Sony's Case Against Geohot Has Been Settled

matt_gaia writes "According to Sony Computer Entertainment America, they have reached a settlement with GeoHot (George Hotz), where Hotz has consented to a permanent injunction, but still denies any wrong-doing in the whole affair. Sony said, 'Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal.'" I wonder if Anonymous will proceed with their anti-Sony campaign.

Comments

Oh, stuff it.

[intellitech]

'Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers.'

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have brought suit against GeoHot in the first place.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[gstoddart]

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have brought suit against GeoHot in the first place.

That part is so they can act like part of the motivation is so people don't write hacks to their modded systems that lets them cheat at the on-line games.

I'm of the opinion that it's 99% protecting of their IP/locking down the console, and 1% protecting consumers ... and even that only as a PR thing.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[grub]

You and I agree, but read the comments on TFA. They're the complete opposite of most slashdot-type posts.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's full of rabid fan boys.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[aristotle-dude]

'Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers.'

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have brought suit against GeoHot in the first place.

Why don't you stuff it? They are interested of course in protecting their own IP and the IP or their partners and looking out for their consumers. The average consumer is not affected by the lack of linux or not being able to run hombrew/pirated games. Let use be honest here, most people bothering to hack their PS3 are interested in pirated games. That is their primary motivation. Consumers "consume" by buying games and media which earns Sony and their partners money.

Let us also admit that GeoHot does not represent the average consumer either.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Anonymous will proceed with their anti-Sony campaign.

I certainly hope so, unless they also drop their various other cases against software freedom liberators.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers = licensees, content developers

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

>The average consumer is not affected by the lack of linux

You may say that now, but in the grander scheme of things, linux is about freedom and freedom affects all of us and future generations.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to Slashdot, which isn't?

Just because you agree with them doesn't mean they're NOT rabid fanboys.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't have to be average to be allowed to do what he wants with his hardware, now does he? The average commuter doesn't use a bicycle, scooter, or their feet to get to work, they use a car, nevertheless the minority users' rights and ability to do something the average person doesn't give a crap about is protected.

It doesn't matter if Hotz was an average user.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[CelticWhisper]

Their motivation doesn't matter. The principle remains - Sony is trying to keep people from using their hardware how they want. While it's completely within Sony's rights to deny use of their network, the fact is that they flat-out stole a feature that was advertised as a major selling point for the hardware and are trying to blame one hacker for their own misdeeds.

I've made this analogy before but I'll make it again. If someone buys a hammer and files the ends down into sharp spikes, then goes out and starts hitting people in the head with their weaponized tool, you prosecute them for causing bodily harm to other people, not for the act of modifying a hammer. Maybe you can take the modification into account as evidence of premeditation for the actual crime, but you don't treat it as a crime itself. Same thing with the PS3. If people modify their PS3s and then use the modifications to play pirated games, game makers can go after them in civil court for pirating games. However, it should never be permitted to pro^H^Hersecute people for modifying what they own.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So will other hackers protect their IP by using Tor and stay hidden.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[kimvette]

I responded many years ago before the rootkit by not buying Sony products and by recommending Samsung, LG, or even Vizio screens for clients who need large wall-mounted screens in their offices, conference rooms, etc.

I started avoided Sony when I found their replacement parts costs to be obscene when I wanted to repair my DVP-S360 DVD player - I paid a premium for the Sony for the feature set (mainly the full-feature front-panel controls) and it turned out the entire run was bad and became known for failing just after warranty. I priced out replacement parts but by then competitors were offering DVD players that could play various mpeg4 videos and the part I needed cost more than competitor offerings, and I could even get a Sony DVD player for a few dollars more.

Another thing is in a lot of Sony products they use resistors in place of fuses, making troubleshooting more time consuming. Between that and cold solder joints in their televisions, it was obvious Sony decided to just start phoning it in, earning sales now based on their past reputation for being innovators and a quality manufacturer.

Now they engage in shameless malfeasance (installing rootkits on hard drives of legitimate paying customers), engage in fraud (sell product based on features, e.g., OtherOS, and then take it away) and then attack the consumer directly when they try to take back control of their own hardware and help others enjoy their right of first sale.

Then, in various products (from MP3 players to notebooks to cameras) they kept pushing their stupid MemoryStick form factor, despite the existence of very workable existing standards (CF, MMC/SD, or even XD), an obvious means to increase revenue through their own costly proprietary (yet slow and low capacity) sole-sourced accessories.

When did this pattern start? Remember when Sony used to be pro consumer (e.g., sony walkman, VCRs and the betamax case, dual deck cassette systems, etc)? Did their anti-consumer agenda start when Sony bought up music labels?

Frak Sony. They're not too large to fail and if enough people say ENOUGH, they will either fail or they will change their ways and bring back the Sony we once knew.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[GWRedDragon]

It wouldn't surprise me if Sony had a few employees whose sole job was to write favorable comments...

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[poetmatt]

Sony could help but dismiss as fast as possible once they realized they didn't even have a shred of a case in california. I'd bet money the settlement involves paying off all of Hotz's legal fees.

It cracks me up that they state that hotz accepted a permanent injunction as a "loss" but it doesn't even say what the injunction was for.

So Sony basically ran the hell away on this. I'm actually quite surprised if Hotz agreed to keep this settlement private, as it would do wonders to not have it private.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[the simurgh]

they don't they outsource it. i once applied for a job at a company that shocked me when i was told what they told me my job was to be. the company existed solely to go from message board forum to forum posting favorable comments, padding fan pages and editing wiki entry's favorably for companies or high profile individuals who were clients. hence why i scream astroturfing at the one comment that is not in the stream of hate that the other 19 are.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[jtownatpunk.net]

Your analogy doesn't work. In some cases, it is illegal to modify something you own. Going with the weapon theme, a sawed-off shotgun comes to mind. Even if you have a legitimate reason to make the modification, it's still illegal, in the US, to reduce the length of a shotgun to less than 26" overall and an 18" barrel. Doesn't matter if such a modification could make the weapon more useful during legal use.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[adam.dorsey]

Parent post brought to you by Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because they're people who have spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it: play fucking video games. Nothing Hotz has done has helped them in any way, and most of it has hurt them. His original hack led to the OtherOS removal. Most of these people didn't really care then, although some pretended to.

Then came the real working hack. First we got slews of updates as Sony tried to stay one step ahead, which was just a giant headache for people who just wanted to play a damn game. Then cheating became rampant in all the major online games, something we used a console specifically to avoid. Then the Anonymous DDoS against PSN which meant we couldn't even sign in.

