crippled to need it to either access unlock codes for content made when the game was made and then locked out by a executive decision later. or to download content made when the game was made but cut out of the master disc to force those who get the game to use xbl to get it while spending a additional 10 to 15 bucks to get it on top of the 50+ dollar game.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

Well, we don't always get what we like.

What difference is there between "owning" a game and having it on your Steam account? You'd really prefer to install 100 games one at a time from the disc every time you get a new PC or console, rather than just log into your account and having a game downloaded and installed with a couple of clicks?

Tying purchases to an account (completely independent of hardware, of course) is a great idea. It makes things even more convenient than the old way of doing things.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[PopeRatzo]

not unlike the current situation with JTAG 360 systems now.

If I search for "JTAG" on Bing will Microsoft send someone to kill me?

I can't believe I just hesitated before googling "JTAG" on Bing. Am I paranoid or just cautious?

(yes, I know I just said "googling"... on "Bing".)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Moryath]

Just FYI,

the one you linked to won't fit either.

PS3's require a 9.5mm height drive. All the new 1TB's, as you point out, use the 12.5mm height that won't fit in anything but very specific Macs (not even an HP or Dell laptop's drive caddy will accommodate them).

the largest drive you can fit into a PS3 is currently 750GB. Which, let's face it, is PLENTY of space to load a library of games to.

On the other hand, word is you can load any game without a file in excess of 4GB (filesize limit of FAT32, for some strange reason the PS3 will only accept FAT32-formatted external storage) directly to an external hard drive and just play it from there.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

Yeah, my first PS3 died last year (after about 3 years of use), but you can register your account on up to 5 machines at a time. As long as the account is registered on that PS3, you can play the games whether you're online or not.

I think I'm actually at my limit now though, so if my current one or my friend/family's PS3 with my account on it dies, I'll probably have to phone up Sony to de-register the dead ones.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly what they want, no pre-owned market, no ability to give away or sell games etc. This isn't what the consumer wants, and why bigger titles in the PSN don't sell particularly well. When we have Steam-like only console gaming, consoles will be a tiny market compared to today's billion dollar empires.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[omglolbah]

Or demand for such discs and burners will increase and finally make them semi-affordable ;)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Inda]

I can and do download 14gb per hour. I know other people who do so faster. It's no different to the 230mb (65 x 3.5mb) game rips we used to download back in the days on 56k. Hey, maybe a new scene will popup where all the media is compressed or removed from PS3 games.

USB connected hard drives are cheap, cheap, cheap.

I can't see a massive problem with 50gb downloads.

I don't own a PS3, nor do I want one.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

If they update code without my explicit authorisation, that is a breach of the Computer Misuse Act in the UK.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, true, I hadn't thought of that. Though in that case, hard disk space may well emerge as the alternative constraint.

I don't think it's too much of a constraint. Hard drive space is cheap these days. For the price of one game ($60 or so), you should be able to upgrade the PS3 to 500 GB. Even assuming the full Blu-ray capacity of 50 GB per game, that's 9 games on the console at a time (theoretically 10, but you would want some space for saves). And for less than the price of 2 games ($100 or so), you can get a 2 TB drive to jam into your PC for long-term storage of another 40 games or so.

Instead, the biggest constraint is most likely to be bandwidth caps. For US-based Comcast users, they're limited to 250 GB which would work out to 5 games per month (less in practice since presumably they want to do other things with the connection, too). However, with 64 GB USB flash drives going for around $110, I could certainly imagine a lot of downloading and trading going on as a way around download caps.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hairyfeet]

Question: Why would you bother to hack YOUR x360? Already banned X360s can be had for quite cheap on craigslist, hell many of them with "back up" games already loaded. So why would you risk boning your XBL account and go to the trouble of hacking your console when you could just have a second one for pirated content?

I would say this is one area where the advantage will be to Sony. The market simply isn't nearly as flooded with PS3s as it is with X360s and MSFT's ban hammer has made pirated consoles a dime a dozen. While there is also the issue of downloading BD rips VS DVDs which will add up quick if you have any caps, and most folks don't have BD drives in their PCs to rip rented games (although that can be gotten around for less than $100 now).

Of course what I would say is the biggest advantage over the X360 is something I bet Sony isn't really happy about, and that is that most folks I've met with a PS3 don't actually game on the PS3 hardly at all. They buy the few PS3 exclusives like God of War and most of the time they are just using their PS3 as a BD player. Now to be fair from what I've been told the PS3 is still the best BD player bar none, but I kinda doubt that was what Sony had in mind when they put the BD into the PS3. Maybe it is just me but everyone I've met with a PS3 also had an X360 and THAT was what they did all their gaming on, preferring XBL over PSN.

In any case I think we can all agree killing OtherOS painted a big red bullseye on the PS3 and it looks like that dumb move is gonna take a big old bite out of Sony's bottom line regardless.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[metamatic]

Sony could potentially stuff the genie back in the bottle.

Maybe. The story so far suggests that an essential part of that would be re-supporting Linux on PS3, and adding a channel for homebrew. If they were willing to do those things, most of the people with the technical skills to keep breaking any new protection Sony rolls out would probably move on to doing what they want to do with the console. In other words, Sony could work with the hacker community instead of picking a fight.

Unfortunately for Sony, I don't think they're that smart.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost.

On the existing hardware a simple NOR/NAND replacement chip used for the initial boot but not the verifying stage can always be used to gain control and run old (thus hacked) loaders.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say, it does feel like having an Ubisoft exec comment on the chances of Sony being successful in combating piracy feels a bit like having Sauron publish an article on Voldemort's chances of taking over the world.

After reading this I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of vagina's suddenly cried out in terror and then slammed shut.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Moryath]

Mostly, MS catches people on "hacked" Xbox360's by catching them playing games that they shouldn't have yet (like when a certain Call of Duty game got leaked early).

There have been rumors that they also managed to code a check in for "modified drive firmware", and checks for various cheat-hacks on certain games. And of course there was the famous standbying cheat...

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[ciderbrew]

If I had points I'd mod that as sad :(

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[ciderbrew]

for the last 4 years you'll be able to buy a game for the ps3 and ps4.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[drinkypoo]

You'd really prefer to install 100 games one at a time from the disc every time you get a new PC or console, rather than just log into your account and having a game downloaded and installed with a couple of clicks?

I'd prefer to have games I can install when I can't reach Steam. I'd prefer to have games that will still work after Steam is a fading memory.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Moryath]

They just assume every hack is instantly for piracy. Which is a little silly.

Is there piracy out there? Sure. On the other hand, I was using a couple of old Xboxes (original not 360) I'd gotten at a flea market, softmodded and loaded with XBMC, as nice little network video frontends for a good long while. Can't remember when the last time I ever played an "official" game on them, though I did have some fun with xDuke and xDescent for a while (and yes, I bought original copies of both years ago) - and the hard drives were tiny as fuck, so there was no point "ripping" a game to hard drive anyways.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kyz]

On the existing hardware a simple NOR/NAND replacement chip used for the initial boot but not the verifying stage can always be used to gain control and run old (thus hacked) loaders.

No. You're referencing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVXfgg7otJw#t=31m18

The revocation list is useless, but it does nothing to help us if metldr is updated with a new key and refuses to run something signed with the old key.

The revocation list's uselessness also does nothing for us today, because we have something even better - the current lv0/lv1/lv2 signing keys. This is what we will soon lose.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Greetings from Latin America!

Down here, most of the piracy is in the form of someone selling a pirated DVD right on the street. Maybe simply because $80 is not a reasonable price for a game (BTW, the PS3 costs $800 here, instead of the US $200). We're also not allowed to join XBOX Live or PSN even if we pay for it. You have to lie and sign up as someone from US. For XBOX live, you have to pay using a xbox live prepaid card - they won't take your Visa because it was issued outside the US/EU/ETC.

And before you say anything, keep this in mind: Movie tickets cost $3 here and the release date is usually 1 day before US (premieres here are thursdays). So if Hollywood can lower their prices to match what the market can pay for, then why can't the video game industry do the same? BTW, PC games are much cheaper than console games, at about half the price. They're expensive, but still more reasonable than console games.

The whole piracy thing is a fuckup from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc. who keep insisting that "developing countries" like the ones from latin america are too poor to afford their systems, except for the rich people, so they keep their prices really high - assuming that only rich people, who can afford them, will buy them. Well, this isn't true. Most people buy grey-market import consoles which cost half the price and come already chipped.

So considering all this, will you tell me why sould I care about getting a $800 console (almost 2 months salary), pay $100 for a game, and be told by sony/MS "we don't allow your kind here, get the fuck out" on PSN/Live. For me, piracy is a form of boycotting sony, for treating me like a second-class citizen.

Keep all of that in mind before thinking people who pirate games are just "cheap".

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

>If they update code without my explicit authorisation, that is a breach of the Computer Misuse Act in the UK.

Aha! Clever bastards. The ps3 used to have linux capabilities in order to qualify for the lower import tax on computers compared to game consoles, didn't it? But now it isn't a computer anymore, so it can't breach the Computer Misuse Act... ;)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[migla]

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, though... :)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Isn't this easier to detect than the compromised key of PS3 ?

The compromised key is not enough to play pirated games. You will also need modified firmware, and while modified firmware can hide that it's modified, it’s not entirely trivial. Sony will probably be looking into ways of detecting modified firmware.

I have to wonder how they will detect an updated firmware. It seems that the only method Sony has of detecting a modified console is looking at logs the console may send to their servers. And anything the console may send could easily be emulated by a homebrew firmware.

The only solution I could think of would be if the console sent the firmware's checksum (or likely some other hash, a simple version check won't be enough as that is easily spoofed) to their servers. This code would have to not only be stored in ROM, but would have to run before the modifiable firmware booted. However, I highly doubt this would be the case; even for the overly-hyped cell processor, calculating the firmware's hash every time on boot would introduce a very noticeable startup lag... and it would have to be a non-trivial hash to prevent the hackers from just making their firmware have the same one. Which means they would cache the hash somewhere writable, and then we're back full-circle again.

Please, if you think I'm wrong or have other ideas on how Sony could detect modified firmware in a method that couldn't just be emulated by the hacked firmware, let me know. It's an interesting thought experiment.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It's not that Sony haven't put a lot of time and effort into improving the PSN - it is certainly far better than it used to be - but it still feels like something that sits off to the side a bit from the PS3's main functionality, while a 360 without Xbox Live feels fundamentally incomplete.

I would disagree you with about how much effort Sony have put into PSN. In my opinion they are substantially behind Xbox live, largely because of their conscious lack of investment in their network. That said, I would agree that PSN, though it is an important part, is not central to gaming the PS3, .... ....except for one thing: Trophies.

If you want trophies, and if you want your gaming level, you have to be on PSN. Personally I think this alone will be enough to blunt custom firmware adoption significantly.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anss123]

The way I think it can happen is:

1. Sony finds some way to detect that your firmware is modified.
2. Consoles are banned.
3. Hackers respond.


Then it cycles back to 1.

Though this only has value if hackers can't easily fake the uinique ID of the console.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Duradin]

If 99.99% of hacked consoles are used for piracy it wouldn't be silly to assume that any particle console was hacked for piracy. Even if only 50% are used for piracy it wouldn't be silly. Pirates (warm up your mental gymnastics pirates) cost them money, so even if the hacked consoles aren't predominantly for piracy as long as a significant number are it isn't silly to think hacked consoles are for piracy.

I have a DS and a CycloDS card. All my games are played off that card. All the games on that card are rips of the actual carts I own (not borrowed or "backing up for a friend", never once "previewed" or downloaded a game) and still have physical possession of and I don't see Nintendo thinking that flash carts are for piracy as a silly thing. I don't pirate but I am an exception not the normal flash cart user. Nintendo taking measures to stop flash carts will hit me but they are rightly aimed at the pirates.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[TheCRAIGGERS]

First, PS3's are US $300, not $200.

Second, I can't help but feel you're comparing apples to oranges here. Hollywood cutting the cost of their movies is easier- there is little to no "product" to store, ship, or manufacture. Even before the advent of digital projectors they use in theaters now, creating and shipping ONE reel is pretty cheap when compared to the profit to be made. Compare this to games and consoles, where an actual product has to be first manufactured, then shipped, then stored somewhere. By the sounds of it, there isn't enough potential profit to be made for them to risk it, especially if they feel the pirates will only undercut them anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your plight. It's just that while I'm sure greed factors into the equation, I don't think that's the only variable.

Also, how do you know those movies in the theater aren't pirated?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[thegarbz]

It'll come with an offer you can't refuse. Like being unable to play all future game releases. I can't remember the last time I bought a game for the Wii that didn't require a firmware update. A very large number of people own PS3s primarily to play games, and an update condition on some new release would wipe out many PS3s from the piracy pool if it worked.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[GIL_Dude]

I agree that prevention of the resale market is a plus for the publishers of the games. Many / most of them have wanted to prevent folks from doing that and erode the "first sale doctrine" (US anyway) to the point where the publishers still control it even though you "bought" it. This actually goes for books as well as music, video and games. So online "sales" (almost more "long term lease") is good for publishers. In some cases it can be good for consumers (scratched disks aren't a problem), but it is a mixed bag - some good, some bad. In particular though the xbox case you mentioned is not 100% correct. While it is tied to the original, when you get a replacement there is a MS website where you can go to transfer it to your new console so that you don't have to be online. I just had to do that when we had an xbox360 die on us. The process was slow and cumbersome (7 pages of about 9 items on a page to transfer all of my son's map packs and our Rock Band songs). But it does work and enables you to have the new machine own those titles. For some weird reason, they only let you do this once per year. That seems ludicrous to me - what if our new xbox got stolen or perished in a fire? No transfer to a new one for another year.

Anyway, there are definitely pluses and minuses to the download option. Heck, with all of the "extra value DLC" you have with games today that you can only get with a serial number a lot of the secondary market is already eroded even with DVD.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't update metldr because:

1) metldr is encrypted and signed with a per-console key
2) metldr's plaintext also includes per-console private constants
3) metldr is only present in one place in flash and changing it is a huge bricking risk
4) they can't implement a mandatory on-line per-console update procedure because updates need to work offline for new games
5) they don't have the infrastructure to do that anyway
6) there is no way to get the per-console key from a console, even from the metldr level itself
7) they never planned for any of this and probably don't even have a database of the per-console keys anyway

Without being able to update metldr, they're screwed, because metldr is the root of secrecy and trust on the console. Old metldrs must be able to decrypt new firmware. That means all future PS3 firmwares, and, by extension, all future game encryption keys, will be decryptable using the metldr keys, directly or indirectly. Once you can decrypt games and firmware, you can patch anything you want to patch.

Sony has permanently lost the entire population of PS3 consoles to hardware mods, and they have permanently lost all secrecy in present and future games and firmwares.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[PhireN]

The PS4 should already be in a reasonably late stage of development, any major changes to the security system would drastically push the release date back.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[thunderclap]

Those who disconnect from the internet won't ever get caught. Surly it can get updated now with a internet connection. Personally I am surprise someone hasn't set up a separate server for it. (I don't have one so this is a thought. I refuse to buy new sony until the apologize for the rootkit. Since it is more likely for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bathe in pigs blood than this to happen, I don't buy anything they produce. Hell even their movies I get from redbox.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Think of that one all by yourself, did you?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

IMO if the "bigger titles in PSN" were priced more reasonably (publishers must make crazy profit on brand new games - often I wait for games to get down to 50-75% of the original price before buying, unless I know I'm going to be getting a very good game), and people had more HDD space, I don't think it would be an issue.

Actually, thinking about it, the used game market is probably contributing to some of what makes the current market so crap:

1) People probably buy potentially shitty games without even trying the demo, knowing they can just sell it on. Maybe they even know the game is shitty, but are just playing it to boost their gamerscore. I've heard that some people actually do that, farm gamerscore. This results in less demos being produced, and even shitty games still getting sales.

