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Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates

Posted by Soulskill on from the of-pots-and-kettles dept.

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.

46 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. Evil commenting on evil by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Evil commenting on evil by mprinkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Evil commenting on evil by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Evil commenting on evil by kyz · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Does my bum look big in this?
    4. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Cruciform · · Score: 2

      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.

    5. Re:Evil commenting on evil by pspahn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    6. Re:Evil commenting on evil by kyz · · Score: 2

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

      --
      Does my bum look big in this?
    7. Re:Evil commenting on evil by anss123 · · Score: 2

      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.

    8. Re:Evil commenting on evil by kyz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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)

      --
      Does my bum look big in this?
    9. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Schadrach · · Score: 2

      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).

    10. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

    11. Re:Evil commenting on evil by bryansj · · Score: 2

      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.

    12. Re:Evil commenting on evil by somersault · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    13. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Moryath · · Score: 2

      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.

    14. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Inda · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    15. Re:Evil commenting on evil by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    16. Re:Evil commenting on evil by hjf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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".

    17. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    18. Re:Evil commenting on evil by tepples · · Score: 2

      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.

    19. Re:Evil commenting on evil by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      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.

    20. Re:Evil commenting on evil by hjf · · Score: 2

      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.

    21. Re:Evil commenting on evil by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      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!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    22. Re:Evil commenting on evil by paeanblack · · Score: 2

      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.

    23. Re:Evil commenting on evil by hjf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

    24. Re:Evil commenting on evil by paeanblack · · Score: 2

      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.

  2. probably not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:probably not by Stenchwarrior · · Score: 2, Funny

      Dear user,

      Please do not post that Key again

      Sincerely, Sony

      --
      Loading...
  3. eFUSE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. OtherOS by Cruciform · · Score: 2

    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?

  5. Why stop pirates? by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  6. Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole by KiloByte · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole by Abstrackt · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
    3. Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole by Jesus_666 · · Score: 2

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

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    4. Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole by GasparGMSwordsman · · Score: 2

      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.

  7. Piracy..? by bhunachchicken · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

    --
    THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
    1. Re:Piracy..? by geschild · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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 )

      --
      Karma? What's that again?
    2. Re:Piracy..? by marcop · · Score: 2

      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.

  8. Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates by CronoCloud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    causing games to bug out midway through if they fail checks

    They've done that before:

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

  9. Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates by DrXym · · Score: 2

    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.

  10. Re:Lots of things they can do to stop pirates by Xelios · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
  11. Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine by just+fiddling+around · · Score: 2

    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

    --
    You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
    1. Re:Difficulty of detecting a compromised machine by Moryath · · Score: 2

      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.

  12. Enough with one dimensional views of Evil by manekineko2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Enough with one dimensional views of Evil by Viol8 · · Score: 2

      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.

  13. Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN by Pentium100 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.