Now, you could (rightfully) claim that Hotz wasn't responsible for any of this. Sony removed OtherOS, Sony pushed out the endless updates, other wanna be crackers wrote the cheats, and Anonymous ran the DDoS without Hotz consent. But as a gamer, I don't give a fuck. A system that I truly enjoyed has become a greater and greater headache, and it all ties back directly to Hotz. And I, like a lot of gamers, just want it to go away.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[TheGratefulNet]

in the 70's and 80's, sony was a respected hardware maker. their audio gear ranged from cheap to very very fine. they made a lot of high end pro audio gear, too.

in the 90's they started to lose themselves.

in the 00's, they totally jumped the shark and I've been avoiding them and their products since.

the brand is dead to me as much as possible. I can't control any internal sony parts or chips but I can at least avoid paying for sony gear that is branded sony.

my life has not suffered one bit. there isn't one thing sony makes that ONLY sony makes. not one thing that affects my life, at least (I don't game and wouldn't know a ps1 from a ps2 from a ps3, fwiw). maybe you gamers need sony but I can't think of anything else that they have any real ownership in any tech area. you can live a sony-free life pretty easily.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is from a Playstation blog. The type of people who would likely go there and make comments are pro-Sony/PS3 by default, and closer to that mindset.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me about the consumer and the 5 clusters of PS3s that I run for computational experimentation and chemical processing.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[do0b]

The consumers they speak of aren't the endusers.
They're the third party developers.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[blackC0pter]

I completely agree. The way Motorola is going with locking down their phones, they will soon become the next Sony. Why can't we just use the products we buy any way we want to?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop saying "Frak" - it's fucking stuipid.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Runaway1956]

You're way off target. The question is, who owns a playstation when it leaves the store? I say, if Geohot, or anyone else pays for it, it is THEIRS. And, Sony has no rights whatsoever to dictate how it might be used.

Stuff it? Good idea, get to stuffing.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[GooberToo]

Hardly surprising that about one of the only posts which actually have anything to do with reality gets troll moderated.

Holy shit has slashdot fallen...and with it, the average IQ...

I'd honestly be surprised if the average IQ of the slashdot readership is above mid 100s these days. And based on posts I seriously doubt the average poster has an IQ above low 90s.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Golddess]

Let use be honest here, most people bothering to hack their PS3 are interested in pirated games. That is their primary motivation.

If we're going to "be honest here", it should be pointed out that what finally motivated the right people to irrevocably break open the PS3 was Sony removing the OtherOS feature.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[gstoddart]

The consumers they speak of aren't the endusers.
They're the third party developers.

Maybe, but never publicly.

If you don't keep up the illusion that "consumers" means the end users who buy the console and the games, the rubes might actually take notice and get annoyed with you.

You can't let them know that they're just sheep and a revenue stream and that anything they want is irrelevant. They are the source of cash, after all.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you charge them extra for capital letters?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Runaway1956]

It wasn't illegal to modify the shotgun - it was illegal to modify the shotgun beyond established parameters which changes that weapon from a "shotgun" to a concealable weapon, ie, a "pistol". The shotgun owner has every right to change out the firing pin, to change the magazine, to put riflings in the barrel, to change the sites, or even to mount a laser pointer on the shotgun. He is prohibited from using it as a concealed weapon. So, your analogy falls short.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mistiry]

And there are thousands of people that 'spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it:' and that's use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away for no reason.

Secondly, Anonymous didn't directly DDoS PSN, and as soon as they realized their DDoS was affecting PSN, they stopped attacking (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/04/08/anonymous_stops_its_assault_on_psn). The LOIC that Anonymous uses and controls via hivemind was not pointed or directed at PSN servers, but at the website.

Thirdly, cry me a river, then build a bridge and get over it.

And finally, saying all the headaches you've encountered are directly tied to Geohot is like saying it is Bill Gate's fault that Windows Vista flopped just because he was involved in the creation of the first Windows OS.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[tophermeyer]

The rational nature of your logic is truly astounding sir.

When presented with a rational explanation of how an invested but uninterested third party would desire simply that disruptions to their service be resolved, you've parried with the Booo-fucking-hoooo defense. Bravo. Surely this sets the stage for further meaningful discussion.

For the record, I totally agree with the GP. I bought a PS3 for a streamlined walled garden online gaming experience. I don't want script kiddies messing with my games, and I don't want to have to sit through a 20 minute update process whenever I want to play. Which, as a result of my twice a month gaming habit, happens to be every goddamn time I turn the thing on.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[i.r.id10t]

Perfectly legal to do it. Just gotta get a tax stamp from the BATFE first.

Only firearms modification that isn't legal (on a fed level) is making a full auto - that particular registry has been closed off to new additions since May 1986.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[NevarMore]

And the restriction is just as arbitrary and foolish as not being allowed to modify my game console.

If I'm a bad guy who is modifying a shotgun to hide in my saggy pants and rob a bodega, I'm not going to ring up the ATF and find out if its legal. This is the same as someone who modifies their console for the sole purpose of playing bootleg games.

If I'm an amateur gunsmith and tinkering with a shotgun with a mangled choke I cannot legally cut down that barrel. If I am in possession of a shortened barrel that will fit an otherwise legal weapon I own, I could still be in violation of the law. This is akin to possessing a bone stock game console and a modchip whether or not it is installed. As a law abiding citizen I am prevented from altering things I own because of arbitrary rules written and enforced by bureaucrats with the blessing of legislators both of whom have a poor understanding of the issues at hand.

Much like Sony booting modded consoles from PSN, the safety officer or owner of a gun range could boot me out and not let me shoot my modified weapon. Or he could require that I have it inspected first.

For a case where modifications are legal, but the places they can be used is enforced through law, private property rights, or insurance risk controls look at the racing industry. Any schmuck can buy a Miata and install a roll bar and modify the suspension. He can make it shoot flames. There is no problem with that, but the city does not have to allow him to register the vehicle to run on roads nor does the owner of a track have to let him drive it there nor does the organizer of a race cup have to let him compete.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Man On Pink Corner]

Correct, and that law wasn't OK, either. They started with shotguns because after all, who but a bank robber would want to tinker with the barrel of a shotgun? They moved on to mandating shower heads that dribble like they belong in a Flomax commercial, water-saving toilets that have to be flushed twice, and cold medicine that requires a 14-day waiting period.

Now they've made it illegal to take your Playstation apart and tell anyone else what you see inside, but hey, as long as it stops those cheaters and pirates, all's fair in law and love, huh?

In short, GTFO of my country, or at least stop voting, kthxbai.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Frak you.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop saying "stuipid" - it's frakking stupid.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[IMightB]

I completely agree. The last *good* products Sony made were the Walkman's. After that they became a POS brand that replied on the reputation they built in the 80's.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[tophermeyer]

The analogy that jumped into my head is that it is illegal to make certain modifications to your care that might make it unsafe to operate on the road.

Granted the public roadways are nothing like the Sony PSN, but in the sense that people have to share access and play along nicely with each other it is completely rational that we accept reasonable limitations on freedoms to ensure everyone is able to use it for its intended purpose.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Lumpy]

Problem is their BLuRay play is one of very FEW that have discreet on and off signals. Required for anyone that has a real home theater or for board room automation. LG being retarded removed discrete on and off ir commands. Panasonic designed all their BLuray players to be for the brain dead and hostile to automation by removing almost all discreet commands.

Only other choice is to go to a $4500.00 denon pro BluRay that does not play a bluray any better than a $199 unit.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Liar.

He stole nothing from the PSN, you're a liar.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[tophermeyer]

it should never be permitted to pro^H^Hersecute people for modifying what they own.

But in this case Sony is clearly not interested in the hardware. Sony is interested in preventing people from modifying Sony software, which the license agreement indicates the end user definitely does not own.

IP law is of course something that is hotly debated, especially with respect to software licenses. But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law. Actively seeking to violate it doesn't make hacker communities look noble, it makes us/them look like cheap teenagers looking to play pirated games for free.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Runaway1956]

The walled garden is a pipedream. Face it. And no amount of legislation, no amount of corporate security, no amount of whining by the gaming community is going to change that.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[gabereiser]

Let use be honest here, most people bothering to hack their PS3 are interested in pirated games. That is their primary motivation.