2) People buy games at prices that they don't actually think the game is worth, knowing they can sell them on. Maybe one person buys a game at £40 and then sells to someone else for £20. Even if both people have only paid £20 each, this perpetuates individual games costing £40, which must be an insane profit margin considering games often come down to £20 within a few months. If all game were £20 instead of £40 at launch, I bet there would actually be more initial sales of the game overall, and therefore more word of mouth which would create even more sales (assuming the game is actually worth it).

I often wait until games get cheaper before buying them, unless I know they're going to be very good games, which I can only really know by playing a demo or by word of mouth. I don't think the real issue here is being able to sell on games, I think it's games being too expensive to begin with. I never sell on games, as I pay what I'm happy to pay to play them, and if they're actually good games then I will want to play them again from time to time, or share them with friends (which you can still do with a decent made online system - I have some of my games on my flatmate's PS3, bro's PS3, and soon I'll register my account on my sis's new PS3, so she'll be able play through Monkey Island 5 and a whole bunch of other games).

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

Heh, I see I repeated myself there. That's what I get for going back and rewriting sections of my posts.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[PhireN]

Implementing a whitelist is going to be hard, because there have been so many releases that its simply impossibly to fit the entire database into an isolated loader, and streaming one in leaves more room for bugs to creep in.

And updating metldr will be a nightmare, current the update process is entirely offline, because not everybody has their console connected to the internet which means Sony have to remove yet another feature. And Sony is not going to want to do that until they have worked out how on earth geohot exploited metldr for its keys, which is probally why the Temporary Restraining Order is demanding that he should turn every single computer or disk that he has to sony. Also, there is no way to revoke metldr. If you have a valid metldr for your console you can downgrade.

So yes, it might be possible for sony to patch things up, but it will be really, really hard.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing people say "Sony will ban modded consoles". How does Sony ban a console? They do it via a serial number on the console... the serial that's reported by SOFTWARE on the console... the same software that can now be replaced.

Sony is truly fucked here. The PS3 will trust anything that's digitally signed correctly - and now the private keys are out there. It's not even a mod-chip that would require someone to physically modify their console. It's that you now truly own your console and can tell it what to do, and what to report to Sony.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

So tick them to work in offline mode, and they work forever (at least on that machine, and possibly if you just copy the Steam folder to another computer, I haven't tried).

And with a company like Valve, I'd really expect them to release a tool to free all your games if/when they go out of business. The fact that they got there first and have such a good system makes it seem likely that they'll be around for a good while yet though.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Even still, I agree with Martin Walfisz : SONY are a bunch of terrorist commies.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[drinkypoo]

So tick them to work in offline mode, and they work forever (at least on that machine, and possibly if you just copy the Steam folder to another computer, I haven't tried).

They work "forever" until something goes wrong with Windows and you have to reinstall either Steam or Windows. They do NOT work if copied to another machine (Steam exists to provide DRM, duh) while furthermore, you cannot install Steam without access to their servers, and finally, you cannot play a Steam game "backup" until you have installed Steam and had it blessed and updated by the servers. I note that you haven't tried but you felt qualified to comment, anyway.

And with a company like Valve, I'd really expect them to release a tool to free all your games if/when they go out of business.

Your naivete would be charming if it weren't so fucking tiresome. When Valve fails (and they will eventually, the only question is how eventually) they will be purchased, and the new parent company will have no reason to release those patches. If they release them they will be forced to support them at least in some jurisdictions. Easier for whoever buys the IP to simply tell all of Valve's old customers to fuck off. If they go bankrupt the situation is even more dire because giving away the codes when you know you're going bankrupt is just stealing from the state by devaluing your company's assets, so to do so at that time is to risk actual jail time (it's not like Valve is part of the status quo like Halliburton or something.)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anss123]

I mangled that post. Left out "timing attacks", i.e. a modified firmware may use shorter/longer time on certain function (games will likely be executed from HDD, so there will be opportunities to see if things happen too fast or slow.)

My main point however was that Sony needs an effective way of banning consoles without hurting legitimate users. If console IDs can be spoofed then Sony might not have the luxury of banning.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kenshin33]

well the console is certainly yours, but the service is theirs ... and they can refuse service to anyone for anything (you can still may be sue them if you want for discrimination or something but that's not a certain win). And it is somewhere in the ToS of Xbox live / PSN.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[tepples]

I can't see a massive problem with 50gb downloads.

Not everybody is willing to move to a neighborhood where home Internet access like yours is available.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[kyz]

Nice post!

1) True, but doesn't make updating metldr impossible if Sony kept a copy.

2) True, but doesn't make updating metldr impossible if Sony kept a copy.

3) It is, but Sony are happy to make their customers' Windows PCs vulnerable to viruses in the name of DRM (XCP scandal). Even Nintendo were happy to brick Wiis in pursuit of locking out mods.

4) There's no reason why Sony can't have two separate paths: compromised firmware with old keys for offline updates, plus uncompromised firmware with new keys for online updates.

5) If the alternative is games and media publishers abandoning their platform, they now have the incentive to build the necessary infrastructure.

6) There is no currently known way, correct.

7) That's a very large "probably" and whether Sony can recover control of their platform hinges on it. If there's the slightest possibility they can do it, they will.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Large downloads are a potential impediment to piracy, but with the ability to run unsigned code, it can likely run backup manager with an ftp server that can be used to move games directly onto the PS3 hard drive and run from there, not unlike the current situation with JTAG 360 systems now. Therefore, bluray blank prices aren't going to be an issue.

We are already getting hosed on bandwidth caps, and you want bigger downloads? Which ISP do you work for?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[tepples]

The 360 downloads will work if they're on the same console you downloaded the games on.

Once a year you can transfer this license to a new console.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[tepples]

And with a company like Valve, I'd really expect them to release a tool to free all your games if/when they go out of business.

What evidence has Valve given us that such a tool is in escrow?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[StayFrosty]

...tight to shell out a reasonable $80 for a good game.

I've been playing games since I learned to read and I have yet to find a game I would consider $80 a reasonable price (Collector editions, etc... aside.) Half that is more like it for a new release. I'm primarily a PC gamer and I refuse to buy a new game if it is over $50.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[VGPowerlord]

the largest drive you can fit into a PS3 is currently 750GB. Which, let's face it, is PLENTY of space to load a library of games to.

Remember, some PS3 games are dual-layer Blu-Ray. Those can be up to 50GB in size. And when you realize that, 750GB doesn't seem all that large any more.

I'm not sure what the largest PS3 game is, although I've heard that Metal Gear Solid 4 is quite large.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[shentino]

If you want to nitpick I'd rather say that until their OtherOS enabling firmware gets replaced, they are still computers at the moment Sony pushes the new update.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

I note that you haven't tried but you felt qualified to comment, anyway.

That's because I used to use Steam, and it was fine for me. I did just copy over folders sometimes to stop it having to download content, and I'm pretty sure you could still run the original Half-Life direct from the executable, but I understand that things may be different with more modern games.

If Valve were bought over, the new parent company would likely continue running Steam. I've just had a look at the Steam forums to see other people discussing this scenario, and I think that makes sense.

If you want to talk about naivete, try Googling "Steam crack" and you will see that it doesn't actually matter what Valve or any other company deos with DRM. If you really want to get rid of it, or download games without DRM, you can do that. Valve know this, but they also know that for those that want to do things to be what I'd consider the "right" way, Steam is a great system. Personally I do think that since they have such a strong stance on DRM that they would actually release an official patch to remove their own DRM if they went down, though obviously I can't know for sure. But I don't see the point in being bitter and cynical about everything in life. Some companies do actually have people like you or me running them, people who actually care about what their customers want. If they get bought over or get a new CEO or whatever then that could change, but right now things are good, and we know how to handle it if things turn bad.

This all only applies to single player games really anyway. With multiplayer games you're at the mercy of individual companies' servers, unless again you want to crack the game and run unofficial servers.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when PS3's start getting bricked. Because sony needs more of that right?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

I don't think there is any solid evidence, though this interview at least shows that they try to keep the customer in mind when designing their DRM. I really wouldn't be surprised if they did have a mode they could leave the server in that would unlock everyone's games, and just leave it in that mode for a week if they had to close down for whatever reason. Or of course if they somehow get bought over, the buyer would probably keep Steam running anyway, as it's a very profitable service.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Yvanhoe]

If 99.99% of hacked consoles were used for piracy it wouldn't be silly to assume they are by default, but it would be illegal to prevent lawful users from accessing some services.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[tlhIngan]

The vast majority of 360 hacks are firmware hacks. It's essentially a change to the dvd drive firmware to tell it not to check if the disc is signed or not.

The only unpatched hole in the Xbox360 is the modified drive firmware. And yes, Microsoft *does* detect that! (It's also not a terribly interesting hack since it is only enables backups - you cannot run unsigned code).

The other hacks, including JTAG hacks, are also detectable by Microsoft. If you watch the presentation or see the slides presented on the PS3 exploit, you'll see that there are relatively small areas where the Xbox360 was actually broken open (JTAG hack and one other hack, besides the drive hack), but were promptly fixed and modified machines cannot be connected to Xbox Live anymore.

But the PS3 hack reveals a key with high enough priviledges that it's practically impossible to revoke and was never meant to be updated. It also means that multiplayer gaming on PSN is pretty much compromised - a sufficiently capable custom firmware and do very convincing lies to both PSN and the game.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Compare this to games and consoles, where an actual product has to be first manufactured, then shipped, then stored somewhere.
But grey-market importers can do it. Why can't Sony?

Also, how do you know those movies in the theater aren't pirated?

Because the tickets have the INCAA approval (Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales), the local MPAA equivalent.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[StikyPad]

the extremely large size of many of the big-name PS3 games (and hence the time and bandwidth needed to download them)

(20 gigabytes) / (50 (megabits per second)) = 54.6133333 minutes

the relatively high price of writable blu-ray media

Blu-rays haven't been a part of playing backups to date. Thus far, the only decision is whether to use the internal drive or an external USB drive.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[IICV]

This can only be used for piracy in a manner similar to PC game rips -- you have to rip the game to HDD then crack it's executable. It would be easy to detect the use of a pirate game for online play, at least for new games -- require some hash of the executable be sent ot the game server.

How is that easy? If I have control of the console, I get to determine what it sends to the server. That means that I can make it send a fake hash of the real executable value. It's actually pretty much impossible to verify that a computer under someone else's control is trustworthy - it's like asking a person "are you lying right now?"

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[snowraver1]

Microsoft has a tool that will allow your to transfer your licences from one console to another so that you can still play offline. Try this out.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[gartogg]

But everyone IS willing to copy a game off of his USB drive onto their laptop. Or copy from their friend who got it from him, etc.

And worst case, people used to leave their computers downloading overnight (gasp) to download one of those 5mb massive games like Doom on a 14.4 modem - this isn't different, expect that torrents are easier to use than Usenet ever was - and there is no need to ask for reposts of expired disks.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[CaseM]

Note that Microsoft hasn't had a mass-banning for over a calendar year, now. The last one was aligned (coincidentally or not) with the release of Modern Warfare 2. There was no such mass banning this year. As I understand it, the team that modifies the DVD firmware to enable piracy on the 360 made improvements that render it far more difficult to detect such modifications.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[VGPowerlord]

When Valve fails (and they will eventually, the only question is how eventually)

Yup, just like the one publisher that I saw that published loads of Commodore 64 games in the early 80s failed.

What was its name again?

Oh yeah, Electronic Arts.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[harl]

Your PS3 manual contains instructions on how to install a larger hard drive.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Duradin]

I don't think it's illegal to disallow out of spec devices from accessing a service. It may be your box but it's their service.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

As for a new PS3 hardware iteration to solve this - I just don't see how, short of sending some kind of self-destruct signal to every existing PS3 out there (and I don't think even Sony would go that far) they could plausibly make that one work.

They could make a usb dongle with new hardware DRM for old consoles.

Actually I wonder why noone did this for PC. I know that some expensive software comes with dongles but it would be impractical for every game to come with it's own. On the other hand a large distributor like Steam could pull this off.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[harl]

But, you neglect that Sony could update metldr. The fail0verflow people said they couldn't, because they reasoned that as metldr is encrypted with a random key that's burned into the console at the factory, Sony couldn't update it en-masse. However, all Sony need to do is to pull their database of "what key was burned into each PS3 at the factory", and add code to their firmware that gets the PS3's serial number, sends it to Sony, and in return gets a firmware update already encrypted for that console.

There are quite a few assumptions here. What if they are not true?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[harl]

5) If the alternative is games and media publishers abandoning their platform, they now have the incentive to build the necessary infrastructure.

False premise. The 360 has been owned for years with no damage done. It's still top of the crop.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[paeanblack]

So considering all this, will you tell me why sould I care about getting a $800 console (almost 2 months salary), pay $100 for a game, and be told by sony/MS "we don't allow your kind here, get the fuck out" on PSN/Live. For me, piracy is a form of boycotting sony, for treating me like a second-class citizen.

Keep all of that in mind before thinking people who pirate games are just "cheap".

You could always take your business elsewhere. MS and Nintendo do offer, in the grand scheme of things, a comparable product. Your rationalization of piracy as a just and noble revenge against perceived insults from a Japan/US-centric company is complete bullshit.

You are just being cheap.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

It's easy to talk when you're standing in greener grass.

For me it's insulting that Sony demands that I pay them $800 for something they sell for much less in other parts of the world.

BTW, I don't even have a PS3.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I dl blu-ray movies all the time. Ofc, I get them off usenet...which isn't quite easy enough for the masses yet (and I hope it never is).

720p HD in about 30 mins.....blu ray in 60-90+. But, it wouldn't matter if it took 3 hours. I fill up the hopper and go to work/sleep while it downloads. Just like you said....same as the dial up days...Or maybe we just learned patience back then.

I don't own a PS3 either....but I may soon.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Spykk]

If you can remove disc checks then you can also rig the function that calculates the executables hash to return the original hash instead.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

SONY has zero respect for its customer base. SONY's perception is that the market serves their needs, they don't serve it. They bear an utter lack of humility, and don't belong in a free market. I'd love to see them stuffed back under the rock they came from.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anne Thwacks]

JTag is a technology used for hardware debugging. You as likely to get you into trouble for it as searching for "axe" will get you lablelled an axe murderer.

However, if you spell if "ax" then I personally, will denounce you to the spelling Nazis!

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[genner]

When Valve fails (and they will eventually, the only question is how eventually)

Yup, just like the one publisher that I saw that published loads of Commodore 64 games in the early 80s failed.

What was its name again?

Oh yeah, Electronic Arts.

EA has failed, in oh so many ways.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

"I just don't see how, short of sending some kind of self-destruct signal to every existing PS3 out there (and I don't think even Sony would go that far) they could plausibly make that one work."

Sadly I could probably see them doing it, and then demanding users to pay 250 dollars to "fix" the machine. Say, how did the class action end the last time Sony did something similar to that? :p (Granted that only affected a portion of the consoles out there via the firmware update that bricked a bunch of consoles.)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[badboy_tw2002]

Yay! Can't wait for punkbuster PS3.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Gorphrim]

For me, piracy is a form of boycotting sony, for treating me like a second-class citizen.

Keep all of that in mind before thinking people who pirate games are just "cheap".

You are using their products, so you aren't boycotting them. You are just flipping the middle finger at them by not buying legit versions.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fact that it would need to be backward compatible is what cripples them. Any new hardware has to accept the old key. Even if they tried to run such code in some new form of walled garden, which I doubt they could do without slowing the games, it would open the door to locating new flaws as one would only need to sign their exploit and test until they found a hole in the wall. The issue is the the nature of computers, no matter how much you try at some point you need to allow direct hardware access by some level the OS. I am coming to suspect that even perfect code running on perfect hardware would still be crack-able because of the basic physics involved. You need to move and store energy states, there is no way to move energy from one point to another without creating a detectable change. You are only left with how hard you can make this detection. The problem with that is, no matter how hard you make it today it will be easier the next.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[paeanblack]

There is a cultural gap in play here. I do realize you actually feel personally insulted by Sony's pricing structure, but that doesn't translate here in the US. Business is business; it's not personal. Americans in general feel it's perfectly acceptable for sellers of non-monopolized, non-essential goods to charge whatever price they wish. The idea of one day being the seller of a highly-coveted product is central to the "American Dream"; it's part of our national psyche.

