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Sony's War On Makers, Hackers, and Innovators
ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine takes a look at Sony's history of suing makers, hackers and innovators. Over the last decade Sony has been targeting legitimate innovation, hobbyists, and competition. From picking on people who want to program their robot dogs to dance to suing people who want to run their own software on something they bought. Sony has made so many mistakes with technology choices (Memory Stick, Magic Gate, UMD!), perhaps they'll end themselves soon enough, but until then MAKE is keeping score for Sony's all-out war on tinkerers."
Tinkerers tend to, well, tinker with their parts.
Considering their (high end) TVs and cameras, and I'd hazard a guess that their Blu-Ray players as well, all run Linux you'd think they'd be FOSS friendly, wouldn't you?
Maybe someone just needs to explain things to them.
I sure hope there's no Linux code in anywhere in the PS3 code base.
It's simple. Vote with your wallet and don't buy Sony. Even if they make something which looks nice, DON'T BUY IT. Basically, they hate their customers and unless you stop buying from them, they will never stop abusing their customers.
As an added bonus, if you don't buy from them, they can't abuse you.
So, it's simple. Every slashdotter should know this by now. If you're on slashdot and complaining about recent bad experiences with Sony, then it's your own fault and you do not have my sympathy.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have a dream. One day in Tokyo, a hacked Sony robot will walk down the street, drawing hundreds of onlookers. It will stop in front of Sony headquarters. It will turn to face the building. And it will slowly raise its arm and give Sony the finger.
Pretty much the entire article could be summed up in one sentence: Sony abused the f**k out of the DMCA. A bit of a rant on the DMCA (might be a tad offtopic but not really): Aren't our elected leaders supposed to represent us and not JUST big content/software companies (so we can really avoid Sony coming after people's asses)?
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I find it funny that Microsoft suddenly is becoming "hobyist" friendly. When adafruit announced the contest they condemned the contest and it was "illegal" or against the EULA. That is when adafruit even doubled the bounty. They sign their hardware peripherals, they have regio coding,... . It is easy to be something if the cat is already out of the bag... .
The whole "we give geohot a WP7 because we support free tinkering" is really just a PR stunt. The day the guy would release the key to sign 360 games I don't think they will give him a free 360. They are even a member of the same anti piracy clubs as Sony... .
For non hacking, Sony do manage to be reasonably relevant. The PS3 and the win for BluRay exorcised some of the ghosts of the Betamax era (and Betamax was a superior technology from a quality point of view). Their midrange consumer equipment is reasonable, and their semi pro stuff still dominates in AV markets and provides a big range of equipment.
That being said, they're no longer dominant in home audio (though they still have reasonable CD players and stuff) since their real flagship - The Walkman - has been deprecated by apple. Home HiFi is not selling as much, the PC is the new media center and there it's Apple all the way for most of my real music-mad friends. Sony have big corporate culture issues, but that's nothing new.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
This seems to be a case of misguided fury where Sony is confusing its failure to to stay relevant, with losses stemming from piracy.
All console manufacturers suffer some losses due to piracy, but not all of them find the need to rage against it.
Sony has had a string of flops, from over-estimating the popularity of the PS3 (are they still selling it at a loss? or has it turned a profit at last?) to failing to so much as imagine something like the Kinect.
My guess is, management has no choice but to scapegoat their failures on something - and who better than the obvious targets, like tinkerers and hackers and that omnipresent threat of piracy?
(Microsoft, oddly enough, is actually profiting by encouraging an eco-system of tinkerers around the Kinect)
I still have a functioning Sony Trinitron and Sony VCR built in the 1990s, when Sony hardware was good. They were one of the first purchases I made of electronics gear when I moved out, and at the time I would have recommended them. I *used* to be a fan of their gear -- a little more expensive, but reasonable quality for consumer-grade stuff.
Now I wouldn't touch their stuff with a 10-foot pole even if it was twice as good for half the price.
Do they understand that they've lost an entire category of users? Yeah, I know geeks probably aren't their biggest market among the vast number of general consumers out there, but when you add in the "What would you buy? Anything but Sony" advice from geeks to their friends, the numbers have got to add up to something significant.
Why don't they get this? How long can they afford not to care?
Sony were control freaks LONG before anything cited in that article. Even in the 80's, when I had occasion to deal with them, I was surprised at how touchy they were about their IP. I always chalked it up to a Japanese conformist mentality (not sure if that's fair, but Nintendo seem to exhibit it too). In subsequent years, I've become convinced that it's not even (primarily) about the money. I think that they would crack down on hackers even if it cost them more money than it was worth to do so.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I knew for years that Sony had been the distributor of CBS recordings in Japan (and a great custodian too; I found CDs in Tokyo of CBS releases, long forgotten in the US, whose excellent quality reflected the care given to their masters), so it seemed to be a natural fit when they acquired CBS Records. In those days, how could I think otherwise? Sony's reputation for innovation and quality were unmatched by anyone else in Japan. Whenever I brought home a Sony television, or a stereo receiver, or a reel-to-reel deck (yes, I'm that old), that was something special.