If we're going to "be honest here", it should be pointed out that what finally motivated the right people to irrevocably break open the PS3 was Sony removing the OtherOS feature.

You sir have hit the nail on the head.... it's not about pirated software or what ever Sony claims they were protecting.... it's about their idiotic removal of the OtherOS feature that spawned all this mucking about under the hood...

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[quickgold192]

It would be illegal for Remington to sell you a sawed off shotgun in the first place. It's not illegal for Sony to sell you a modded PS3. In the shotgun scenario we're talking about banning a category of item. There's nothing categorically wrong with "modded consoles" except for the fact that Sony, a public foreign company not associated with the US government, doesn't want you to have one.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Belial6]

Hotz hurt them? Is that the same logic you use when you beat your girlfriend? "Well, I wouldn't have had to hit the bitch if she didn't talk back."

Anything Sony did to their customers is Sony's fault. Period.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[thestudio_bob]

When did this pattern start? Remember when Sony used to be pro consumer (e.g., sony walkman, VCRs and the betamax case, dual deck cassette systems, etc)? Did their anti-consumer agenda start when Sony bought up music labels?

That and movies. When they incorporated content into their business model, they lost their way.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Shark]

if thats ok I suppose if I get a copy of your house key I should be able to take whatever I want.

Well, for your analogy to be accurate: If you get yourself a house identical to mine, find pictures of the inside of mine and decide to make copies of my furniture and other stuff at your own cost, I have absolutely no problem with it. Even if I had spent lots of money designing my interior decoration, buying the stuff, etc. If you can do it for a minute fraction of what it cost me, I'll be nothing but happy for you.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[the simurgh]

as i remember it they charged you by the sentences i think. i guess it was easier to make more money off the controversial clients that needed it more.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[antdude]

Frak you! :P

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[houstonbofh]

Beautiful analogy! Especially since Sony lovers in spite of all the crap they have done, do seem like the co-dependent abused spouse. And anyone who has every tried to help out a fired or relative in a situation like that knows how Geohot feels.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Surt]

He's talking about what should be, not what is. What is right, vs what is legal. How the legal system itself should work, not how it does.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[chaboud]

Sony actually has a pretty interesting (but annoying) policy on this (or, at least, did a few years ago). Any Sony employee posting at any time online is supposed to clearly represent himself/herself as an employee of Sony to remove any hidden bias or unethical representation.

This includes when you're on your own time, doing un-Sony-related things.

That's not to say that people aren't violating, or being compelled to violate, that policy, but the suits seem to favor having their astroturf above board (which completely ruins the point).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[tophermeyer]

So we should just give up on the prospect of a "clean" gaming community and accept the intrusion of exploiters as inevitable? Hell no. That's like saying "Goatse's are inevitable so I might as well just make that my Christmas card".

A perfectly walled garden is unattainable. But if in the pursuit of perfection we happen to maintain a fairly well manicured garden with a minimum of intrusions, I'd accept that. And considering how much I pay for the console and game, It's not unreasonable for me to expect it.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[poetmatt]

Or you know, get a computer, turn on magic packet/wake on lan, and get it done cheaper.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Lemmy Caution]

I was going to say "your right to a walled garden stops where my right to tinker with the things I've bought begins," but I'll go farther and say that it is depressing that our roles in society as consumers has eclipsed and dominates are status in society as citizens. Because even if, at the end of the day, you recognize that your convenience is not important enough to justify legal action someone who has tinkered with what they've purchased, there are thousands and thousands of people who do not recognize that.

It puts me in the "we just can't have nice things (like a civil democracy)" camp.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[AmberBlackCat]

Perhaps the settlement was big enough to make him sacrifice his cause. Or perhaps he's already done his job and might as well take the money too.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[cheekyjohnson]

Let use be honest here, most people bothering to hack their PS3 are interested in pirated games.

Can you prove this?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[jimicus]

Hence outsourcing it. The people doing the astroturfing aren't Sony employees, and so are not bound by Sony's terms of employment.

Sounds to me like the marketing department found a way around a rule invented by the HR department.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[chaboud]

You're falling into the single-minority myth.

SACD playback.
PS2 compatibility.
Four USB ports (instead of two).
Card reader.
Everything on the PSN being non-subscription.

Those were all minority features that, say, 90% of people didn't use. If there's no overlap between people for those being differentiating features, that's 50% of people who look at the platform and go "nope, nevermind." Now, of course there's overlap in your minorities, but they're not all the same minority. The number of people lost is somewhere between 10% and 50% (for our example numbers). Surprise, the PS3 is in dead last in the current generation of consoles.

What makes the OtherOS removal so much more nefarious is that it was actually perpetrated on *already sold* consoles. Imagine if, a few years after you bought your car, your manufacturer told you that you had to choose between having the headlights function or having the radio function (for the sake of argument, let's imagine that it's not a British car). Would that feel like a fair choice? What if it were something more rarely used, or not used by all, like the headlights and windshield wipers? Headlights and lumbar support adjustment? Headlights and cup-holders?

It would be completely stupid to make any of these concessions because you purchased that product for the collection of features or some personal subset thereof. It is not the right of the manufacturer to choose to do material harm to a group of purchasers only because that group is too small to make a dent in revenues.

Now, did Sony likely miscalculate just how many people it would cause to become life-long Anything-But-Sony purchasers? Probably, but this one is best not left up to the market. We don't let free market pressures govern rapists, murderers, and bank robbers. Hotz was stepping in and doing the job that the DOJ wouldn't.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[smelch]

I don't see what any of this has to do with Hotz, or the people who bought the console for OtherOS. You're not the only person in the world, no matter how much you paid for your system. Sony fucked the dog on this one by removing OtherOS, Hotz restored his PS3 to the way he wanted to use it, sorry his work around broke what you wanted but Sony did it. And all the bitching in the world won't make it otherwise.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[countertrolling]

No, the only 'consumers' Sony cares about are the other heavy industries it trades with. The malls are a front.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your actions might anger a big evil company, do them anonymously.

At least until the lawmakers wake up. China does not have the DMCA.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

They're the third party developers.

Not just developers, but also retailers. Who do you think sells the games?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Captain Hook]

Why can't we just use the products we buy any way we want to?

I think it is because the products you buy these days are actually the hooks to get you to buy overpriced content later on. They are effectively loss leaders.

Games consoles are designed to make you buy games, mobile phones are really designed to be attractive for mobile operators which increases a customers spend on messages and data etc.

Companies don't want you to use the product how you want because at best they don't make as much money as expected and at worst, outright lose money.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't.

It might be illegal to drive a modified car in some public places. If I own a 1000 acre ranch and want to drive my modified car around on it, I can. Hell, I could give it a propeller and wings and make it fly as long as it remained within a certain distance to the ground (to avoid public airspace).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mrchaotica]

In some cases, it is illegal to modify something you own. Going with the weapon theme, a sawed-off shotgun comes to mind.

The difference is that that's a restriction created by government. Sony, in contrast, is a mere corporation -- it does not and should not have the right to make law!

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

I was going to say "your right to a walled garden stops where my right to tinker with the things I've bought begins," but I'll go farther and say that it is depressing that our roles in society as consumers has eclipsed and dominates are status in society as citizens. Because even if, at the end of the day, you recognize that your convenience is not important enough to justify legal action someone who has tinkered with what they've purchased, there are thousands and thousands of people who do not recognize that.