Personally, I think you demean yourself more by resorting to piracy as revenge. The noble response here would be to take your business elsewhere. Perhaps that's considered too passive or cowardly where you are from. Maybe your culture expects a more active response.

Either way, don't expect much sympathy on a US-centric forum. Americans just don't have that honor/revenge mindset about business.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Well they did flip their finger at me when they sold me a product saying I could play on XBOX Live and then it turns out I couldn't.

So fuck them, indeed.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

The noble response here would be to take your business elsewhere.

Yeah? Where? All console makers charge the same price. I should just NOT play games? Should I resort to a Balero (Cup-and-ball) only because that's the "noble" thing to do?

Perhaps that's considered too passive or cowardly where you are from. Maybe your culture expects a more active response.

You, as an american, don't have the moral authority to say that. America is all about suing your way through life. You don't like something? Sue away!

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[h4rr4r]

You keep the game collection on your regular computer, which uses those nice 2TB 3.5" drives. Lots of them. When you want to play a game you copy it to your ps3.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[paeanblack]

I should just NOT play games? Should I resort to a Balero (Cup-and-ball) only because that's the "noble" thing to do?

Only you can answer that question. I don't know what your honor is worth to you.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[h4rr4r]

Everyone I work with has a PS3, not a single working 360. One of the helpdesk guys has a broken 360 that he never bothered to get fixed.

My anecdote cancels yours out.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[h4rr4r]

I would suggest you have someone mail you one from the states. How likely is your customs dept to catch on?

Customs in the USA is a total joke.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[h4rr4r]

Which means when sony decides the PS4 is done you can't play those games anymore. I still play my NES.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[h4rr4r]

Considering the failure rate of 360s that does not seem anywhere near enough.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Sancho]

Once Sony detects a cracked console, they can disable that console. All they have to do is have multiple checks in the game. Maybe the first check gets bypassed and the game can run. If the second check doesn't have to do with running the game--it just alerts Sony that this particular console is cracked--then they can mass ban people.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

OK, I'll feed the troll for a while longer.

You see, the american dream, is something the whole WORLD is shoved down their throat every single day. The fact that I speak english, when I never took english lessons, is proof of that.

So it's not about nobility. It's about globalization. US companies, all the time, keep showing us their stuff. On the internet, magazines, ads, movies, everywhere. They keep telling us that THIS, the american dream, is the best. But then the whole world has to pay for the american dream. To pay for it, you mortgage your house (only americans do that), but then it turns out you can't pay for it - so the whole world enters an economic crisis, because some redneck can't pay his mortgage.

So you see, that's why the whole world hates you. That's why you're the only country that spends so much in war. Thats another part of your bully culture. You say my culture demands a more active action. Yes, we get a bomb in a local jewish bulding. What do we do? A long trial. You get a bombing in NY, and you start a war. The problem is that you, as an US-centric idiot, thinks it's the proper thing to do. It's not. You should just stop messing with every other country and you won't need such a big army.

There's something I don't understand about the US. You see, there's the EU... they are getting together to take some power off the US. You had the chance to make allies with every Latin American nation in the 70s but you just fucked up. Here's how it went. Latin America was a nice place before the end of WWII. That's when the US opened up to the world. From then on, you have crushed our economies again and again, as if we were a competition. By the 70s it was so bad, communism started to appear all over the place. The US was scared about communism, so you made us get De Facto (Military) governments, get a big debt (Brady Bonds) and from then on, just keep us on a short leash.

Why?

It's a huge market. The US could be the leader of a continental block, where everyone gets a benefit, and a huge workforce to stop depending on China for everything.

But you refused to do so, and you lost your chance. Now there's BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The truth is, with the EU and BRIC, the american dream will be just a dream in 20 years or so.

Just because your bully tactics won't work anymore.

Good luck.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[TheCRAIGGERS]

For accusing him of being a troll, your reply sure smacks of a troll, itself. Although for the record, I don't think either of you are. It's an interesting discussion though, and think it should be continued... just with less name-calling on your side.

If you're still reading this, know that we are not our government. And there's not one culture, either. People talk of what it is to be American, and I laugh because the state where I'm from, Michigan, has a fairly large gap between cultures itself. The difference between the west of the state, is wholy different from the middle, which is itself entirely different from the east. And then we have the north, which is again, different. One state, many cultures. And that's not even getting to the culture differences between the states- comparing Michigan to Texas, for instance.

Americans that have a clue already know the 'american dream' is dead, to be largely replaced with the lottery it seems. In fact, most inventors only want to be popular enough so they can get bought out by Google or some other mega-corporation. Not exactly noble-sounding to me, but to each their own.

I don't condone our war-mongering attitude. Nor do I like the fact our government is run by corporations. Most of all, I hate being grouped with those people simply because I was born in the US. THAT is not MY culture. I didn't invade another country, and even if I voted for the guy that did, I don't get to vote on the decisions he makes.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[paeanblack]

There's no question that the US has an extremely ugly history when it comes to relations with Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine was grossly twisted into a license to establish hegemony over the Western hemisphere and join the emperor's club of Old Europe. Half of the current problems in Latin America stem from US meddling. I've lived outside the US long enough to have a realistic perspective. Culturally speaking, we certainly prostitute ourselves to the entire world. We're okay with that; you aren't.

In one breath, you call us a whore and complain that our prices are too high.

What makes no sense is that you, despite all your invective towards the US, will readily sacrifice your personal honor and integrity at the altar of US commercialism. It is, in many ways, a disease, this "keeping up with the Jones'" or "he who dies with the most toys wins". What you don't realize is that you have also been infected, and you are helping to spread it.

If you can't stand Sony's pricing, if you hate what the advertisers are pushing, if you loathe what it all represents, then walk away! Don't become a prostitute yourself. If you have to amuse yourself with a Balero, then do so. Your kids will respect you for it.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you'd read any of the articles or presentations explaining the hack you'd know that this exact method has been shown to be useless.

1) Sony releases firmware that is signed with current private keys (the only way your current PS3 will install it)
2) You decrypt that firmware using the private keys that you have on your ps3 (the ones that sony *has* to sign updates with)
3) You change the firmware to ignore whatever Sony is doing (and simply pull out any new keys they are providing)
4) You resign the firmware, your ps3 cannot tell that it isn't the official one
5) You install the modified firmware and move on with life.

Could Sony stop you from using PSN? Yeah, possibly... Can they stop you from playing new games? not a chance in hell unless they all check PSN connection first

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Em Adespoton]

It would be easy to detect the use of a pirate game for online play, at least for new games -- require some hash of the executable be sent ot the game server.

...except that if people are cracking the game security to begin with, they can easily push a fake hash to the game server. Same goes for a combo hash of the executable and the blu ray serial number -- it can easily be faked.

The only thing that allows them to detect pirated gameplay is that they have some information which remains secret that is required for gameplay -- and that information they were depending on is no longer secret.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Then what do I do to stop it? Give everything up, become a Gaucho and live in the Pampas? Sorry, I can't do that. To compete in today's world you HAVE to be connected.

Even american history has taught me that you should fight for what you think is not fair. Like sitting on the back of the bus if your're a black old lady... or, I dont know? Hacking the PS3 because Sony removed the option to install Other OS to it?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Em Adespoton]

You could also mod your PS3 such that you have a cable coming out of it making your "internal" HD external. Then you can put any size drive on it that you want.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

When Valve fails (and they will eventually, the only question is how eventually)

Yup, just like the one publisher that I saw that published loads of Commodore 64 games in the early 80s failed. What was its name again?

Oh yeah, Electronic Arts.

Very clever, but just because they haven't failed yet doesn't mean they won't eventually.

And yeah, that's a pedantic answer to some extent, but your one counter-example doesn't prove that much either. If we take the OP's comment in the spirit it was intended, then we'll notice that the *vast* majority of publishers around at the time of EA's inception have disappeared, either through going bankrupt (the vast majority, I suspect, in terms of numbers) or by being bought over and merged multiple times.

Good luck in getting a replacement for your 5.25" copy-protected floppy from the company that took over the company that took over the company that got the rights to most of the games of the company that took over the original publisher. Actually, good luck in even having a clue who that would be in the first place! ;-)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

I'm a latin american person - but I'm not a Latino. You know what's a latino, really? A dominican living in Miami... or a Puerto Rican. That's as far as latino goes.

The rest of latin america is SO different. Me? I'm 1,82m (6ft), green eyes, and white. Not quite your latino stereotype. But to the Average American (not literally), a latino is a short brown guy who can teach you to dance (I can't even dance). No one here wears a moustache and a sombrero either.

Latin music? Salsa, merengue, mambo? We know that, and we've been told that those are "latin" rythms. Because of central american influence in the US.

Near my area there are Russian, German and other central european communities. Down south the Welsh influence shows (they even have bilingual welsh-spanish schools).

So the "latino" idea is just a stereotype.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

You have to go pick up your package at the nearest customs office. For me it's in another city. Then you have to open your package in front of a customs officer and show him what's inside. Then you have to pay all the taxes...unless he can find a way to keep you from "importing" the product for some technicality (meaning you have to pay a bribe).

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you're wrong there. Some "backup managers" have a splitting process + putting them back together for games with a single file over 4GB (it splits them into volumes on the FAT32 external drive) and when you play the game, the backup manager rejoins the file(s) (in RAM or drive space internal I don't know) so that lets huge external drives store any game on them regardless of filesize, you just need the backup manager to split the file, how it does and 'when', I don't know, never been in that scenario, research I've done shows this can be done although.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[makomk]

Really, I don't think this will lead to as rampant piracy as everyone thinks -- the jailbreak dongle allows easy piracy, the 3.55 FW hack requires actually cracking the game executable to remove disc checks and redirect IO from /dev_bdvd to /dev_hdd0 (which frankly any multiplayer game should do a hash check on it's executables anyways, which would catch that).

Until someone figures out how to modify the OS or even the hypervisor to redirect I/O at a lower level, yes.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Um yeah, that is the kind of approach that ensures that folks who wouldn't otherwise vote with their wallets actually will. Way too heavy-handed impacting folks who have no part in this. And for a 4 year old console? No. Besides that the hackers would go the route you outlined second to last paragraph.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[somersault]

I still play my NES.

What, and I can't still play my PS3 if I keep it in good condition, or buy second hand units? You don't have to be online to play these games, you just buy them and you're done. The PS3 has a backup and restore option, so as long as you have a working PS3 I suppose you can potentially restore all your games to it.

Besides, you can play NES games on the Wii. You can play PS1 games on PS2, PS3 and PSP, and even play PS2 games on some PS3s, though whatever douche is currently in charge of Sony's gaming division cut out support for that. The PS4 may even play PS3 games if they get their act back together, I can't imagine it would be that hard to do if they stick with PPC/Cell for the PS4 (though of course they may not, everyone makes a big deal about how hard it is to code for).

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

I admit a lot of them are really crap and $80 is just a retarded asking price for them. But then there are games like God of War 3, Resistance 2, etc where I felt my $80 was well spent considering the hours of enjoyment I got out of them (Specially when you consider movie tickets here in this backwater country are $30)

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I wasn't saying you were cheap per se. I was saying 'if you can't buy an $80 game, you likely also can't buy a dual layer blueray burner AND the media to go with it otherwise you would just buy the game because it's easier and cheaper to do'. And I'm betting this holds true even in latin america where despite your argument, ps3 games are still on blueray media and not DVDs which /are/ low cost and easy to produce.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

No one here wears a moustache and a sombrero either.

Surely SOMEONE in Argentina has a moustache :) Also I bet if you looked hard enough you could find a sombrero. I've even found them here in Australia on the other side of the planet. I think you're just stereotyping perception of stereotypes now.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

And before you point out Australia is just a little America and the sombrero appearing here is just America's perpetuation of a sterotype.. I even saw them in Beijing China when I visited there 2 months ago. And in the Philippines.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I am confused by your post. If you're implying that, because you are subjected to stereotypes that I should be as well, I will kindly inform you to go dunk your head in something cold.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Thats why I said people DON'T download and burn their own games here! They buy them on the street, for 10 pesos.

And I'm not sure what kind of prices you're getting...but a BD-R is 20 pesos here, and an original game, 400 pesos. Even if you sell the pirate version for 50 pesos, you get a big enough profit.

BTW, 1 USD = 4 Argentine Pesos.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[anomaly256]

how much is a BD-R *DL*? and a burner that can burn it? Are they actually selling ps3 bootlegged discs yet? Considering that it was not possible to use illegal backups until very recently? And the current jailbreaking methods still require you to copy the bluerays, legitimate or not, to a hard drive in order to bypass the DRM? I guess all this together still means my initial point is correct. People there will be using hard drives if they're playing ps3 backups just like everywhere else. I know you're on a soap box right now trying to attract attention to the unjust situation in your country... but nothing you have said yet invalidates any of my points so please calm down and take your argument to the appropriate venue. Thanks

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Schadrach]

Wouldn't a modification to the FW that caused it to redirect all references to /dev_bdvd to /dev_hdd0 be *bad*? It's not like in the scheme used for 3.55 homebrew you can tell the difference between homebrew, a pirate game, or a legitimate game?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I can right now go to a local store and get a br burner for $115, then buy a small pack of 10 25gb br disks for $10. So literally $1 per disc. So i dont think the would ne a huge problem either. It would pay for itself after burning 2 games.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

Whatever.

As if attracting attention here in Slashdot will make any difference.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[sjames]

They will most definitely bing your google!

Seriously, JTAG is a perfectly legitimate tool commonly used for testing boards and debugging firmware. I've used it to un-brick my WRT54 a few times when I was hacking on the firmware.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[blarkon]

I can't drive a Porsche because I can't afford one. Is your argument that I should steal one?

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hairyfeet]

What does that have to do with banned x360s being cheap and plentiful? What does that have to do with the fact that counting used and refurbs you are probably looking at 3 to 1 on x360 VS PS3 in the marketplace, thus helping to drive used units even cheaper? What does that have to do with MSFT's ban hammer creating a huge pile of pre hacked x360s that you can simply drop your "back up" games on? What does that have to do with DVDs being much easier then BDs to download?

Oh right, absolutely nothing, you just wanted to wave your "I have a PS3" fanboy flag. Well good for you, here is a prize. Of course it doesn't change the fact that part of what I do for a living is help to wire people's homes so they can get the most out of their equipment, therefor have probably a little more experience than you in this area, and have found more than a few PS3s being used almost exclusively* as high end BD players. So enjoy your console and feel free to ring in when you actually have something to say other than "PS3 Roxorz!"

*- Almost exclusively in that with the exception of God of War and a few other first party titles the PS3 just plays BDs. If given a choice between the same game on both platforms I've noticed they will nearly always pick the x360 due to the much nicer multiplayer experience on XBL.

probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

this metldr Key :

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

is static and it is not revocable and even if they change everything that is revocable, someone can start using this key to get the ones after and so on.

Re:probably not

[kyz]

It is probably revocable.

Re:probably not

[Stenchwarrior]

Dear user,

Please do not post that Key again

Sincerely, Sony

Re:probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

probably not

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/01/ps3_root_key_found_-_is_the_sony_ps.html

Re:probably not

[kyz]

From the reddit comment:

There is absolutely nothing Sony can do short of updating metldr

Correct. My contention is that Sony can update metldr, over the internet, without revealing its encryption key.

Re:probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

How could Sony run something on current PS3 with firmware 3.55 without the hackers decrypting, changing as the wish and signing again ?