However, that acquisition, along with that of Columbia Pictures, marked the days when Sony began its long decline as an electronics provider. (Akio Morita's inevitable departure didn't help, either.) They still produce some amazing products, even though products like the Walkman, once ubiquitous, is now largely a historical fact. Their shift in focus now makes them a content provider first and a electronics provider second.
When it comes to content, I think of them as nouveau riche, in the derogatory sense. Like the person with newfound wealth sometimes behaves, Sony has behaved in a most vulgar manner. It has demonstrated an amazing lack of finesse toward its customers while attempting to protect its content. The most infamous example of this has got to be the rootkit debacle.
I miss the Sony of old. But I'm done with them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
When it stopped being a pro & consumer electronics company, and started being a multimedia conglomerate.
Suddenly the folks running Columbia Pictures had a say in the board-room concerning what products would do and be capable of.
This is how we wound up with audio CDs that had root-kits on them, and MP3 players that didn't play MP3s. When Sony just made hardware, it was damn good hardware. Especially in the pro-area, stuff like BetacamSP was top-notch equipment.
But they lost their way, become too convoluted, too mired in internal politics and too many chefs spoiling the soup.
If they had *never* put their claws into all other media, and had just stayed a hardware company, Slashdotters would be singing their praises, and they'd probably be bigger than Apple.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Trademarks and trade secrets definitely benefit from vigorous defense in this manner, but not so much for other forms of IP
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Bullshit. I pay at the store, I take it home. Copyright and/or patent law might forbid me to use my replicator on it, but it's mine.
You don't see the stupid EULA at the store, moron.
Sony's broken business model is not my problem, and the courts should not be propping them up.
so that people don't own it. Problem solved.
Buy a license to use some SONY gear, and during the term of your license, if you have trouble with it, drop it off or ship it to a depot, and get a new one, no worries.
When you are done, return the device and carry on.
That's really what they are trying to do, only they are trying to leverage the benefits of ownership, without also dealing with the realities of what people do with their stuff.
If it's really that big of a deal to open the PS3, don't sell them to people. Simple as that.
Blogging because I can...
That's not really a justification.
It is actually. Those kids are harming no one and they are better off. The world is a better place. Really.
Uptight content "owners" need to get their head around that fact. The amount of broken law making being done in the name of "controlling" those harmless kids is a travesty of the democratic process.
Content "owners" need to understand what "ownership" is; simply the right given to them by we the people to control most, though not all, uses of some object or entity.
e.g. Owning some real estate allows you, with planning permission, build a house on it and restrict access to others but, depending on the country or area, doesn't give you the right to build a shop in a residential zone or dig a big hole endangering neighboring structures. These seem reasonable restrictions on this particular style of physical object.
The concept of "ownership" maps fairly well to the physical restriction that only one person can use a physical object at a time but when it comes to non-physical entities there is very little that's natural about "ownership." "Ownership" of non-physical entities is a very messy concept with no clear definition or boundaries. Vendors are able to "sell" copies of bits and give only very restricted access to those bits while still calling it a sale. First sale doctrine and free speech just some of the many traditional rights that vendors are trampling all over with DRM and broken law at the moment.
Personally, I'd like to see "intellectual property" law that recognizes that artificial scarcity is an artificial, harmful construct that should be structured and kept to the bare minimum necessary to encourage people to create. Copyright terms should be drastically reduced (e.g. 7 years) and not apply when something is DRM'ed. There should be many exceptions for socially useful activities (e.g. education, third world, the poor, reverse engineering for compatibility). Contravention of such laws should be a misdemeanor only. Patents should be very restricted and require significant proof that it took a lot of time and effort to research, not develop, something. etc.
Artificial scarcity blocks billions of peoples' free speech and drastically limits the spread and use of ideas so that a very small number can have an increased profit. That's not right.
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Copyright rewards distributors (copiers) far more than creators.
I find it funny that the "Evil" microsoft corporation doesnt go around suing people left and right. Xbox1 media server or running emulators? w.e Xbox 360 HDD hack. w.e Xbox 360 DVD hack. Cant play on xbl if you get caught but wont get sued. Kinect. People are controlling goddamn tiny gundams with this thing. Maybe thats why they dont get sued? Daaaaamn you evil microsoft!
...anyone who's posting damning Sony comments on here from a Mac, iPhone or other locked-down Apple device is a hypocrite.
I'm typing this from Linux, so I'm allowed to wear open-toed sandals, not shave most days and hate Stony and Snapple.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Ah, so it's not freedom to tinker you're opposed to. It's freedom of speech. Hack all you want, just don't talk about it? Excuse me if I don't find that point of view any more acceptable. And for the record, no, just because a side effect is known does not mean it is intentional.