Except that you intentionally bought a device that is a walled garden when there are plenty of devices of the same type that aren't walled. And then choose to bitch about it being a walled garden.

You should try this fancy process called "voting with your wallet."

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Culture20]

Contracted third parties aren't employees.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

And there are thousands of people that 'spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it:' and that's use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away for no reason.

They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more. This should have been obvious when Sony started to ship the PS3 Slim with no OtherOS support even before they removed it from older models.

Geohot, et. al. gave them just the opening they were looking for: an excuse to remove it from all older consoles via a firmware update.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Apple are the same.

Also, if you work for any part of Apple, even if you work at Apple Stores, you are not allowed to take part in any online activity relating to Apple or their direct competitors. I think the contracts last for 2 years after you leave Apple too.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, they are too large to fail. A Belgian chain of super markets (GB) was bought, renamed to Carrefour, and started to ignore Belgian customer wishes, treating them as French inhabitants and requiring them to pay more than other supermarkets for products they did not really want. Mass exodus of customers ensued.

It took years of this idiotic mismanagement and huge losses every year, AND a global crisis, before the whole thing just recently collapsed. Even now Carrefour France is wondering what the hell went wrong, while they could have asked just about any customer a decennium ago.
I've heard they are doing the same in Spain, with about the same result.

If this is what it takes to take down a local chain, don't wait for sony to crash down in the near future

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

PS2 Compatibility is the one thing on that list that I actually use with my PS3.

I probably would have just been better off getting a Slim, as my (used) PS3 60GB is starting to have weird issues.that I think are caused by overheating, which I hear is less of a problem in newer models.

Hell, I shouldn't have bothered with a PS3 in the first place, and just stuck with a new PS2 to replace my dying one... but that's neither here nor there. It was one of those "look, I has tax refund!" things a year ago.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Projector screens do not work using WoL.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[smelch]

He doesn't need to prove it, it doesn't matter. The case wasn't Sony v. Most People.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[jusdisgi]

They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more.

Yes, that is a reason. It's not an acceptable reason at all. They billed OtherOS as a feature when they sold the console. Then they took it away. I don't give a damn what their reasons were, that's fraudulent.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[dstyle5]

Microsoft's "strategy", as you put it, cost them billions of dollars in losses. They also lost many sales for a time as people (myself included) stayed away from buying 360's because of their abnormally high failure rate. Imagine what their market share might be now if not for the RRoD gong show. Yes consumers got shafted, especially the launch unit buyers, but to think Microsoft envisioned a failure rate as high as it was would be silly. The costs to their business were far to high.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[smelch]

Dude, PSN should be very easy to make hacker free if Sony gave a shit about really doing it. Its called banning for cheating. Ban enough people fast enough and it will dry up almost immediately. Tell me, what has this lawsuit really done for PSN?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[zeroshade]

What about those who purchased it expressly for the OtherOS Functionality? Anyone who purchased it for the OtherOS functionality (to have that AND be able to play games) was then legitimately wronged by Sony.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[zeroshade]

And there are thousands of people that 'spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it:' and that's use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away for no reason.

They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more. This should have been obvious when Sony started to ship the PS3 Slim with no OtherOS support even before they removed it from older models.

Geohot, et. al. gave them just the opening they were looking for: an excuse to remove it from all older consoles via a firmware update.

If every company who "didn't want to support [some feature] anymore" simply issued an update removing it, then that would be a really bad thing.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[jusdisgi]

They moved on to mandating shower heads that dribble like they belong in a Flomax commercial, water-saving toilets...

Yeah, how dare we regulate products that use water when 80% of the country is facing a catastrophic water shortage within a couple decades...

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[cheekyjohnson]

He doesn't? He stated something as a fact. I asked him if he could prove it. If he can't, then he shouldn't have stated it as a fact.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Oh for the love of God, no. Not just no, historically no.

It's piracy. it's always been piracy.

The NES had the real first lockout mechanism. Coleco didn't have one, Atari 2600 or the 5200 didn't have one, Intellivision didn't have one.

Really, they didn't need any, ROM chips were expensive then.

When the first real hack came out for the NES? Piracy to get around the lock out chip(Companies like Wisdom Tree came later; 10 in 1, 1000 in 1 carts from overseas on the other hand came well before Wisdom Tree and other companies; very rare but they existed; famicom had no lockout chip, FWIW and pirates kept pumping out cheap bootlegs; same with FDS). SNES? Piracy to load games off of floppies via the Game Disk Doctor. N64? Piracy to load games off of the Doctor V64. PlayStation? Mod chip to play burns. Saturn? Mod circuit to play burns. Dreamcast? Mod chip to play burns. PS2? Mod chip to play burns. Xbox? Mod chip to play pirated games. Xbox 360? DVDROM firmware update so it would play burned games. Wii? Modchip to allow it to play burned games.

PS3? Tool to load an HDLoader for games that never bothered to verify if you actually owned that game. Not to mention one of the first home brews was an FTP client so you could load ISOs over a network.

Fail0verflow and GeoHot's work(well, the work that landed him in legal hot water; releasing the Metldr keys. Sony probably didn't care about him glitching the memory bus) came much later, well after pirates opened up the console.

No, let's be honest here. Pirates do the hard work of breaking the system open.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

I completely agree. The last *good* products Sony made were the Walkman's. After that they became a POS brand that replied on the reputation they built in the 80's.

I disagree. Both the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 worked very well... it took something like 8 years for my PS2 to start dying, which is well beyond the 6 year life cycle a console traditionally has.

I can't say much about their other products, though.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Yeah, how dare we regulate products that use water when 80% of the country is facing a catastrophic water shortage within a couple decades...
They still doing fountain shows in Vegas? STFU.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Just an addendum.

Handhelds were largely the same. GB? GBC? Flash carts for piracy. GBA? Flash cart for piracy. NeoGeo Pocket? Flash cart for piracy. DS? Flash cart for piracy.

PSP on the other hand, had a flaw in it's 1.0 firmware revision(which came out in Japan only) that didn't check if an EBOOT was signed or not, so there already was a healthy homebrew scene for the PSP when 1.51 came out. In fact, PSP didn't get UMD Emulator until sometime in September of '05. Console had been available in Japan since '04 or so.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but they were outnumbered by 1,000,000:1 (or higher) and common good and conscience dictated that their loss was preferable to the losses of the millions of owners who didn't buy it for that reason.

I wish we could rack up a dollar amount of damage against consumers caused by fail0verflow's repurposed work.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Kenshin]

My giveadamn for the anti-Sony crowd is broken. "Boo-hoo! I want to install Linux on this! There isn't anything else I can install Linux on! I want to install Linux on THIS system from THIS company!"

FFS, grow up, junior.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Kenshin]

A better analogy would be "Well, I wouldn't have had to hit the bitch if she didn't cut the brake lines in my car."

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

GP: There are five fingers on the human hand.

cheekyjohnson: [citation needed]

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[BitZtream]

The problem with your response is that ... you've ignored the point the parent made ... these changes to save water actually cause MORE water usage because they are so ridiculous. Double flush a low flow toilet and you're worse off than a single flush ... and half the time a double isn't enough so you do 3.

I won't even get into the freaking shower heads, and let you continue to ignore the fact that the real problem is we're dumping too much water into direct paths to the ocean rather than putting it back in the ground for future use.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VGPowerlord]

They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more.