Re:probably not

[kyz]

Hackers can change any new firmware as they wish and sign it again. This work can then be used by anyone who didn't install it.

If you do install any firmware after 3.55 (which Sony haven't released yet), it will likely a knock-out punch that changes all the keys, including metldr, so your PS3 will be impervious to all current softmodding and hardmodding techniques. And Sony will never inadvertently let slip their private keys again.

Re:probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

Which key?

This key?

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

I ask, because I wouldn't want to accidentally stop posting the WRONG key, now would I!?

Re:probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony themselves posted the key as part of an unsealed exhibit that is now part of the public record. They're equally incompetent at leagl stuff as they are at security systems.

Re:probably not

[anethema]

Unless the exploit geohot used is still there since he has not disclosed it. There could possibly be something done again.

Re:probably not

[HonIsCool]

I'm not up-to-date on the PS3 hack status, but fail0verflow talked about a hardware downgrade during their conference talk. This is what allowed them to claim game-over for Sony, even though metldr wasn't compromised at that point. Is this downgrade also dependent on metldr (or lower) being non-updatable?

Re:probably not

[kyz]

Is this downgrade also dependent on metldr (or lower) being non-updatable?

Yes.

If geohotz hadn't given us the metldr private key, we could not sign our own firmware.

In that scenario, the lv1 revocation list hack would have been useful. It would allow us to install older Sony-signed firmwares that metldr trusts, but then skip the lv1 check that refuses older firmware. If we knew all private keys but metldr (which fail0verflow did), and Sony came out with an upgrade and we applied it, we could still downgrade at a later time to an official Sony firmware where we knew the private keys, despite the system Sony put in place to stop us doing that.

However, geohotz gave us the metldr private key, so we don't even need that. We just write our own firmware and sign it.

To deny us, Sony now have to alter metldr.

Re:probably not

[kyz]

It's possible geohot could dump the public key metldr uses for verification, from any new metldr, but he won't be able to take multiple public keys where Sony used the same random number and turn them into the private key used for signing.

We have the signing key right now. We're unlikely ever to get that again.

Re:probably not

[anethema]

Agreed on that front. Just hoping that having metldr access through his exploit could give SOME higher level access to enable a 'jailbreak' even if we no long have root signing authority.

Re:probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

this metldr Key :

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

is static and it is not revocable and even if they change everything that is revocable, someone can start using this key to get the ones after and so on.

eFUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony's only possible solution is to revise the PS3 hardware itself, which would be a very costly process.

Maybe. Cell has IBM's eFUSE system. It may be possible for Sony to issue a system update which changes the behaviour of all existing PS3s in some way to detect pirated games.

Re:eFUSE

[HonIsCool]

Please don't bring back the old efuse again...Everytime Sony did anything, there was always the ignorant "OMG! They blown an EFUSE!!!111" comments being tossed around, of course without the slightest evidence of it being true (because it of course wasn't)

OtherOS

[Cruciform]

I want my OtherOS back. I made a point of not formatting the drive when applying the update that originally killed it, so it *should* still be there.
I've just been biding my time, waiting for someone smarter than me to make it possible.

The homebrew jailbreak is so easy to install anyone can do it. But I still haven't run into an OtherOS bootloader. Are they out there yet?

Re:OtherOS

[justsomebody]

i just want some decent homebrew audio player, the one in GameOS is pure example how blasphemy can still look good. and maybe homebrew video player which actually supports other codecs and subtitles

Re:OtherOS

[CronoCloud]

and maybe homebrew video player which actually supports other codecs and subtitles

for your pirated mkv anime? Tell the original pirates to use MPEG4 or MTS containers as the gods intended.

Re:OtherOS

[leuk_he]

I was also waiting for a announcement that someone ported ubuntu (ubuntu news makes headlines!) to the PS3 and created a signed bootable disk for a disk3, that has full hardware access.

Re:OtherOS

[Cruciform]

fail0verflow has AsbestOS in the works, but that will just function as a bootloader as far as I know.

A signed LiveBoot Ubuntu would be slick.

Re:OtherOS

[Elbereth]

Why do you want the ability to run Linux on your PS3? I don't get it. Why not just buy a secondhand PC off ebay and run Linux on that? Or use some other PC that you've already got? Why on the PS3? Just because you can? Or, should I say, could?

I don't quite understand the draw.

Re:OtherOS

[TeknoHog]

Because I am interested in Cell programming. You know, there are these things called different hardware architectures. X86 is just ugly.

Re:OtherOS

[betterunixthanunix]

It may have something to do with the Cell processor, which for some tasks significantly outperforms x86. True, you can find other Cell processor machines...at ten times the cost.

Even if there were no technical reason, why shouldn't people be able to use their computers the way they want to? Why should Sony get to decide how a system that I purchased gets used?

Re:OtherOS

[Lumpy]

It's called XBMC. If you are lucky someone will port it to the ps3

Re:OtherOS

[drinkypoo]

Why do you want the ability to run Linux on your PS3? I don't get it. Why not just buy a secondhand PC off ebay and run Linux on that?

Yes, why would people in a recession want to use the hardware they already have? Clearly they should just go out and buy some more hardware.

People like you are what is wrong with America today.

Re:OtherOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar argument: I have a Wiii. I have other computers in the house. I do not currently have a media pc in my bedroom, which is where my Wii is. I find it convenient to be able to have the Wii act as a media player, able to access a network storage device and play video for me. I softmodded my Wii and to install homebrew media software. As a side benefit, I now have a USB Loader running as well, and my kids can play their games without destroying more discs. (2 was enough. I don't care that I could have had them replaced, that's time and hassle that isn't necessary since to me there's a reasonable alternative.)

I could take my wife's laptop with Win XP MCE and set it up. But, that would require (1) me setting it up for the connection to the TV (it's an analog Tube), (2) having an extra box sitting next to my TV. Why on earth would I want more hardware when there is a perfectly reasonable solution to make use of my existing hardware to provide sufficiently similar functionality?

Again, not the PS3, and other options become available with a full Linux OS, but if nothing else a PS3 form of an Xbox media center is one possibility.

They're selling you a computer, with a lock down to play video games. The capability is there to be more than just video games. People want to be able to make that functionality available on hardware they own. Some people especially want it available when it was available as a feature on the hardware when it was purchased. And yes, a lot of people want to pirate games. Oh well.

Re:OtherOS

[Cruciform]

I just got a lecture elsewhere that pirates were using OtherOS and we deserved to have it taken from everyone if other people were abusing it.

When I mentioned that the key extraction work didn't begin until after the 3.21 release, I was told by the user that they had made their point and they were done with me.

Oddly he was able to use a computer to send that message.

Re:OtherOS

[shentino]

If hackers could sue pirates for provoking Sony into revoking OtherOS I might agree with him.

Re:OtherOS

[drinkypoo]

Oddly he was able to use a computer to send that message.

You know nothing about the capabilities of that computer save that it is at least capable of running a text-mode web browser. Further, it almost certainly does not have a Cell processor, and you cannot buy a PC with one in it, so if your goal is to experiment with the Cell then your solution won't even work. Instead of telling people what they would rather do, why don't you just not "contribute" to conversations that are above your head?

Re:OtherOS

[Cruciform]

If he could send a message he could infringe copyright. Begone, concern troll.

Re:OtherOS

[Cruciform]

Or maybe I'm reading you wrong. ARE you being a concern troll? Or are you advocating that if people want to experiment with a Cell this is the way.

Your message is confusing.
You realize that I was the one advocating FOR the jailbreak to return OtherOS to the device and he was the one saying everyone should be denied access because of pirates.
If he can post on the internet, he too can infringe copyright. In text.

Re:OtherOS

[Em Adespoton]

Plus, you have no way of knowing it was HIS computer. Maybe he has a library card. Maybe he spends time at a friend's place. Maybe he has a computer that he shares with family, but wants to be able to mess around with Linux while someone else is using the computer?

Re:OtherOS

[Elbereth]

It's just a PowerPC processor. You can find those on ebay.

Re:OtherOS

[TeknoHog]

It's just a PowerPC processor. You can find those on ebay.

*sigh* I already have a few G3 and G4 machines. For some weird reason, they are not quite the same as a Cell.

Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

Platforms like the PC, Amiga, C64 and others thrived because of piracy... People (mostly kids) would trade games with their friends and keep copies, most of the people i knew bought as many games as they could afford and then pirated others. Without piracy, those people would just have had less games, they simply didn't have the money to buy more. I still have a stack of original games from publishers who i would never have heard about had i not pirated their games from friends.

All DRM schemes, including those on consoles do is hurt legitimate consumers...

Lost/damaged media (especially when kids are involved)
Inconvenience of having to have the media instead of playing a game from HD
False positives from DRM schemes preventing paying customers from playing

Actual organised pirates don't care about any of this, they actually have a superior product for a cheaper price..

So what they should do is tollerate casual piracy (eg kids sharing games with friends), stop wasting their time/money/public image on implementing draconian drm schemes and ensure that legitimate customers actually get a better product than the pirates do.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Anonymous Coward]

On Xbox and PS3 you can exchange games with your friends, no issues at all. On PC, you get crap like Ubisoft's DRM and the latest Starcraft 2 thing, one account per person.

I have a PS3, and I liked it because unlike the PC or Xbox, nobody can cheat, and you get the full experience because of it. Now, I'm going to start watching the news about my favourite games, to know what the latest cheats are, and when they do come up, start single player again.

People think that Sony is defeated, the new consoles will be the same etc. Bullshit. They won, for four years they maintained their console secured, if anything the next generation will be even tougher to break. Backwards compatibility? Ha, you can't run PS2 games on PS3, no reason why you should run PS3 games on PS3+=1

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Errol backfiring]

You must be old here. Yes there was a time when an OS vendor was proud that its MS-DOS was the most pirated software in the world. Times have changed. The companies grew up, saw that "everybody" was dependent on them, and suddenly yelled that piracy was bad. Off course you are right that the easy copying made them big. That is why the worse programs on the PC survived. Not because the programs were good, but because they were easily copied.

The next step was even more brilliant: making copying even more easy (e.g., pre-instaled on a new PC; you now have to go through trouble not wanting a copy) while still making it illegal to use it.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[TheoGB]

Isn't the difference here that in the days of 8-bit and then 16-bit home computers, the machines weren't a loss-leader for the games? I understood that the PS3 and the xbox are sold at either no profit or a loss but this is because the games manufacturers have to pay a huge amount back to the manufacturer in licence fees for being able to make their games run on those machines. A friend used to work for Eidos and she could get PC games at a huge discount but no PS/Xbox because of this mandatory cost back to Sony/Microsoft. So, the pirates making the machine would only work if the machines were profitable enough for Sony/Microsoft that buying them alone covered their costs.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[imakemusic]

Sony make a loss on each PS3 sold. They make their money back in game sales. They can't rely on piracy bringing more sales of the hardware because that wouldn't earn them money, it would cost them money.

You might argue that this is Sony's problem and that they should have thought about this before they made the PS3 and developed it so that they could sell it at a profit. However if they had done this then it would most likely be either a less powerful machine, a more expensive one or both.

I don't disagree with you in principle - it would be great if they did do this - but there are reasons why they can't do this at this stage.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Elbereth]

What?! Piracy killed the Amiga!

Lots of people want to claim that piracy is killing the PC, but I'm not so sure that I buy that. It's certainly getting to the point where most kids today pirate, rather than buy, their games, but kids aren't the entire audience for games. Until DRM gets even more invasive and powerful on consoles, it's obvious that consoles aren't going to be the answer to that little problem, anyways.

Sony's answer has to be the PS4. Nothing else will really do more than put a bandage on a wound that requires a tourniquet. Sony has some smart people working there, and I'm sure they know this. So, I'd look for an announcement and advertising blitz very soon.

The best way to fight piracy on consoles is a relatively short life for each iteration. Who cares about piracy on the PS1 or PS2? The vast majority of pirates want to play current games on current consoles, though the nostalgia-based "retro-gaming" will always have some draw, of course. I don't care how many of your friends are currently playing Super Mario Bros 3 on some emulator. It's not representative.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft too, Office especially, thrived because of piracy.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[betterunixthanunix]

I understood that the PS3 and the xbox are sold at either no profit or a loss

Which has always been a precarious business model, propped up by laws like the DMCA.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

Exchange yes, not keep copies...
Back in the days one of a group would buy a game, everyone else copied it off them and we would play the games networked.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

Indeed...
The best thing that could happen to Linux right now, is for MS to come down hard on pirates.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they used to make a loss. Then they started ripping out functions while production costs fell, and the current models are sold at a profit. Their best source of income is the PSN sales, however, which they disabled back in April to coerce us to accept the removal of functinality in already sold machines too.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[TheoGB]

It's a perfectly reasonable business model. The main issue I have is when the pass down ludicrous fines to those caught pirating, but this model at least means that most people can afford such a console, which is a better situation for children at school than when only an elite have access to such things. Sorry, I'm really explaining my point well, but essentially I think there's a levelling quality about it and an aspect that makes the web and technology very much in the grasp of areas of society that would otherwise never get it.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Schadrach]

You could run PS2 games on the PS3 until they decided to cut hardware costs by removing that ability. If you can get a hold of an old fat PS3 that has 4 USB ports instead of 2 it will run PS2 games.

As far as how long the console was secured, remember that the group of people skilled enough to hack the console has more overlap with "legitimate homebrew" than with the pirates. It wasn't really "on" as far as the PS3 until they removed OtherOS, and the timescale from removal of OtherOS till PSJailbreak was much more in line with other consoles.

As an aside, if you've ever noticed, the degree to which a given hack for something like this emphasizes piracy is dependent on it's form. Hardware based hack push piracy a lot harder than entirely software console mods specifically because they have a gadget that they have to produce and sell, and the pirates are the largest market for such a thing, though not the largest producer.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[icebraining]

They were sold at a loss, but they've been profitable for some time now.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[TheoGB]

Because the technology / processing automation has got so cheap over the years, I presume? Still, it will be their model for the next generation, I'd imagine.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

Piracy never killed the Amiga... This was a myth largely perpetuated by the late scalpers in the Amiga market who tried to nickel and dime the last Amiga users... $35 for a TCP stack, which requires a $30 GUI toolkit, another $30 each for a browser, irc client or even a telnet client. All of this made the Amiga far too expensive for Internet use, so people either bought another platform or pirated the software.

Commodore killed the Amiga, slacking on updating the hardware (AGA came far too late), poor marketing, and finally by going bankrupt while being the only supplier of Amiga compatible hardware or the core OS.

Everyone i know who had an Amiga had a stack of purchased games and an even bigger stack of pirated ones, none of them could afford to purchase all the games they had and if there was no piracy would just have had a much smaller stack of games - they couldn't afford more.

Many people who bought Amigas did so specifically because copying games was easy compared to the cartridge based systems of the day, and most of those people also bought games as well as pirating them. Most Amiga users i knew back in the days had more purchased (ie not counting pirated) games than any of their console owning friends.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[drinkypoo]

Commodore killed the Amiga, slacking on updating the hardware (AGA came far too late), poor marketing, and finally by going bankrupt while being the only supplier of Amiga compatible hardware or the core OS.

The president of Commodore killed Commodore.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[jack2000]

What's worse is because of draconian drm the games themselves work at least one third better compared to with the drm sucking up valuable ms coding and decoding things. The worst offender is by far Valve's steam platform on older hardware. I have a friend that owns the entire valve release catalog from one of their series, but chooses to play the single player stuff cracked and without steam running. I've seen the fps output from cl_showfps and net_graph.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[VGPowerlord]

Platforms like the PC, Amiga, C64 and others thrived because of piracy...

Most computer games in the late 80s/early 90s still used a form of copy protection: looking things up in the manual or using a code wheel. Keep in mind that this was before the advent of the commercial internet, so you couldn't (easily) find a text dump of the manual online.