Yes, that is a reason. It's not an acceptable reason at all. They billed OtherOS as a feature when they sold the console. Then they took it away. I don't give a damn what their reasons were, that's fraudulent.

I never said it was a good reason.

Although I didn't address it in my last post, the reason they removed it from newer consoles is that it was essentially costing them money... because the PS3 was sold at a loss, recuperated through Sony's licensing fees on developers. Places like the military would buy large numbers of PS3s only for its number crunching abilities... which means Sony took a hit on every single one of those sold.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Xtifr]

you intentionally bought a device that is a walled garden

I intentionally bought a system that was advertised as being a cheap supercomputer which ran Linux and played games! At the time I bought it, it was more openly open than even the devices you mention, which are usually sold with no indication that OtherOS is even an option.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[smelch]

Just pointing out whether its true or not (it probably is true) it doesn't matter one way or the other. It has nothing to do with a justification of Sony's actions or the overall validity of modding your box.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[imgumbydamnit]

They had a reason: they didn't want to support it any more. This should have been obvious when Sony started to ship the PS3 Slim with no OtherOS support even before they removed it from older models.

By that logic:

• When Apple no longer wants to support Netflix in their Apple TV units, they can just push an update, and remove the reason why I bought it.
• Microsoft can decide that only OEM or MS keyboards should work with their OS's from now on, and push that in a service pack to my old XP box.
• etc., etc. (use your own imagination)

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[easyTree]

But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law.

The legal fallacy. The idea that all are heard equally before the law and that right will triumph.
Isn't it a case of one David vs a team of Goliaths?
Isn't it the case Corporate interests gain far more expression under the law than those of the masses due corporate interests being politically represented?
Under such circumstances, it seems that convincing the common man to abide by laws over which he had absolutely no control, to self-censor so as to spare Goliath the trouble of breaking a sweat is the coup of the age. Those in power are to be applauded if not heeded.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Man On Pink Corner]

Yeah, how dare we regulate products that use water when 80% of the country is facing a catastrophic water shortage within a couple decades...

Funny, I remember hearing that a couple decades ago. And yet the stuff still keeps falling from the sky.

(Or maybe you meant to say something like, "Because a bunch of dumbasses built golf courses in the desert 2000 miles away, you're not allowed to own a toilet that works.")

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Labcoat Samurai]

It wasn't illegal to modify the shotgun - it was illegal to modify the shotgun beyond established parameters which changes that weapon from a "shotgun" to a concealable weapon, ie, a "pistol".

And, analogously, it's not illegal to modify your PS3 either. You can swap the hard drive, for example. It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.

The shotgun owner has every right to change out the firing pin, to change the magazine, to put riflings in the barrel, to change the sites, or even to mount a laser pointer on the shotgun. He is prohibited from using it as a concealed weapon. So, your analogy falls short.

You know, I actually tend to agree that people should have the right to modify their consoles. I also don't see a problem with modifying your shotgun. If it's illegal to conceal a shotgun, fine, arrest someone for concealing a sawed off shotgun, but don't arrest them for sawing it off in the first place. Making it capable of being concealed is not the crime any more than making your PS3 capable of pirating should be the issue.

So.... I guess I think it *is* a good analogy, but otherwise I agree with you

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[DurendalMac]

Precisely. An injunction on Hotz will do absolutely nothing for Sony except prevent him from doing further cracks. The information is out there in the hands of many, many people. Shutting Hotz up won't do a damned thing to shut everyone else up. The cat is out of the bag.

This was a quick settlement to avoid a precedent.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Computershack]

And there are thousands of people that 'spent large amounts of money on a PS3 so that they can do one particular thing with it:' and that's use the OtherOS feature that Sony took away for no reason.

So you're telling me that these people spent £100's on a PS3 to run Linux with only 512MB of RAM and with the graphics in basic Framebuffer mode when they could have bought a desktop PC with twice the RAM and proper graphics access for half the price?

BWAHAHAHA.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

who owns the metldr keys?

Who owns the right to sign software for the PS3?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[HungryHobo]

fucking astroturfers.
get a real job and stop writing bullshit paid comments.

sony fucked the common good. it all leads back to them removing otherOS.

That dollar amount of damage against consumers was done purely by sony when they decided to fuck a minority of their users.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[cheekyjohnson]

The difference is that that is easily provable. This, however, is not. He is speaking of the intentions of most people without actually performing any study (or linking to a study that proves his claim).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because as we all know, one injustice justifies another.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The Grim Reefer2]

I don't see what any of this has to do with Hotz, or the people who bought the console for OtherOS. You're not the only person in the world, no matter how much you paid for your system. Sony fucked the dog on this one by removing OtherOS, Hotz restored his PS3 to the way he wanted to use it, sorry his work around broke what you wanted but Sony did it. And all the bitching in the world won't make it otherwise.

I'm sure I'll be modded as a troll or flamembait as Sony is the company of the antichrist (or what ever) on Slashdot. But really Sony's biggest mistake in this instance was to allow people to hack the PS3 in the first place.

I don't own a PS3, so I really don't care one way or the other. But I thought the intended use for the PS3 was to play games. The OtherOS option was a nice added feature that I guess the XBox and Wii do not have. It sounds to me like a small number of people "abused" the option and made it a bigger pain in the ass than it was worth for Sony and somehow interfered with the bulk of their customers, the gamers. If Hotz wanted to hack his PS3, great. Hell, it's his so who cares if he uses it as a boat anchor. But he didn't stop there, did he? He made his work available to the public.So Sony could go after the single point of this issue, Hotz, or try go after everyone with a hacked box that tried to cheat at the games on their servers.While the OP is obviously not the only one who bought the PS3, he's part of the majority of consumers that did. Which also happens to be the group that are using it for its intended purpose.

If I modified a Toyota in some way that it ran the way I wanted it to, but somehow generated an EMI pulse that shutdown other cars, including yours anytime I was within 2 miles, would be pissed at Toyota? This would somehow be Toyota's fault? And fuck you and all you other whiny bastards, you're not the only drivers in the world. I got my car running the way I want it to, that's the important thing.

Maybe people should be pissed at the dip shits that tried to cheat with modified consoles rather than the company that was nice enough to allow the system to be hacked to begin with.
.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[feepness]

If we're going to "be honest here", it should be pointed out that what finally motivated the right people to irrevocably break open the PS3 was Sony removing the OtherOS feature.

Is this another of the "my girlfriend made me hit her" arguments?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[stealth_finger]

'Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers.'

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have brought suit against GeoHot in the first place.

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have removed otherOS in the first place

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[MemoryDragon]

Yes it is a well known fact that the shennanigans started when Sony went into the media business in the mid 90s.
Somehow the media division took over and is killing slowly Sony electronics. Their proprietary shennanigans started earlier
and goes back way into the VCR days.
But they never really got their way by pushing sony only proprietary formats.
By now Sonys reputation is down the gutters to such a big degree worldwide that they really should worry. The PS line
keeps their electronics division afloat.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no interest in the Anonymous April 16th boycott of Sony. I boycotted Sony when their first rootkit came out and never looked back. Just boycott them now.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, you stupid fuck: we bought the damned things with the ability to both run Linux on it and access the Playstation Network. By removing Linux in a patch, they took away one or the other. Sony is pure evil, and should be destroyed.