Do you know why they started doing that? To stop piracy. Why? Because game producers/publishers don't care if the platform succeeds; they care if their product succeeds. And by succeeds, that's referring to either copies sold or amount of money earned. This is identical to nearly every industry ever.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Hatta]

It's a perfectly reasonable business model.

The fact that it can't be sustained without corrupting our government and eroding our property rights shows that it's not.

this model at least means that most people can afford such a console

Nonsense. Everyone who plays games pays for the full cost of their console and then some. It's just spread over time. The proper solution to your issue is layaway.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Actual organised pirates don't care about any of this, they actually have a superior product for a cheaper price..

Actually they attack ships. But I guess they sell the loot at a cheaper price later.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

And these copy protection schemes were also cracked...
Sure there was no internet with text dumps, you typically acquired your games from friends who could photocopy the manual for you, or you got actual pirate copies from street vendors who would supply a printed or text file copy of the manual.

Also you don't get manuals anymore, apparently they cost too much. When i bought elite 2, it came with 3 printed books and a poster.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[TheoGB]

There has to be a balance between someone's hard work being paid for and people's rights being infringed. Where do you feel this model, the idea of having games that are copy-protected is eroding people's property rights in a real sense rather than toys-out-of-the-pram sense?

Equally, everyone who plays games may pay the full rate but they are also free to borrow games still, are they not, from Lovefilm, libraries, etc? Or to buy them, play them and sell them one?

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

It's not a better situation for children at all, they will end up with a cheaper console but being unable to afford games for it...

You also get old consoles deprecated far too soon, (MS are more guilty of this than sony), an older console could be produced far more cheaply and still provide entertainment for poorer kids.

It's also a flawed business model simply because it cannot exist without government intervention into the market and consumer hostile features implemented in the device.

essentially I think there's a levelling quality about it and an aspect that makes the web and technology very much in the grasp of areas of society that would otherwise never get it

Very few people use a PS3 to browse the web, a generic PC where competition has pushed down prices combined with free software actually does far more to put technology within reach of the poor.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[mark-t]

Funny thing about piracy though...

If companies don't attempt to prevent it, then the social contract of copyright (nobody else is supposed to copy this) for the pirated works completely falls apart. Were the damages restricted solely to the works that are being pirated, this might still be a manageable problem, however it has the side effect of weakening the perceived ability for the social contract of copyright to adequately protect the copyright holder's interests. This happens across the board -- all copyright holders are affected, everywhere.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[TheoGB]

The 360 is in its 6th year now and the PS3 it's 5th and as yet I don't think I've seen much in the way of fanfares about the next gen coming along. Older consoles aren't really the thing we're talking about. When you're at school 'old' is rubbish, you have to have the current thing. No one was cool for own a C64 or Spectrum when the Amiga/ST were out. And it's key that I *am* talking about what makes kids tick here, not about how great the games are/were etc.

When I was at school in the 80s few kids had 8-bit computers because they were comparatively very very expensive. And again, the games can be rented from Lovefilm or similar for a small amount each week or borrowed from others...

When you talk about govt. intervention in the market can you explain what you're specifically thinking of? Yeah there's google but it's a vague comment and I could spend two hours I don't have and still not find what you're thinking of.

Consumer hostile features? You don't HAVE to buy a console. You can play games on a PC or a Mac if you wish. I feel there's a degree of people claiming 'entitlement' here to something they have opted into.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Commodore" did indeed kill the Amiga by not innovating fast enough. Dave Haynie had some good ideas, but management was way too slow. Just look at the deathbed vigil video.

PC gaming caught up with the SoundBlaster and VGA, then 3D games like Wolfenstein 3D surpassed the Amiga. Also the Playstation came out which made 3D games state-of-the-art. Note that 3D isn't what we think of it today. PC as an open platform made things better and cheaper than Amiga ever could offer: faster processors, more and cheaper RAM, cheap IDE HD as opposed to A2091 SCSI. Things like the Voodoo card was the final nail on the Amiga's coffin.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Belial6]

If you count the PS3 being the first console I have not owned since the NES, and one of the few that I have not owned since games systems have been sold to the public.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Hatta]

Property rights are being eroded in that I can no longer use my property as I see fit. If Sony et. al. want to retain control over the hardware, they must not sell it. Just rent out the consoles. Of course, their customers won't stand for that, so they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. This isn't good for anyone except Sony and the rest of the MAFIAA.

Re:Why stop pirates?

[benhattman]

The real problem here is the internet I think. Because you're right. In the 90s a kid could get a CD and make cassett copies for his/her friends on a standard stereo. After that, maybe he could even make a perfect copy of the CD on a computer. But, that kid probably only gave the CD/tape to 1-5 friends. And not everybody made copies at all. Add it all up, and piracy might have been rampant but the legitimate copies may have made up for 75% of all copies on the market.

Now, one kid can buy a CD and put it online for literally thousands to download. It's just too easy.

What content providers really need to be looking for is a way to make massive piracy hard while actually encouraging more limited piracy (because in small enough quantities it can actually serve as advertising). I just don't know how you can capture such disparate goals in an internet world...

Re:Why stop pirates?

[blarkon]

You can't. There isn't a model where you make money out of publishing something digitally in the long term. You might make money out of ancillary stuff like T-Shirts or running concerts, but digital publication in and of itself is a loss making enterprise because of the entrenched attitude that there is no need to remunerate the creator for a product that can be copied indefinitely. In the long run fewer people will create professionally. Why spend time making music if all the money is in making the T-shirts?

Re:Why stop pirates?

[Bert64]

Because music is what sells the t-shirts... Digital publication will simply become a promotional activity, basically a form of advertising, it will serve to advertise merchandise like t-shirts as well as services such as live performances and hired appearances etc.

Foolish Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

regardless of how deep you shove that stick in the sand, the tide will eventually wash it away.

Online

[Rik Sweeney]

But Sony won't be able to stop people from running pirated game copies as long as the machines are not hooked up online.

Isn't that a problem for the 360 and (to a slightly lesser extent) the PC too?

From what I currently gather, most of the install hacks require changing the hex string in the game to make it run from /dev/hdd0 instead of /dev/brd0*, so what's to stop a developer simply encrypting this string?

Personally I'll continue to buy my games. Granted, most of them I'll get from trade-ins, which, sadly, will be the next thing to go. I see that Mass Effect 2 will be available for download from the PSN meaning that once you've bought it you're stuck with it. And this trend will only continue.

* I'm guessing at the device names

Re:Online

[wamatt]

That won't work because the game would carry the encrypted/obfuscated hex string PLUS the code to execute the decryption/obfuscation of the string.

Hence it becomes the similar scenario as PC software DRM schemes. And we all know how secure that is :D

Re:Online

[91degrees]

Isn't that a problem for the 360 and (to a slightly lesser extent) the PC too?

Yes, but it affects Sony more. Most PCs are connected to the internet. It's not an unreasonable requirement for most people. Those that object are such a tiny segment of the market that the loss of sales won't be noticed.

It's currently seen as not all that reasonable for consoles. But Microsoft's online offering is considerably better than Sony's. It's actually a valid reason to buy the console. An XBox 360 is still quite usable without the online connection, otherwise modchips wouldn't sell, but its utility is reduced.

Re:Online

[ducomputergeek]

Not in my case. My Xbox 360 without XBox live would be pretty useless to me. Why? Netflix. I maybe use the 360 to play 5 - 6 hours worth of gaming a month if that. It easily gets used 5 - 6 hours a week streaming TV shows and movies. If it wasn't for the fact that cable internet alone is only $20 cheaper a month than the phone/internet/TV bundle I would have ditched the TV and home phone parts.

Re:Online

[Hatta]

From what I currently gather, most of the install hacks require changing the hex string in the game to make it run from /dev/hdd0 instead of /dev/brd0*, so what's to stop a developer simply encrypting this string?

If you can modify the system's firmware, you can make "/dev/brd0" point to whatever device you want.

Personally I'll continue to buy my games. Granted, most of them I'll get from trade-ins, which, sadly, will be the next thing to go

Don't worry about it. There are more good games from the Atari 2600 to the PS2 than any person could play in their lifetime. There could never be another video game published and you won't run out of things to play.

Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[DrXym]

Of course there are things they can do. The 360 is cracked and MS engages in waves of mass bannings, usually to coincide with it's firmware updates. I expect the same will happen with the PS3 too.

So the most obvious thing would be for Sony to seed firmware and games with audits (some obvious, some not so obvious) and then ban the shit out of anyone stupid enough to sign onto PSN with modded firmware. That in itself would be a huge deterrent because it would shut the door on all multiplayer, DLC, patches etc.

There are other things they could do such as padding out game data on disk to bloat out the size of downloads, causing games to bug out midway through if they fail checks, cease & desist notices etc. Maybe nothing that would stop ALL piracy, but stuff that would scare most people to avoid it, keep the problem manageable and minimize the impact as much as possible on legit revenues.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[CronoCloud]

causing games to bug out midway through if they fail checks

They've done that before:

http://www.webcitation.org/5vN0X2AgG

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[DrXym]

That's a great article and more or less elucidates what I've been saying in the last few days in various places. Basically you want to fuck with the crackers as much as possible, inlining mutually dependent checks all over the place. Perhaps EVENTUALLY they'll crack the thing (no doubt premium games are worth the effort) but the time required gives a great window of opportunity for legit sales. It also annoys and confuses the hell out of consumers of the pirate game especially if they've just wasted 10-50Gb bandwidth trying to download the damned game to discover it's broken.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[Xelios]

The only problem with this approach is it tends to generate a lot of bad publicity for the game too. Suddenly the internet is full of first hand accounts of how buggy and unstable your game is, which might well cause other people to decide not to buy it. You could end up losing more sales than you gain.

I suppose you could have the game throw up some kind of anti-piracy notice before crashing out, so people at least know it's related to the fact that they pirated it. But this might also make it easier for crackers to disable the checks, since they now have a common point from which to backtrack through the program to find the triggers.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's cool? Check out the massive copy protection in Dungeon Master. From 1987.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

A development that I'd like to see, with this liberation of the console, would be the ability to run game *servers* on a PS3. To forgo SONY entirely, network and all, would really be awesome.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[Schadrach]

DarkStar One did something similar. With an imperfect crack, the prices for upgrades were insanely high. The game was playable, maybe even completable, but it was a horrific grind.

Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates

[VGPowerlord]

I suppose you could have the game throw up some kind of anti-piracy notice before crashing out, so people at least know it's related to the fact that they pirated it. But this might also make it easier for crackers to disable the checks, since they now have a common point from which to backtrack through the program to find the triggers.

In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, apparently the fairy (who both gives advice and acts as a continue point) will tell you that the game has been modified.

not exactly correct...

[rob13572468]

walfisz is not entirely correct about sony's abilities to combat piracy... Technically speaking if a console user chooses to *only* use their PS3 offline and not access PSN or any online content then yes it will be difficult to impossible for sony to employ countermeasuers. The problem is that most users *do* use PSN and do use their console online and this opens up some avenues for sony. The most likely countermeasure will be to run code snippets that detect changes to memory in the console. This will be done in conjunction to PSN access (e.g. to be authenticated for access to the PSN network, your console must run a piece of code that calculates an authenticfication hash of your consoles serial number and contents of memory.) if any memory is changed then the code will return an incorrect result and you will not be permitted to access the network or worse they will ban you from PSN. hackers will then introduce code that will "cloak" the changed areas to reflect proper results from an unmodified console and sony will then attempt to detect those changes as well. In the end it becomes a cat-and-mouse game that goes on and on which is exactly what happened for years in the SAT tv industry. The big difference is that sony will eventually be forced to start banning users from PSN simply for having hacked consoles and this will make console modification undesirable for many users. As far as the lawsuit being baseless these guys need to read up on the DMCA... its a lousy law that was poorly written but it *is* on the books and unfortunately liability is determined based on whether there is substantial non-infringing uses... since the reality is that most people have been and will be modding their consoles to play copied games, they will find anyone involved liable... The only realy question is whether sony is going to detect and go after end users with the $2-5K demand letters/lawsuits as the RIIAA/MPAA have done...

Re:not exactly correct...

[Viol8]

"The problem is that most users *do* use PSN "

Do they? I've got a PS3 and I've got a couple of friends who have them - we all agree that PSN is a waste of time and money and don't use it. I'd make a guestimate that the number of PS3 owners who use PSN - especially on any regular basis - is a small minority.

Re:not exactly correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

"time and money"

Referring to the game purchase system possibly? signing in to PSN is required for multiplayer of all games (not insinuating that you didnt know this). Single player limits the replay value of games so multiplayer is a big factor to the average ps3 owner especially if they play games that are focused to online use. They could even take a page from Ubisofts book and put "internet connection required" on there games.

Re:not exactly correct...

[JackOfAllGeeks]

liability is determined based on whether there is substantial non-infringing uses

I think there's a strong case here for re-enabling functionality that was available at the time of purchase. That's ostensibly why they were doing this in the first place, and it's hard to argue that it's infringing to do so.

Re:not exactly correct...

[PsychoSid]

Isn't PSN free as opposed to XBL Gold which costs $$$ ?

Re:not exactly correct...

[bryansj]

Referring to the game purchase system possibly? signing in to PSN is required for multiplayer of all games (not insinuating that you didnt know this). Single player limits the replay value of games so multiplayer is a big factor to the average ps3 owner especially if they play games that are focused to online use. They could even take a page from Ubisofts book and put "internet connection required" on there games.

Replay value is irrelevant when it involves free/pirated games. If they start banning from PSN and you really must play online you would either: risk it and play on your modded PS3, get the 360 version, or get another PS3 for online play and buy the game. Those with banned 360s typically have another clean system for Live and buy the multiplayer game of the day (COD or Halo). It doesn't take many pirated games to save enough money to buy a new system (~5 @ $60).

Re:not exactly correct...

[imakemusic]

"The problem is that most users *do* use PSN "

Do they?

Yes, they do.

Everyone that I know who owns a PS3 uses PSN. Anecdotes are meaningless so lets do some figures.

According to Wikipedia 41.6 millions PS3s sold (as of Sept 30th 2010).
There are 60 million PSN accounts.

The tricky bit is figuring out how many of those are active accounts. I'd say it's between 1/3 and 1/2 of that figure: 20-30 million...48-72% of users. I'd say it's a majority.

Also, I don't get how it's a waste of money when you don't have to pay for it. Maybe you don't like the selection of games on there but it's only a waste if you buy one and don't like it. Plus you can get demos from it which helps stop you from downloading games that suck. And you can download games rather than going out to buy them which, unless you live close to the shops, will save you time if anything.

Are you sure you're not talking about Playstation Home?

Re:not exactly correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since PSN is free to use for anyone that has a PS3 I wonder how you can label it "a waste of money". Perhaps I can agree with you on "a waste of time" if you don't like playing with your friends over the Internet.

I have set my PS3 to autologon to PSN, on-line social gaming is what I experience the current generation of consoles is all about. If I don't want that I can start up a PS2 that has many more titles, and many more that allows for playing together in the same room.

Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Viol8]

Real evil is children being massacred in tribal wars, real evil is people being tortured in prison cells. Real evil is NOT a company trying to protect its profits no matter how much you dislike it.

A PS3 is hardly a critical item to 21st century life. If you didn't like the way SOny played ball you shouldn't have bought one - vote with your wallet. I get tired of kids whining about how unfair it is that they can't do [some hacker thing] with [insert name of expensive consumer kit here]. Life is unfair - deal. That doesn't make it evil.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[KiloByte]

This is a very insignificant battle in the war against culture.

But that war is more important IMO than a war against mere lives. Having peace won't get you free dissemination of ideas, free dissemination of ideas is a doom to oppressive rulers.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Not fearing for own life is a key element in having intellectual freedom.

You can't have intellectual freedom if you live in constant danger of being harassed/raped/harassed/killed by some known or unknown entity.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Stenchwarrior]

I completely agree with your statement; there are far more important things going on here. OTOH, to kids growing up in Suburbia and only being exposed to those world-atrocities if they decide to turn on the tele and watch, this Sony article is a pretty important thing. It's all a matter of perspective, really. The fact that kids don't have a great understanding of all things worldly means, I think, that America is still working the way is has been since WWII. Anyone can choose to block out what's happening in country because it doesn't direcftly affect them.

Yet

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Abstrackt]

This comment reads like you think people dying for no good reason (real war) is less of an issue than the chance you might not be able to mod your PS3 ("war on culture"?). At first I thought I read it wrong so I went through some of your older comments, apparently you believe "copyright is a crime against humanity". And yet, based on previous comments you appear to support the GPL (a copyright license) without pushing for open source to go public domain.

You're redefining evil to suit your agenda just like the *IAA redefines theft to suit theirs.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Real evil is children being massacred in tribal wars, real evil is people being tortured in prison cells. Real evil is NOT a company trying to protect its profits no matter how much you dislike it.

X is not real evil because Y is more evil than X?

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Real evil is buying blood diamonds and blood tantalum and funding tribal wars and torture. Companies are perfectly capable of 'just following orders' and committing grave evil in the name of profits. Is this the case with the PS3 DRM? No. At least, it's not evil 'till it gets to the point of Stallman's "Right to Read".

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[drinkypoo]

Real evil is children being massacred in tribal wars, real evil is people being tortured in prison cells. Real evil is NOT a company trying to protect its profits no matter how much you dislike it.

Bait and switch is fraud, fraud for profit is selfish and deprives others, fraud on a massive scale deprives many others, how is it not evil? It's all "real" evil. I think we can agree that some evil needs fixin' more than others, but I can't see how you can say that Sony is not evil. They're just not a gigantic evil like Monsanto, Chevron, Union Carbide, Bonita (nee Chiquita, nee United Fruit) or BP.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Real good is one man giving his life so thousands can live. Real good is selflessly giving away all your worldy possessions and money and living like a hermit. Real good is NOT helping an old lady cross the street, or donating to charity.

Wrong, Good and evil exist as more than just the extreme ends of the spectrum. They run the gamut from small to big.

And it's hard to vote with your wallet when Sony changes your product after you bought it. Removing features after purchase is something that is relatively new to this generation, you can't vote with your wallet unless you can predict the future.

I get tired of ancient duddery old people whining about the kids because they dont understand the situation.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[thegarbz]

Real evil is any kind of morally objectionable behaviour. This is how it has been defined in the dictionary for a long time. Can we please top pretending that the word is somehow magically reserved for only acts that register on the very peak of malevolence. It's not.

Just because some kid somewhere on the planet is being killed right now does not mean that we should all just happily bend over and take it up the rear from some evil corporation.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Jesus_666]

Yes. Since eradicating all life on Earth is more evil than killing children and torturing people, pedocide and torture are now A-okay.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Viol8]

So a child nicking a comic from a newagent is "evil"? Don't be absurd.

"the word is somehow magically reserved for only acts that register on the very peak of malevolence. It's not. "

Yes, it is.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[KiloByte]

The whole point of GPL is to make it impossible to put copyright restrictions on that piece of software. And unlike BSD/MIT, it cannot be trivially worked around.

If copyright wasn't there, GPL wouldn't be necessary.

For my comment about battles -- dying in a real war is more important than modding a silly console, but the comparison of these incidents ("battles" as I said) doesn't say anything issues they're about ("wars"). An oppressed peace works only short term.

Imagine two groups of dissidents in China: a thousand-strong group with guns and a few tanks, and a lone guy who manages to send a message to half the population -- which one would their government fear more?

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[mr_gorkajuice]

Imagine two groups of dissidents in China: a thousand-strong group with guns and a few tanks, and a lone guy who manages to send a message to half the population -- which one would their government fear more?

Stop equating copyright with the downfall of freedom of speach. Copyright is not about restricting what people can say. Your single chinese guy does not *WANT* to utilize copyright if he wants his message to reach as far and wide as possible. Copyright is about giving the author of any given intellectual material the right to choose who he wishes to share it with (the answer usually being anyone willing to pay).
Copyright doesn't restrict who you can talk to, and what you can say to them. It allows you to restrict who you'll allow to listen.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[3vi1]

>> If you didn't like the way SOny played ball you shouldn't have bought one

Next time, I'll consult my crystal ball and look several years into the future so that I know Sony is going to remove the feature that tipped me into buying one.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[tepples]

Copyright is not about restricting what people can say.

If you create and publish a work critical of another work, expect the copyright owner of the other work to sue you. Sure, such suits are winnable, but only for people who have beaucoup bucks for a good lawyer.

Copyright doesn't restrict who you can talk to

Copyright on the firmware of a computing platform allows the firmware to be used as a technical protection measure, restricting who may talk using that platform. And if all similar platforms have analogous restrictions, such as all major set-top video game consoles using signature verification and blanket policies against individual developers working from home, it restricts who may talk.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[rockNme2349]

It's never a good idea to abuse hyperbole.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[GasparGMSwordsman]

The whole point of GPL is to make it impossible to put copyright restrictions on that piece of software. And unlike BSD/MIT, it cannot be trivially worked around.

That is patently false. The point of the GPL is to place copyright restrictions on further use of said work. If you wanted to prevent copyright restrictions on derivations of your work, then you want to use a close sourced license as you then have complete control of how it is used (including the right to give up that control). If you wanted to place no restrictions then you should release it to the public domain or use a BSD style license.

I am a fan of the GPL so don't get me wrong and misinterpret this as anti-GPL. That is not the point here, simply put most people have a very skewed understanding of what it does and how it works.

The GPL simply places specific restrictions on expansions of the work. Among those restrictions is adding additional restrictions via the GPL (if you obtain non-GPL copyrights then you can still add additional restrictions via non-GPL contract).

Lastly I have to point out that the GPL depends on copyright law (at least in the US) and as such it is only enforceable for the lifetime of the copyright. Any thoughts that the GPL forever protects anything is also misunderstood.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[merxete]

Real evil is paying your taxes to endorse illegal wars of agression

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[GasparGMSwordsman]

If you create and publish a work critical of another work, expect the copyright owner of the other work to sue you. Sure, such suits are winnable, but only for people who have beaucoup bucks for a good lawyer.

Not really, this just does not happen. If it did any such action is almost certainly going to be thrown out on the first motion (assuming US jurisdiction - in Brittan your fucked). You basically don't hear about cases such as you've described unless it is disgustingly messy, the person is guilty or the plaintiff is insane (which ALWAYS looses and fast, usually on the first motion which costs pennies to have prepared).

Copyright on the firmware of a computing platform allows the firmware to be used as a technical protection measure, restricting who may talk using that platform. And if all similar platforms have analogous restrictions, such as all major set-top video game consoles using signature verification and blanket policies against individual developers working from home, it restricts who may talk.

This you have a point with (again assuming US jurisdiction), but only since the DMCA. If the DMCA's anti-circumvention clauses gets removed then this is no longer a copyright issue.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't like the way Sony played ball you shouldn't have bought one - vote with your wallet.

Slightly off-topic, but I would just like to point out that boycotting a product isn't necessarily the best way to strike back at a corporation doing things you don't like. Sometimes, particularly in the case of gaming consoles, buying their product can be the most damaging.

Buying a PS3 at release caused $400 of financial harm to Sony because it was subsidized (It supposedly cost about $800 to make). If you buy all your games used, they never make a single penny of that $400 back. You profit by having a nice Blu-ray player and game machine, while Sony takes a massive loss.

This is far more damaging to Sony than any boycott and you can rub it in their faces if you so please, as it is all perfectly legal.

For this reason, I will probably buy a PS4 on release day, despite the fact that I despise Sony.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[KiloByte]

Uhm, you can find "the point of GPL" in its preamble: "The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users.".

The GPL places just one restriction: it restricts you from adding restrictions to the work (and as a pre-requisite, from restricting others to access the source). This fixes a fatal flaw in BSD: in BSD, anyone can place copyright restrictions back.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[GasparGMSwordsman]

It places many restrictions on both derivative work and on the source (not just source code) work. Lets list some of them (we can just stick with v3 for now):

1) If you want to give a copy of any part of a work (say the binary executable), you MUST also give the source code and additional resources (via one of many methods).

2) If you convey (see v3 definition of convey) the work then you agree that any patent you own is licensed royalty free to any recipient of the work (at least while it relates to this work or a derivative of this work).

3) Unless every copy of a work that you convey under the GPL also includes the full source and other required items, you are required to keep conveyable copies of that source for the lifetime of the license (or until you or your company ceases as a legal being). (See GPLv3 6 d)

4) You must include or maintain "instillation instructions" for the work. If you have ever maintained a large software project you will understand that this is not by any means a simple task.

5) You are required to use proper attribution to previous authors as noted in the license.

6) Section 7 also adds in multiple additional restrictions that are optional to each copyright holder to their works. These are restrictions that are specifically listed as being acceptable as part of the GPL.

Each of these items is by definition a restrictions on your "rights". I am NOT stating that this is bad. It is simply insane to try and prove your argument by stating things that are unarguably false. It hurts the case of the GPL and undermines the support of the OSS community (regardless of what camp you are in).

The GPL is a useful tool exactly because it DOES place specific restrictions on what you can do with a work and its derivations. Your argument should not be that it does not act in this way, it should be that the restrictions are reasonable, useful and outweigh any negative factors.

This fixes a fatal flaw in BSD: in BSD, anyone can place copyright restrictions back.

Again this is false. If I write a section of code and distribute it with a BSD license, no restriction can ever be placed on MY code by anyone else (I can still release it again with other conditions). Others can take my code and modify it and then place restrictions on what THEY wrote. But no restrictions can ever be placed on what *I* wrote. This is similar to me walking through the park and picking up litter, I don't care what other people use the park for, I am merely giving myself and everyone else a gift.

Again, I am sure you don't like this method, but that has nothing to do with statements of fact. In this case you weaken your argument (and that of the OSS community) by making statements that are simply and provably untrue.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Each of these items is by definition a restrictions on your "rights".

And all of them are intended as remedies for tradtional copyright restrictions.

So the OP left off the word "traditional" but it's clear from the context that is what he meant.
All of your arguments boil down to nit-picking semantics and that does much more to "weaken the argument of the OSS community" because all it does is change the focus from the forest to the trees.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Well copyrights for current works last the rest of the creator's life, plus 50 years (or is it 75 years in the US?), and will easily come to 80+ years. Or for corporate works, 95 years from the creation date. A lifetime may as well be forever, as far as software goes.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[GasparGMSwordsman]

We are talking about legal definitions in a contract. If you want to use a word in a discussion about either topic in any serious way you really need to be specific. Just look into the whole issue with the word "distribution" in GPLv2 to get an idea why.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[thegarbz]

www.dictionary.com, now please try and learn the language you are using.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid. Sony gives money for parts and work ($800). If you buy it you give them $400. So they are $400 in red. If you don't buy the console than Sony doesn't get a single $.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Viol8]

I'm not interested in how some website defines it. I know what the word means thanks and it does not mean any illegal or wrong act undertaken.

End of.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[thegarbz]

I'm not interested in your perversion of the english language which is clearly defined in things we call dictionary. Now please do us all a favour and fuck off. Defined here for you and your poor grasp of how language works.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Viol8]

Oh you're so hilarious! You sad little boy.

Heres a definition of evil by a proper dictionary , not some yank garbage. We're talking the proper definition of the word here, not the definition in your idiotic dialect.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/evil?view=uk

release cycle change?

[kennethmci]

just a thought - we were supposed to be seeing a very long period of time for this generation of consoles.... im wondering if this might push sony ( and therefore microsoft ) to bring forward the release of the next generation of consoles? i mean, so far sales havent been stellar for the PS move?

Piracy..?

[bhunachchicken]

What's all this talk about piracy? As far as I understood it, people were cracking the PS3 so that they could install Linux and run homebrew...

Re:Piracy..?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original jailbreakers were for piracy, the only software was "backup" managers. The masses can't install Linux (yet), homebrew requires multiple hoops to get through and it's all garbage my_first_program stuff. Most forums are full of people prattling on about giving it to sony and copied games.

Re:Piracy..?

[geschild]

I'm not really interested in fairness and 'politcal correctness' towards Sony anymore. As far as I'm concerned Sony 'altered the deal' and is muttering that we should pray it alters it no further.

Unfortunately for Sony, as soon as you change one end of the bargain unilaterally, I feel no obligation to uphold any the deal from my end and so I feel no obligation towards Sony. None. Whatsoever.

(The fact that buying a PS3 was my first Sony purchase after the DRM fiasco and making me feel like a sucker now for slowly starting to trust them again has nothing to do with it. No. Really. ;p )

Re:Piracy..?

[marcop]

Yup, I could really care less about the games. I hope they get XBMC on it. I will then buy it for use as a great media player and excellent Blu-ray player. If this turns into a piracy only hack then forget it.

Re:Piracy..?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my ps3 cracked so that I can use those 'non standard' ps2 to ps3 converters. I have 3 of them... but sony feels it's wrong of me to use them.

Re:Piracy..?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's all this talk about piracy? As far as I understood it, people were cracking the PS3 so that they could install Linux and run homebrew...

And yet, for some reason, the one thing that the hackers were claiming to be working on is the one thing that they still haven't achieved...

Re:Piracy..?

[m50d]

They were. But since they've had to break all the protections to do that, pirates now have free reign.

Re:Piracy..?

[Necreia]

Yup, I could really care less about the games.

I'm confused, so you do care and are interested in piracy? Or do you mean "I couldn't care less".

To the GP, game publishers only look at / care about the piracy angle. Even if no one admitted that they wanted to pirate, these companies have a vested interest in keeping the game system 'locked down' and will see any openness on it as a threat.

Re:Piracy..?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's all this talk about piracy? As far as I understood it, people were cracking the PS3 so that they could install Linux and run homebrew...

Wow, it's almost like I can hear the PAINFULLY CONSPICUOUS WINK you reflexively added to the end of that...

Re:Piracy..?

[Schadrach]

You left out the emulators. At least I didn't think the likes of SNES9x, Final Burn Alpha, FCEU, and VisualBoy Advance counted as my_first_program stuff.

Re:Piracy..?

[Schadrach]

AsBestOS, look it up.

As for the now "wide open" system and not working through a jailbreaking dongle, the keys haven't been available that long. It took less than a week to have a CFW hack that enabled the ability to install properly signed software from USB in the current firmware. I'm not sure how quick a return of OtherOS as it existed before will be though -- Sony did kind of just sue the very people who'd be working on it. So not until the suit is resolved or another group of CFW hackers comes along, I'd expect.

Re:Piracy..?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even care about Linux and homebrew. I just want to run my games from a hard drive. I have kids. They're hard on disks.

Unfortunately, that makes piracy easy. Still, I bought the hardware and the games - let me do what I want with them. Blocking my console from PSN would be fair - that's an additional service - but for fuck's sake, just let me do what I want with the hardware you stopped owning when the cash came from my bank account.

Creative use of language

[mwvdlee]

From TFA:

the fact that maybe some hackers got code running ages ago but didn’t want to publish their work.

"the fact that maybe" something happened?
Wow.
That proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person who wrote that is in fact maybe an utter retard.

Just give use Linux back already

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet most of the effort to hack the PS3 would go away if users were able to run Linux again on the device.

The people cracking security are not the same as people running copied game on the console. The one who want to play with copied games rely on hackers to break the security model.