In the future, shut the fuck up about things you know nothing about. Meanwhile, people who actually give a fuck about consumers' rights will fight against companies like Sony. I haven't jailbroken my PS3, but I will defend to the death the right to do so.

In short, fuck you, fuck Sony, and fuck America for letting this kind of shit happen. Gun rights advocates say we have the right to bear arms so we can fight against threats to our rights. Maybe it's time to actually use them--not necessarily against the threats that government poses, but those that corporations pose.

As for Geohotz, he's a coward. I was completely on his side until I heard this news--he had the high profile and public support to actually effect change. Instead, he took the coward's way out. I understand, of course--the risk involved in fighting Sony is great--but the people who make the biggest impressions on the world are the ones who take the greatest risks.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but they were outnumbered by 1,000,000:1

Doesn't matter. Sony are thieves.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Alsee]

in this case Sony is clearly not interested in the hardware.

Correct, this case isn't one of Sony's usual attacks. Almost all Sony's other abusive attacks have been against hardware modification.

Sony is interested in preventing people from modifying Sony software

Yeah, Sony is "interested" in that. However you still have not correctly identified Sony's interest in this case. This isn't about Sony not wanting their software modified. That is not why Sony went after Geohot.

Why did Sony go after Geohot? And what *is* their interest in this case? They went after him for figuring out the keys needed to make NEW SOFTWARE for the system. The keys that make it possible for all of the other game companies to release new games for the Playstation.

Sony's interest in this case is in preventing independent game developers from making and selling new games for the system. And in this case "independent game developers" includes major game developer companies like Electronic Arts and even Microsoft. Sony doesn't get to collect an extra tax on game sales if independent companies are able to simply make and sell new games for the system. But there's an even worse issue for Sony, Playstation owners might buy fewer Sony-brand games because they're too busy buying and playing lots of new non-Sony games for Playstation.

There have been countless other minor issues swirling around the war to lock down consoles, but right from the beginning that has been the one true and driving cause for all of this. Back in the 80's the first attempts to lock down consoles were very fairly simple, the console would refuse to run a game unless there was some copyrighted or trademarked code embedded in the game, or the console would refuse to run a game unless a microchip code was in the cartridge. And in each and every case the console company went to court to try and protect their lock down system, the courts ruled that it was perfectly legal for independent game publishers to write and sell new games for the console.

The exact same thing is going on here. It's just the newest tactic for blocking other games from running on the system. The Playstation looks for a fancy new scrambled signature on the game, are refuses to run it if the signature is there. Other companies can't write games for the Playstation because they don't know the key they need to sign the games. Well, that's what's going on here.... Goehot did the math and figured out the keys that let companies release new games for the Playstation.

When you cut through all the song and dance and propaganda, the case is fundamentally about preventing other companies from making new Playstation games. The case is fundamentally about the fact that Sony doesn't make as much money if people like and buy those other new games.

-

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that, in this case, the only injustice was that committed by Sony.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be "Well, I wouldn't have had to hit the bitch if she didn't cut the brake lines in her car."

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The End Of Days]

Most people understand that companies are in it for the money. I don't know why those of you who consider yourselves to be more intelligent than "the sheep" would be foolish enough to not get that.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Omestes]

It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.

Doesn't basically every modern toy support piracy in some sense? Should Microsoft be allowed to kill my computer since I have a torrent client installed, what about Apple, can they go brick my home built PC because I have iTunes and said torrent client? Should my car manufacture take my car away because the fuzzy dice I just put on my mirror makes it a speeding machine? My iPod doesn't have a single song from the iTunes Music Store, can Apple delete it all at whim?

Who cares if Sony doesn't like what I do to my hardware. I bought the damn thing, I didn't sign an agreement saying "this hardware, and everything you ever do to it is property of Sony.". If I want to take it apart, then that is my business. If I want to hack it to run Linux, then that also is my business. If I want to take it out to the desert and shoot at it, my business. If I want to take a picture and publish it only, my business. If I want watching porn on it, my business. Get the picture? Its mine. I bought it. Sony's abilities stop there, or at least should.

If I figure out how something works, I should have the right to tell others. This is how things worked for a very, VERY, long time until Americans decided that corporations are more important than anything else in the universe, including their own, individual, selves. No one is actually being harmed. And no, violating some giant faceless Japanese corporation's wishes doesn't count as harm.

Pulling support that was advertised is a bad precedent. I was allowed to use OtherOS, then Sony decided that I wasn't. It said I could, it was in writing, but nope, it stopped being useful to them so I get screwed. Sony should have thought about it first, and just not included the feature. Nope, they get to lie, and rescind an advertised feature, and the users are obviously the bad guys for thinking this wrong. I kind of wish this was more common, so the ignorant masses on the Sony board would have stuff they liked arbitrarily pulled, and then be forced before court, with thousands of ignorant teenage wankers threatening to come to their house and kill them.

Sorry, you can only, now, use you Television for cable. Allowing other inputs was a mistake, and we'll issue a firmware patch to fix this situation. Circumvention of this patch is a violation of our corporate rights, and you'll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (that we bought).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[3vi1]

Some of us just wanted it as an alternate development platform and to experiment with the SPUs, just as much as a gaming machine. We already have x86_64 PC's for 'normal' use. I definitely wouldn't have bought it if it had not supported Linux at the time (as I already had a 360).

How serious am I? I've still not even upgraded the firmware - so I can keep Linux on it (Though I own five other PCs that all have Linux on them), So, what Sony gave me was an end to online gaming (and new games that require the new firmware)..

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But really Sony's biggest mistake in this instance was to allow people to hack the PS3 in the first place.

And when did they really "allow" it? OtherOS is not == to hacking your console, using OtherOS =/= hacking.

If Hotz wanted to hack his PS3, great. Hell, it's his so who cares if he uses it as a boat anchor. But he didn't stop there, did he? He made his work available to the public

So, you argue that because it can be abused, people shouldn't know how to do it for themselves?

Maybe people should be pissed at the dip shits that tried to cheat with modified consoles ..

Which was done even BEFORE GeoHot's work, and no, that does not mean SONY gets none of the blame whatsoever - even if they are responding to something that may be legitimate, that doesn't mean that they have no extreme that is too far, they can still overreact - and when THEY overreact, THEY get blamed for overreacting, which is logical.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Labcoat Samurai]

It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.

Doesn't basically every modern toy support piracy in some sense? Should Microsoft be allowed to kill my computer since I have a torrent client installed, what about Apple, can they go brick my home built PC because I have iTunes and said torrent client? Should my car manufacture take my car away because the fuzzy dice I just put on my mirror makes it a speeding machine? My iPod doesn't have a single song from the iTunes Music Store, can Apple delete it all at whim?

Who cares if Sony doesn't like what I do to my hardware. I bought the damn thing, I didn't sign an agreement saying "this hardware, and everything you ever do to it is property of Sony.". If I want to take it apart, then that is my business.

Yes. I suggest you read the rest of my post before responding. Particularly the part where I said:

You know, I actually tend to agree that people should have the right to modify their consoles. I also don't see a problem with modifying your shotgun. [...] Making it capable of being concealed is not the crime any more than making your PS3 capable of pirating should be the issue.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Raenex]

But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law.

That's just authoritarian bullshit. As long as you don't redistribute your changes, you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with your copy, especially when the software is limiting your use of the hardware.

"Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."

http://gigaom.com/video/new-dmca-exemptions-ripping-dvds-for-online-video-now-legal/

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The End Of Days]

Yes, liberate us from clean well water - shit right in the hole pls.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Alsee]

A better analogy would be "Well, I wouldn't have had to hit the bitch if she didn't cut the brake lines in my car."

I think you mean in the car you sold her...

And you neglected to mention that the reason she "cut the break lines" because they improperly froze up when she tried to drive it on her own property...

And you neglected to mention that what she actually did was "cut and repair" the "break lines" so they worked properly. So that the car would only stop when.... you know.... the driver-slash-owner actually put their foot on the brake pedal.

-

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mistiry]

Uh...yeah.

A quick Google search will show you numerous comments from people that are pissed off because a feature for which they purchased the system was forcibly removed.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

An injustice was committed against PS3 owners by leaking the root key, as a result of an injustice committed against OtherOS users by Sony.

Imagine you had discovered the root key. Unless you were a sociopathic nerd with no ingrained morality, you would have kept it to yourself and modified and re-signed the original OtherOS firmware, thereby restoring the original capabilities of the PS3. That would have been justice. What happened was not justice.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anthony Mouse]

If I modified a Toyota in some way that it ran the way I wanted it to, but somehow generated an EMI pulse that shutdown other cars, including yours anytime I was within 2 miles, would be pissed at Toyota?

If you modified a Toyota in some way that it ran the way you wanted it to, and Toyota decided to stop you by generating an EMI pulse that shutdown other cars etc., yes, I would be pissed at Toyota.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

Anyone who purchased it for the OtherOS functionality (to have that AND be able to play games) was then legitimately wronged by Sony.

This is not at all true. People who bought a PS3 labeled with OtherOS compatibility were able to use that feature and every game manufactured up until Sony released an updated version without Other OS, and even up until Sony offered the ability to play newer games in exchange for the lose of Other OS. These people you speak of lost nothing at all, they actually gained an option they would not have gotten from other console producers. Had this been an MS problem for instance then we would be seeing an XBox 720 being released with no new game releases for the 360 and the 720 would have limited backward compatibility with the 360.

Sony did screw up. They should have release a new console called the PS4 that was 100% backward compatible with the PS3 (it would have the same hardware after all). And then the could have offered a free upgrade from a PS3 to a PS4, with the understanding that the PS4 does not support the Other OS feature. This way, instead of people being upset about the removal of a feature, Sony would have been praised as the first console manufacturer to implement forward compatibility. Sure there would be no improvement over the PS3, except the ability to play the latest games, but since it would cost the same as the PS3, most consumers wouldn't even notice.

Sony missed the possibility for a great PR win in this case. And now they have to deal with uninformed users like those in this thread, complaining because Sony gave them a chose to keep what they have, or lose one old feature (Other OS) in exchange for a new one (Latest Games and Latest Game Servers).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

I intentionally bought a system that was advertised as being a cheap supercomputer which ran Linux and played games!

And you still have that system unless you voluntarily upgraded the firmware. You were never promised compatibility with Game release for any specific period of time, and specifically warned that Online Servers will not be maintained indefinitely. So you lost nothing that was advertised. In actually you gained the option to play newer games in exchange for the lose of Other OS. A choice that you would have to make on your own.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

I don't give a damn what their reasons were, that's fraudulent.

Where is the fraud. Sony advertised a machine that could play some video games (not all video games, just the ones that where up until that point labeled as PS3 games) and would also run other compatible OSes. If you lost the first feature then your machine is broken and you should get it repaired. If you lost the second one it was your own choice and you probably did it in exchange for being able to access an even larger library of games (games labeled PS3 compatible that required a firmware release after the removal of Other OS)

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[fightinfilipino]

But as a gamer, I don't give a fuck. A system that I truly enjoyed has become a greater and greater headache, and it all ties back directly to Hotz. And I, like a lot of gamers, just want it to go away.

and this is the woefully-apathetic stance that many gamers apparently take when it comes to rights.

let me ask you this: do you use an iDevice? and i mean an iPhone, iPad, iPod, or any other similar Apple product?

maybe not. do you use an Android-based device then? a PC? a car?

imagine if your ability to use those devices for your own personal use was severely curtailed somehow. no jailbreaking on the iPhone. no modding/building/upgrading your PC. no open-app environment on Android devices.

what's being debated here is whether consumers should be dictating what corporations ultimately produce, or if corporations should ultimately dictate all of the things you can do with their "product". we're rapidly approaching the point where goods produced by corporations are becoming so advanced that the average consumer, not knowing the internal workings of their own products, are legally barred from plumbing the software and hardware behind those products. consumers increasingly have no choice but to accept what a corporation dictates. it's not just a matter of market choice, either. ALL corporations are pushing for increased control over the consumer.

considering that gamers started out historically as hackers themselves, building their own PCs, operating systems, software, game ideas, etc., this is a sad direction to see.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[sortadan]

The actual settlement was posted here

It basically says that Hotz (and associates) can't mess with Sony's stuff any more (distribute a 'circumvention device') or encourage other to do so unless congress or an other court rules that Sony's terms of service aren't legal or enforceable. If he breaks this agreement then he has to pay 10k each time, up to a cap of 250k. It also says that if there are further disputes about this from Sony they will be in a California court, and from Hotz they will be in a New Jersey court.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Sony didn't do this until Hotz released information allowing others to fuck with the majority of their users. In this case to keep the majority happy, they disabled the function being used and potentially abused by the minority.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Stupendoussteve]

If you hack the ATV's Netflix DRM and post it all over the internet, they probably would pull the feature. I couldn't blame them.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are protecting their consumers. They are screwing their customers.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[kimvette]

The funny thing about the whole boycott thing is boycotting one day won't hurt sony in the slightest, just as boycotting Mobil for one day would not hurt Mobil at all. All you are doing is delaying your purchase for a day.

Want to hurt a publicly-traded company? Organize a large-scale boycott for a minimum of one quarter. THAT is how you can make Sony execs notice; when the quarterly results show a huge drop in revenue shareholders will be screaming for blood.

Otherwise, don't even bother. If you're going to buy a Sony LCD television, go ahead and buy it on 04/16 because if you delay it to 04/17 it makes no difference to Sony.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[shutdown -p now]

If you don't want to see cheats, you have to stop playing multiplayer games. Sorry, there really isn't any better solution to that problem.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if someone else does it, I don't expect to loose the feature for which I bought the device.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[metacell]

There's a difference between that and what Hotz did: Hotz' hacks didn't disrupt any other people's games - that was done by people who chose to use the hacks for cheating. It makes more sense to hold those people responsible.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mywhitewolf]

you sounded good until this

But he didn't stop there, did he? He made his work available to the public.

. using your car analogy, you have a new type of Toyota with an engine held in by a "security bolt". all hots did is GIVE AWAY the DESIGN of a socket that would fit on the "security bolt". some people then used this to remove the engine in the Toyota and replace it with something that generates a EMP pulse that disables cars within 2 miles.

technically (as proven in court OVER AND OVER again) Hotz did nothing Illegal. So why does he have a permanent injunction on him now? Sony should be drawn and quartered for unethical use of the legal system to harass, and yet Hotz is the one who is treated like he had done something wrong.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Belial6]

Besides the fact that it would be her car that she cut the brake lines one, you would STILL be wrong for hitter her for cutting the break lines even if it was YOUR car. Hitting her would not elevate a threat to life and limb, so YOU would still get arrested for hitting her. Your attempt to debunk a perfectly sound analogy with an analogy where Sony would still be in the wrong fails.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mywhitewolf]

Considering that the only thing that really set XBox and PS3 apart to begin with where the OtherOS option in PS3, i didn't chose PS3 over a Computer, I chose the ps3 over its competitor. which i (and many others) wouldn't have if they couldn't use the OtherOS function.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The Grim Reefer2]

But really Sony's biggest mistake in this instance was to allow people to hack the PS3 in the first place.