Re:Just give use Linux back already

[Fallen Kell]

Unfortunately, the cat is already out of the bag. I agree that if Sony had simply left OtherOS on the PS3, none of this would have happened. It also was Sony's decision from the start that they were going to remove it. It was gone on the slim version from the start, even though there was no technical reason that it couldn't be there. At that point its days were numbered on the rest of the line, as you know that they were not going to want to have to maintain two different firmwares for the different platforms which would require regression testing of any new changes to both versions, as well as needing extra code to always check which version of the PS3 everything was running on.... And sure enough, a few months later, Sony unilaterally removes the feature at about the same point where they realized all the headaches it was going to be to maintain the slim AND the older version, when they could simply cut a ton of costs on their maintenance cycle (which by the way does not actually make money, so from a pointy-haired-boss point of view is simply a direct loss of profits) by making just one firmware. Add in the fact that there were a decent amount of companies, governments, and universities purchasing groups of PS3 to create a cheap computing cluster, with each unit costing Sony money because Sony was still subsidizing the cost of the hardware and counting on the profits made from games and peripherals to turn a profit, you can easily see why they wanted something, ANYTHING, to drop OtherOS. So they came up with some BS story about security and dropped it. Which then had the direct effect of all the people who used OtherOS to drop the gloves on their experimentation with the PS3, because, really what was Sony going to do now, drop OtherOS? They already did the worst they could do, so now it was "game on" in a sense on really hacking the system because now fully hacking the system is/was going to be the only way OtherOS was coming back.

Sony completely brought this on themselves. I complained at the time, but that seemed to have gone nowhere, even with my state AG. I can only hope that some AG has been working on this for the last 10 months and building a case before filing action, but I doubt it. I think it was all ignored and swept under the carpet.

Re:Just give use Linux back already

[mark-t]

It's my understanding that most of the effort to hack the PS3 is already subsiding because the unit has already been hacked. To pieces. Nothing more to see here, this baby's done. Even hardware changes to any future consoles made would not help the situation unless Sony forfeits backward compatibility.

It is possible that it might not have happened, or at least not this way, if Sony hadn't removed the OtherOS option, but now it's simply too late.

Wait a second

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering ubisofts DRM was cracked 24 hours after it was released, they shouldn't be giving anybody DRM advice.

Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Xian97]

The biggest problem I see is that people could patch games to enable cheating on PSN which can be a huge problem on any online gaming platform. I believe that is one of the main reasons Microsoft bans modified consoles from Live, because once a platform become riddled with cheaters then people will avoid it. That would hurt more than lost game sales due to piracy.

There will be people that pirate games, but I believe that the majority of people are honest and will purchase what they play. If that wasn't the case, then how did iTunes just sell their 10 BILLIONTH song last year? Most of what is on their store would be available for free if you were so inclined to search for it. The average user will continue to buy games, while the more tech savvy ones may get them through other means. Look at the Nintendo DS, cracked wide open for years yet I saw games for it flying off the shelf last holiday season. Ditto the Wii, which can be softmodded.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Pentium100]

You don't understand it, do you? If pirated MP3 were not available, iTunes would have sold it's 500 TRILLIONTH song last year. Not only that, but various other MP3 stores would sell a lot of music too. People would have bought every single track they (now) have downloaded for free, everyone would pay thousands of dollars each month for music (doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).

Same with games, if pirated copies were not available, then Sony would not need to shut down its CD factory, it would need to open a new one.

Also, now that it is possible to pirate PS3 games, nobody will be buying them, anybody actually buying a PS3 game is an illusion and does not really exist. After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheating costs game companies 0 dollars a year, piracy costs them millions, yeah you are correct, it's all about cheating. Besides, even before the ps3 was cracked open plenty of people can still cheat, exploiting glitches and the likes. Take a look at the zen pinball high scores on the psn. Play any call of duty online, specifically world at war (last one i paid for), play red dead redemption on ps3 or xbox.

And for those saying the PSN isn't a big part of the ps3, you've obviously overlooked the treasure trove of kickass games available exclusively on the psn like pixel junk shooter and such. Those titles alone are worth keeping a legit console.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

You are very wrong, sir. Some people, such as myself, cannot afford to buy all that stuff. Whilst my friends and I pirate heavily, it is on a try before you buy basis - often, we buy games after we finish them, just to support the developers. Hell, we spent $200 ea last steam sale, who can resist games at 5$ ea or so? Steam DRM is not so annoying at any rate, we jokingly compare it to having to open an emulator which then loads your stuff.

Most people download pirated stuff because it's much MUCH more convenient than actually buying it, waiting for it to arrive or .. heaven forbid, physically go to the store to purchase it. It may also be the case that said article is not available in their region for some crappy reason or other.

You are much mistaken regarding what you said about songs too. It's much more convenient to download an album than a single track, which means that probably, at least 50% of the collected music works will never be listened to (let's face it, few people listen to an album from beginning to end .. or if they do, it's only once). It's also a great means of promoting their works: more often than not, I am introduced to fantastic new metal bands through similar listings on warez sites, which I then support by buying merch.

As someone said, if they spent less money on DRM and more on actually making good stuff, they'd make more money. WRT your iTunes argument, they would have made a bit more, but not so much more - people who pirate, more often than not, would have eventually refrained from buying the article in the first place anyway.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you are in sarcasm mode, right? Otherwise, it bears repeating: Pirated copy != Lost sale.

Let me repeat that in plain English: A Pirated copy does not equate to a Lost sale.

I will admit, I have, ages ago, pirated software noncommercially, for the purpose of "try before you buy". I avoid it now, as I have other priorities, but the point still remains valid that, as often as not, it may mean a successful sale if the product is actually worth the trouble to play. Now that my income is better (marginally), I opt to legally rent, or make use of the second hand market. Many times, I have actually taken the trouble to legally purchase from overseas vendors, things that I once pirated as they were otherwise unavailable any other way. In my case, at least, a pirated copy usually translated into a successful legitimate sale, eventually.

On the other hand, Oppressive DRM, obscene pricing, and a lousy product DOES equal a lost sale, at least for me.

I will not spend my hard earned cash on something I cannot afford, cannot use, and simply sucks major portions of hind end after having tried it out. In fact, I'd be inclined to advertise the fact that something leaves a bad user experience to as many of my friends as possible (yes, I have friends, LOL) which potentially means many lost sales.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

If pirated MP3's were not available most people wouldn't know computers could play music.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if people weren't able to pirate the 50,000 songs or however many the current iPod holds, they would have turned to free alternatives. Indie bands releasing things for free, recording radio stations, trading CDs with friends and ripping it yourself, perhaps even outright theft of the CDs from the store. What you're essentially saying, is if people weren't able to pirate those 50,000 songs, they would hand over $50,000 to Apple. Just for something to listen to in the car.

Yeh, sounds reasonable.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but this is Earth and the reality is there is pirated music, books, movies, games and whatever else some "multi national corporation" has invested $$$ to sell *cough* rip off the buyers of these products at artificially higher prices than it should be "morally" set at.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Pentium100]

After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.

(doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).

You didn't read attentively.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Pentium100]

I assume you are in sarcasm mode, right?

Yes, here's the proof:

After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.

(doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).

Let me translate that for the judge...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've just read Sony's legal document, it's full of crap and the guy who wrote that doesn't know shit about how the PS3 works. Any judge acknowledging those court documents is a moron."
"Btw apparently you can violate the PSN user agreement without having a PSN account or agreeing to those in the first place... At least that's according to the crap SCE lawyers wrote in their legal paperwork. I think they fail just as much as their security team."

Defendant denies the allegations of paragraph 53.

"Until a few days ago, the efforts of these hackers were largely thwarted by the TPMs that secure the various levels of the PS3 System." < == yeah right, they seem to forget about the memory glitch, the libusb bug, or the fact that maybe some hackers got code running ages ago but didn't want to publish their work..."

Defendant denies the allegations of paragraphs 31-36.

"Why does no one speak of how Sony is violating a large number of anti-trust laws worldwide while preventing their consoles interoperability? Perhaps if they led us run our code on consoles we purchased, those would never have been hacked. They should just suck it up, face the truth and tell their licensees how they screwed up their console's security implementation. Oh! And they should hire decent security engineers (like hackers) rather than suing them, at least that'd have some form of effectiveness."

So are you filing a counter-claim under the anti-trust act?

Piracy: bad?

[blind biker]

After all the crap Ubisoft and others have pulled with DRM, and after all the evil doings of RIAA and MPAA, I have a very hard time feeling negative connotations about piracy. I am almost not even conflicted, my moral compass is swinging in the direction of "pirates=good guys". This doesn't refer to high seas pirates which are, of course, murderers and thieves. But in this context, pirates are... good or bad? I don't feel anymore they're really the bad guys. I'm trying to feel that way, but Ubisoft et al. just killed it.

Re:Piracy: bad?

[judeancodersfront]

What about 90% piracy rates of indy games? Are those good guys too?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars

Re:Piracy: bad?

[geekoid]

neither. the vast majority of them are people who wouldn't have bought the item anyways. If anything, there are free marketing.

Every song on iTunes can be found on the internet for free, and easily. iTunse still sells billions of songs.

It turns out people will pay for something if they can. Most people.
Which surprised me. in the 90's I figured the movie industry would be nothing but small pocket companies advertising live shows by now.

Re:Piracy: bad?

[blind biker]

I understand what you're saying, but I still can't summon up enough outrage to care. Even if you said "what if the whole game, music and movie industry came to a grinding halt?", I'd still be numb to the whole fracas. I'm sorry, I just don't have it in me, any more.

Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine

[just fiddling around]

The thing is, with the security architecture of the PS3, it is plainly impossible for a game (runlevel 2+) or application to test directly the characteristics of runlevel 0.

You could compare the situation to using VMware: the OS inside a virtual machine comprises runlevel 1+, but the real OS running VMware is runlevel 0. VMware isolates anything inside a virtual machine from the rest of the machine, and from any other running virtual machine. In fact, the client OS is like a brain in a jar: it is prevented from even knowing it is not running directly on hardware.

For more details, see this excellent article on Ars Technica

Re:Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine

[leuk_he]

I disagree, PSN requires a certain firmware version. All sonly has to do is create a new firmware version (firmware can contain level 0 code) that does the the check and require that firmware.

Blacklisting the most common hacks will be enough to discourage coming online with a jailbroken PS3.

In theory you can create a hypervisor that is completely hidden like the blue pill hypervirsor, But creating a completely undetecable rootkit is not trivial, especially on the PS3 where you can detect such beast vai timing attacks since the difference in available hardware is small

Note that the hypervirsor currently does not do security checks, those checks are done by the loaders, not the hypervirsor.

Re:Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine

[Moryath]

I disagree, PSN requires a certain firmware version.

Actually, no.

PSN requires that the firmware report back a certain version number, and maybe a couple of other "right answers."

There's a world of difference there, as the custom firmware setups for the PSP have proven time and again.

Re:Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine

[Anonymous Coward]

that's easy to detect and duplicate.

The Solution

[Stenchwarrior]

Sony/MS/Nintendo should just give the games away for free but charge a higher amount for online play, some of which they give to the developers, since that's the only thing they can truly control. Until then, this will keep happening because there will ALWAYS be a way to crack the DRM.

Re:The Solution

[dstyle5]

The last few Call of Duty games have made over a billion dollars over a very short period of time. There is no way Activision could ever make this much money by giving their product away for free and charging for the online portion of the game. Many games are also offline experiences, especially games from Nintendo, so how would they make any money?

I despair at Sony

[frap]

Ever the idiots, Sony have again dropped the ball with this. All they need to do is hold their hands up, congratulate the hackers on their work and release some sort of API allowing software to be loaded on GameOS. Allow Other OS to be reinstalled as well and 80% of the people interested in this will run away and make proper homebrew software rather than concentrate on piracy.

OK, this isn't going to work because

[r3verse]

the mass unwashed just don't care

I know that graph doesn't show owners under 18, but i'm sure it's still climbing. With each generation of console we move away from being able to pay $50 to some dude in his momma's basement to solder a few wires for us. They've (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) made it hard enough, and it'll get harder. And the 14 year olds who need their fix'll JUST BUY THE GAME.

Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[manekineko2]

Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, BP, and many others thank you for your strict limitation on what "real" evil is.

After all, they're just companies trying to protect their profits.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Viol8]

If you don't know the difference between selfish behaviour and evil then you need to see a shrink because you could be a borderline psychopath.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Did you just lump in Goldman Sachs (Company that's basically fleeced millions of folks for profits), Monsanto (Willing to poison environments for profit, suing farmers for unintentionally having their plants on their field, using BGH on cows ) and BP (no explanation necessary) with PLAYSTATION? There's a glaring difference here, the shit these companies pull affects you, whether you use their products or not. Monsanto (IMO, the most 'evil' company in the world) dumping chemicals in your back yard and giving you cancer directly affects you, whether you use their products or not.

I'm not an apple fan because of their policies, but I sure as hell wouldn't lump them in with these 3 companies and say "well they're all just trying to make a profit". Apple, or Playstation for that matter, doesn't force you to buy their product. Maybe not being able to tinker with your hardware exactly the way you want isn't exactly what you want, but it's at least not chemically KILLING you or ruining you financially.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Goldman Sachs is still considerably less evil than say, a single person who cold bloodedly murdered another single person.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[chispito]

If you don't know the difference between selfish behaviour and evil then you need to see a shrink because you could be a borderline psychopath.

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say no one has ever been killed by someone trying to protect their profits, but I try not to lie on the Internet.

Pretty sure no one has been killed for 'pirating' content, but only $deity knows that for sure.

That's what we do here, right? Take every argument to the extreme?

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, for the rest of the reasons you left out when reusing part of Viol8s comment and more.

There is no evil when there is no violence attempted. Offering a service, shitty or otherwise, is not evil. Fraud, theft, intentional(or intentionally reckless) damage to others property, now that is evil. If you are going to attack someones definition of evil, don't take only part of their definition and use it out of context.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but isn't "selfish behavior" the very strict definition of "evil"?

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contraire; methinks the psychopath is the one who thinks greed that kills 11 people, destroys hundreds of miles of coastline and decimates whole unrelated industries is somehow not evil, but mere "selfish behavior."

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Belial6]

Only if you subscribe to the philosophy that all acts are selfish acts. I have known many selfish people that I would not have called "evil". On the other hand, I have know a couple of people that actually try to cause harm other around them strictly to make sure that other people are hurt and unhappy. They will do this even when they recognize that they not only have nothing to gain, but when it will cost them a good deal of time and money. They had consciously made the decision that happiness must be destroyed, and they took action to destroy it. THAT is evil.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

'I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,' said the golem calmly.

'I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be- all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!'

'No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.'

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[h4rr4r]

So when those folks died on that BP oil rig, which one was that?

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Viol8]

It was the result of corner cutting and cost saving. They didn't decide one day to blow up their own oil rig and kill those men. THAT would be evil.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Your defense of these kinds of business practices and "Life is unfair, deal" attitude and relating people to psychopaths for speaking against it over greater evils indicates you're a sociopath. Get that checked out so you don't hurt somebody. A better society would keep sociopaths in check.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

So evil only involves physical harm to others according to you? You need to open your eyes, because the corrupt people in power have done more to destroy the lives of millions than any single person with a gun has. Yet your definition would say the opposite.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[xaoslaad]

I wouldn't necessarily qualify all greed as evil behavior, but when it's on the scale of what bastard companies like Monsanto does to farmers who are not intentionally or willing infringing on anything they start crossing a line. Read up on them, and how farmers get caught up in this web, through no fault of their own. And then Monsanto sweeps in and sues them, destroys livelihoods, and in general acts EVIL. You couldn't have planned an evil conspiracy to amass a fortune much better than what's in their playbook. I'm not a farmer; not even close; don't even know anyone that lives on a farm; it in no way affects me personally, but I still know evil when I see it. BP is probably a case of negligence, stupidity, greed, and may not cross into what you might consider evil, but I can at least see the case for arguing it.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

There's various levels of evil. I think stealing and murder are both evil actions. But guess what? One's a smidge worse than the other.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[alexo]

There is no evil when there is no violence attempted.

Let's conduct a thought experiment:
Assume there's a person that figured out an effective treatment for, say, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease but refuses to share his findings.
No violence attempted.
Is he evil?

Now assume that your daughter is diagnosed with the disease.
Does your answer change?

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[benhattman]

How did this get modded insightful? It's a non sequitur at best and an intentionally misleading comparison at worst.

The GP never claimed a company can go to any ends to protect its profits, only that protecting it's profits is not in and of itself evil. If a company slaughters children to protect its profits, its the slaughter not the profit aspect of it that is evil. From the examples above, Goldman Sachs is evil because they use collusion with the federal government, insider information, and privileged access to markets to gain an unfair advantage over smaller competitors and generally transfer wealth from regular people to themselves. Monsanto is evil because they are trying to use patent law to steal unowned genetic information from the public. BP is evil because they took shortcuts which lead to a massive ecological disaster.

In contrast, a large company may have tens of thousands of employees and millions of shareholders. If a corporation can ethically protect its profits, it benefits all those people, which is a good thing.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you don't know how to apply terms within different contexts, then your world is too black and white, which is scary in itself.

Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that all decisions that corporations make to protect their interests can be justified as simply selfish and are never evil, then congratulations - you could be a CEO and therefore are definitely a borderline psychopath.

I also hurt Sony

[MemoryDragon]

I admit I hurt sony probably more than the average pirate out there. The reason, I do not own a sony console nor did I ever buy a single game from them.
This is potential losses of thousands of dollars since 1995!!!

So where are all the disks n pirare rejoice posts?

[Stu101]

For all the talk I have not seen any "pirate breakthroughs" or a ps3 pirate scene with regards to running backups. It has been a few weeks now and if it is so fatally flawed, you'd expect the piracy to be skyrocketing now because no hardware mod required, unless I am missing something?

I realise the people that hacked it are hardcore, in the true hacker sense of hackerdom. Surely there are equally intelligent people who just want "games for free, Dud3". There is at the end of the day a very big financial incentive.

Surely if there was a working 'sploit to enable backups etc you'd expect to see it on "the bay" etc

Give me a real Power Linux box!

[Anonymous Coward]

I could give a crap about pirating games and whatnot. What I want is a $200 Cell-based Power Linux box with full access to all the SPEs, GPU and HDMI out. I just want to run BOINC to earn download credits at Easynews! Imagine if you are into downloading binfiles? Get your bins off usenet and while you're not playing games, reboot into Linux and crank through some World Community Grid chunks. Burn your credits on more downloads, wash, rinse, repeat.

Most of all, why should they

[Opportunist]

The PS3 most likely by now is no longer a loss at sale (someone might want to look into this). Which means that every PS3 now sold to people who wouldn't get one because they couldn't play copies adds revenue. Since everyone who would buy one with the intention to buy games too already has one, and will most likely continue to buy games instead of copying them (and even if, it won't be widespread copying, rather it's backyard lend-a-friend copying that's to be expected from these people), now being able to sell to "those pesky pirates" would only add revenue. They might not buy games, granted, but if the console already makes a profit, why should Sony worry?

Other OS was just a tax dodge

[Joe The Dragon]

Other OS was just a tax dodge so they can call it a computer and not a game system.

Title fail

[drb226]

Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Game Pirates

FTFY. I highly doubt that there have been or will be many instances of people swashbuckling their way out of Walmart with a brand new PS3 in tow.

There is only one viable solution

[Lifyre]

PS:4

What about piracy on the PC?

[jbssm]

I see so many people, claiming the end of the platform just because "perhaps" now we can pirate games. Oh God, Sony will be loosing money (it won't actually, since the console building costs is lower than the selling costs and has been for quite a while now), the game devs will be loosing money, it's a dead end.

People, wake up. Every PC game is pirated. That didn't end up PC market, neither did it end up the development of PC games. Some people will pirate, some people will continue to buy the games. After all, if you wait a couple of months, you can buy a recent title for about €20, that's about the same you pay for 3 lunches out during work days ... just cook at home, buy the game and have no hassle, downloading it, burning it on a BR disc or installing the ISO in the PS3 and patching it and fear Sony will know it, or if you are for it, just go ahead and have the lunch out and take a bit more time and trouble to have the cracked game. Either way, there will always be some pople buying it and some people pirating it.

In the end, pehaps this will be best for all of us and the prices will come a bit down.

Chinese pirates cracked it first

[judeancodersfront]

remember the $150 usb hacks? It had nothing to do with OtherOS and in fact crackers had been unsuccessfully trying to break out of the hypervisor through Linux.

Re:Chinese pirates cracked it first

[HonIsCool]

Assuming the usb-hack was developed by Chinese as opposed to merely sold to them... And it very likely built on geohot's hypervisor hack (which was the first hack, not counting the RSX incident, and it was splendidly successful by the way)

Re:Chinese pirates cracked it first

[judeancodersfront]

Sold to them by who? And it doesn't use the hypervisor.

problem

[ProfessorKaos64]

Problem is no company can condone piracy even if it helps them. I think they should just turn a blind eye and let it help them while making the occasional "hey piracy is bad mmkay?" statement but doing nothign about it. Checking out figures, most piracy helps garner attention and in turn sales that would have never occured in the first place.

Juust like they want to legalize cannabis

[Anonymous Coward]

to make more rope.

Re:Juust like they want to legalize cannabis

[arkane1234]

Fortunately, we have hemp for that :)

Tax

[tepples]

So if Hollywood can lower their prices to match what the market can pay for, then why can't the video game industry do the same?

Because you haven't voted against excessive taxation. Brazil, for example, charges import duty plus VAT plus interstate commerce tax, and it adds up to a 160% sales tax on consumer electronics.

Re:Tax

[hjf]

I'm in Argentina. Import taxes are roughly 50%. That doesn't justify the 4x increase in price for the PS3.

I'm not in a position to "vote" against taxes either. These taxes have been there before I was even born.

And don't forget: Import taxes are charged for the COST, not Final price. If the PS2 sells for $200 the cost declared in customs will be what? $150?

Re:Tax

[kramerd]

Argentina's inflation is estimated to be 25% for 2011. This is a decrease from the prior year. It can take years to move money from one currency to another, so if a PS3 in Argentina costs equivalent to $800, that price might be a bit low.

Re:Tax

[hjf]

No, it doesn't work like that.

If your rationale was true, all of us would be driving Mercedes and BMWs.

Re:Tax

[hjf]

BTW, forgot to mention it... the PS3 price has always been $800, it's been like that since they started selling it here.

The price in pesos has gone up because the peso goes up with inflation. The USD price remains stable.

self-destruct signal to every existing PS3

[midicase]

"self-destruct signal to every existing PS3"

DirectTV did something like that in 2001 to combat DirecTV card piracy:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/143

A tax on paying tax

[tepples]

I'm in Argentina. Import taxes are roughly 50%.

How much are your national VAT and local sales tax on top of that?

I'm not in a position to "vote" against taxes either. These taxes have been there before I was even born.

Are you in a position to run for office on a tax reform platform?

And don't forget: Import taxes are charged for the COST, not Final price.

I don't know about Argentina, but Brazil charges VAT on cost + import duty (yes, a tax on paying tax), and it charges IPI (Industrial Products Impost) on cost + import duty + VAT (a tax on tax on tax).

Re:A tax on paying tax

[hjf]

How much are your national VAT and local sales tax on top of that?

VAT is already included in the "roughly" 50% tax. Local sales tax is 3%

Are you in a position to run for office on a tax reform platform?

No. I don't live in Buenos Aires.

"Furthermore..."

[PeeweeJD]

Furthermore, current users would still be able to run pirated copies on current hardware."

So if they revise the hardware, the only way for an honest gamer to play games would be to become a pirate. LOL

Caps

[tepples]

And worst case, people used to leave their computers downloading overnight (gasp)

Modern broadband plans for people who don't live in a cable or DSL serviced area include transfer caps to prevent just that. Think 200 MB per day on satellite, 5 GB per month on 3G, etc.

and there is no need to ask for reposts of expired disks.

Once a torrent has 0 seeds and no downloader in the swarm has the piece you want ("less than one distributed copy"), you must ask for reseed. Or if a torrent has entered the long tail of popularity, the number of downloaders will trail off. After this point, you won't be able to get your ratio back up to 100%, and you may have to pay the tracker operator for more ratio credit or you won't be able to download anything else.

Re:Caps

[gartogg]

You then have a problem with caps, not speed. It's a real issue, but a different one.

And ratio? Operator? What are you using, some kind of ftp site? Torrents don't have ratios. (Unless you are using one of those private illegal sites, in which case, it's not your ISPs fault you don't want to follow the law.)

Let's not listen to Ubisoft when it comes to DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting this here is nothing more then flamebait.

For those who don't know, Ubisoft decided that all (of their) games MUST have a CONSTANT internet connection. Even, you know, single-player games. If you lose a connection for a split second, it kicks you out without saving. Hell, this is 1000x worse then WoW, and WoW is an MMO. Not that I was particularily fond of Ubisoft to begin with, but now if I even think of buying an Ubisoft game, I'll spend hours online looking into it's DRM... and probably lose interest all the while.

Hell, it didn't work with CD's.

The Wind Done Gone

[tepples]

If you create and publish a work critical of another work, expect the copyright owner of the other work to sue you. Sure, such suits are winnable, but only for people who have beaucoup bucks for a good lawyer.

Not really, this just does not happen.

It has happened. See SunTrust v. Houghton Mifflin over The Wind Done Gone .

If it did any such action is almost certainly going to be thrown out on the first motion

Good luck getting to that first motion on an indie budget, and good luck defending the appeals of the throwing out.

(assuming US jurisdiction - in Brittan your fucked)

So how do I prevent copies of my work from being sold in Great Britain and Northern Ireland so as not to attract British jurisdiction? How should I know in advance which jurisdictions are least friendly to criticism of a copyrighted work?

If the DMCA's anti-circumvention clauses gets removed

...then magical unicorns exist. Substantially pro-consumer changes to United States copyright law aren't going to happen in the next decade because the MPAA-owned news media control who can run for Congress.

And there's another issue: accidental copying. George Harrison accidentally copied part of a Ronald Mack song into his own "My Sweet Lord" and lost a lawsuit (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music). What was Harrison supposed to have done first in order not to get sued by Mack's publisher?

Re:The Wind Done Gone

[GasparGMSwordsman]

It has happened. See SunTrust v. Houghton Mifflin over The Wind Done Gone .

Notice that in this case the author was found to have plagiarized and copied large parts of the story. Or in other words, they were substantially guilty of what they were accused of. Finally the case was settled with the author and publishing company paying the plaintiff in order to continue publishing the book. Also note that in this case the issue of fair-use as a parody were brought up. The court held that in large part the new work failed to qualify as such.

Good luck getting to that first motion on an indie budget, and good luck defending the appeals of the throwing out.

I think your a bit unclear on how such a motion works and what can be appealed. The appeals process does not examine the facts it examines if the proper procedure was followed (defined by both statutory and case law). They can also be asked to clarify an issue if multiple precedents exist, but mainly just by picking between the existing precedents. If the issue is as simple as the one you first suggested then the appeal will never be granted. (The higher court has to agree to examine the case before you need to do anything.)

So how do I prevent copies of my work from being sold in Great Britain and Northern Ireland so as not to attract British jurisdiction? How should I know in advance which jurisdictions are least friendly to criticism of a copyrighted work?

This is irrelevant, if you are not in Britain (or the EU) then you are not subject to their foreign libel laws. More specifically if you are a US citizen then this issue has been recently re-codified in Title 28, USC. For an interesting look at the issue in more detail look into the debate in the EU and EU Parliament.

...then magical unicorns exist. Substantially pro-consumer changes to United States copyright law aren't going to happen in the next decade because the MPAA-owned news media control who can run for Congress.

I do agree that change is not likely. I disagree as to why. The reason is not that a group owns the media. It is that no one cares. 15 years ago 99% of people did not understand or care one wit about copyright. The majority of those that did were pro-copyright. Now 95% of people do not know or care about copyright. The majority that do know or care still support the current system (although the numbers have balanced out much more). (By people I am stating US citizens with voting rights, those who actually vote are even more apathetic on this issue.) Unless you can get people to care about this subject at all then there will be no change ever.

What was Harrison supposed to have done first in order not to get sued by Mack's publisher?

Not use the other person's song. Facts: Person A writes a song. Person B uses parts of that song. Person B pays royalties to person A. That is how the system is supposed to work. Just because Harrison copied the works by accident does not change the fact that he did copy work by another person and should pay that person for it.

Re:The Wind Done Gone

[tepples]

Not use the other person's song.

If I write a song, what specific steps should I take to not use the millions of existing other person's songs?

Re:The Wind Done Gone

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Statistically speaking if you put 500 monkeys in a room with typewriters for an infinite amount of time they will eventually write character by character all of War And Peace. HOW something is created is irreverent.

If someone owns the copyright to something then it is theirs for the duration of the copyright. If you come up with the exact same thing at a later time through any method then you have re-created their work and not created your own work. That is how the system work, it is very clear. If you don't like it, then work to change copyright law.

Re:The Wind Done Gone

[tepples]

If you come up with the exact same thing at a later time through any method then you have re-created their work and not created your own work.

Then what steps should I take to prevent myself from coming up with the exact same thing at a later time through any method?

work to change copyright law.

How is that possible when the news media benefit from no change or from change in the opposite direction?

Re:The Wind Done Gone

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Then what steps should I take to prevent myself from coming up with the exact same thing at a later time through any method?

Let me ask you another question in response. What steps should you take from being shot in your living room? Drunk idiots, gangs, random nut jobs go on shooting sprees all the time. I live in a safe neighbor hood where this has never happened before but I am really concerned. So , "... what steps should I take to prevent myself from coming up with the exact same thing at a later time through any method?"

The law is simply a set of equitable rules that apply to everyone. If you really can't fathom that concept I don't know what to saw to you.

PS4

[__aazsst3756]

At next Sony meeting: "When can we release the PS4, with a new key or better anti-piracy measures?"

And this is why

[geekoid]

we will get a PS4 that's not compatible with previous version of games. way to go "hackers".

Re:And this is why

[cheekyjohnson]

More like, "Way to go, Sony, for screwing over your legitimate customers because you're so afraid of the 'evil' piracy boogeyman."

Sony makes me feel

[gaza3g]

like an idiot all over again. I bought a PS3 instead of an XBox due to the never-ending complains regarding the RROD issue. Should have taken the risk instead.

Reading about GeoHot getting sued just goes to show how much of a dick Sony is. I have a job that affords me to buy games that I want without having to resort to piracy. But at the end of the day, the PS3 is mine and Sony should not have the right to dictate how I use it. I'm interested in the homebrew community since there's a possibility that someone might write a better XMB for me to play my MKV files without the need for prior format conversion.

I knew I shouldn't have trusted Sony ever since the rootkit fiasco but I thought to myself, different departments, different policies. Nope, they proved me wrong time and time again.

The PS3 will be my last purchase from Sony ever. None of their TVs, eReaders or any of goods whatsoever.

Bring in the Navy, Sony

[AP31R0N]

Sony, if you are having trouble with pirates petition your government to have the Japanese navy escort your shipping vessels. Or hire mercenaries to stand guard on your ships. Ship to ship armed robbery is much less likely against a ship that is armed. Most pirates are cowards. Shoot back and they're likely to leave you alone.

5 GB/mo

[tepples]

You then have a problem with caps, not speed. It's a real issue, but a different one.

The cap implies a sustained speed, as opposed to the burst speed that carriers advertise. For example, a 5 GB/mo cap is just over the sustained speed of a mid-1990s dial-up modem (5000000 KB/month * 8 bits/byte / 30 days/month / 86400 s/day = 15.4 kbps). The 7.5 GB/mo cap of WildBlue satellite isn't much more than that.

Torrents don't have ratios.

If share ratios don exits, then I'm confused.

(Unless you are using one of those private illegal sites)

(See article topic)