If Hotz wanted to hack his PS3, great. Hell, it's his so who cares if he uses it as a boat anchor. But he didn't stop there, did he? He made his work available to the public

So, you argue that because it can be abused, people shouldn't know how to do it for themselves?

Not at all. If you , or anyone else wants to hack their PS3 great. But downloading someone else's work and applying it to your PS3 is not hacking nor is it knowing how to do so yourself. It's being a script kiddie.

Which was done even BEFORE GeoHot's work, and no, that does not mean SONY gets none of the blame whatsoever - even if they are responding to something that may be legitimate, that doesn't mean that they have no extreme that is too far, they can still overreact - and when THEY overreact, THEY get blamed for overreacting, which is logical.

So it happened before. Then they put a stop to it and he reversed that and they put a stop to it again. It's a company trying to protect its business. When someone breaks into someones house and the owner shoots them, I don't get pissed at the owner. The idiot breaking in shouldn't have been there Don't get me wrong, I agree, they over reacted and shouldn't' have. Frankly, on several occasions. But that doesn't justify the over reaction on /. either.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

What made you think life on a console was going to be any different from life on a PC? As soon as MS made the XBox able to patch games, the major selling point of a console was out the window. Hacking, cheating, online warfare was an inevitable foregone conclusion once companies could release unfinished games even on a console.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The Grim Reefer2]

There's a difference between that and what Hotz did: Hotz' hacks didn't disrupt any other people's games - that was done by people who chose to use the hacks for cheating. It makes more sense to hold those people responsible.

I agree with you completely. But in this case I'm sure they thought this to be the best solution and one person getting sued probably looked like less bad PR than going after many people. Frankly the vast majority of, if not all the people, that used this to cheat probably couldn't figure out how to do this themselves anyhow.

Unfortunately we live in a ridiculously litigious society in the US. I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen gun manufacturers sued because some idiot chose to use one of their products to do something bad.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Ant P.]

I did note that they use the label "consumers", and not "customers".

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mywhitewolf]

You can swap the hard drive, for example. It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.

"device that supports piracy" I like it. next time I'm talking about a computer, That's what I'm going to refer to it as. the problem with the shotgun analogy is that the modification rule would have been set as a safety exception. there are reasonable safety grounds why the shotguns modification should be limited, this does not indicate that everything should have a limited modification allowance. Weapons are the exception to the rule of "your equipment is yours to do what you like with" for a very good reason. Is piracy really a good enough reason to have an exception?

also, its not the company that made the shotgun that will get you into legal hot water.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They chose the business model. It's on them if that happens.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[WhitetailKitten]

It's my understanding that people had discovered how to circumvent the hypervisor's prohibition on using hardware graphics acceleration in OtherOS. Sony intentionally crippled 3D acceleration in OtherOS to prevent homebrew games competing with their library. Whether or not they were in the right to do this, someone decided this was stupid and worked out a way around it. Sony overreacted and pulled OtherOS. And pissed off people that were otherwise content with their hardware. And that started the war that exposed their hardware security model and revealed the root signing keys. It's DeCSS all over again, except that geohot happened to be in lawsuit range. Sony is trying to close the door after the horse, four cows, and drunken wayward hobo have left the barn.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't own a PS3, so I really don't care one way or the other. But I thought the intended use for the PS3 was to play games.

Actually, it was to promote Blu-ray and make it the video disc standard of the future more than anything IMO... they used the whole "game system" image as more of an added value for the masses while still attracting their gaming crowd and the relatively low price of the entire system compared to other Blu-ray players at the time is really what allowed it to take off. Now--who would've guessed: Blu-ray crushed HD-DVD thanks to the power of the PlayStation brand name and the PS3 has actually started selling after Sony lowered its price a couple times. Anyone remember the original Five Hundred and Ninety Nine Dollars? Would you like a Giant Enemy Crab with that?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Qubit]

If you hack the ATV's Netflix DRM and post it all over the internet, they probably would pull the feature. I couldn't blame them.

Right, but Netflix can disable the feature on their end, without doing a single thing to the hardware or software on my machine.

A good analogy to what Sony did is to imagine if Frigidaire decided that the "Internet-enabled Fridge/Freezer combo" I bought last year should just be a "fridge/fridge combo," and pushed a firmware update so I couldn't set the temperature of the freezer portion to anything lower than 35 deg F.

If I bought the unit from Frigidaire to use for freezing my jars of peaches, then Frigidaire has now made the unit worthless.

And even if Frigidaire says "Oh, well, you don't have to update the firmware," what if there are critical security bugs in the older versions of the firmware that would make it easy for people to break in to my fridge?

This is why you always need the source and the signing keys to the software that runs on your devices. Always.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[WhitetailKitten]

Hold on. You're calling "the ability to play new PS3 titles" a new feature that was offered when they removed OtherOS? What the fuck marketing kool-aid did you drink? If I buy Brand X game console, I expect it to work with every Brand X console game (leaving special peripherals out of the picture). Microsoft has twice overhauled the Xbox 360 dashboard (a software feature of the console). If you wanted to continue to play online, you had to update to the new dashboard, I imagine for compatibility reasons with Live, but you wouldn't be incapable of playing newer store-bought game discs on it if you decided not to update.

I'm reminded of one of the first system updates for the PS3. It included the line Increased compatibility with PS3 titles. These are the geniuses we're dealing with, here.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Travelsonic]

... yeah, because it makes sense, if you want to modify a system to your liking, to modify / use other hardware than that you want to modify? And should yo have to fear prosecution for such a venture of modifying your console and telling others how?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Travelsonic]

Somebody mod troll or flamebait. [BTW, what is the point of figuring it out if nobody else gets to find out, and is following your progress?]

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[turtledawn]

Perhaps you need to update your fixtures. Much like computer hardware, early adapters tend to get buggy products.

Or maybe you need more fiber.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

All I'm saying is that this is no different than discontinuing the current console and releasing a new one. When Microsoft had done that with the XBox, new releases for the XBox all but dried up (a couple games trickled in after but not many). Sony effectively did the same thing with the removal of Other OS, but they also offered a free upgrade to the latest version of the Playstation. They were just foolish and called it a PS3 slim rather than a PS4 as they, hide sight being 20/20 and all, should have.

Had the slim been released as the PS4 with full backward compatibility, and all the newer PS3 games relabeled as PS4 games, then people would have been happy that the latest PS was fully backward compatible, but upset over the short lifespan of the PS3. But when Sony sent out the free upgrade to convert peoples PS3s to PS4s people would have been ecstatic. None of this issue would have even existed. People with PS3s that wanted to keep Other OS would have kept it. People who wanted to forgo the Other OS option in exchange for a free upgrade to a PS4 would have done so. And the whole world would have been buzzing about Sony being the first and only game console with a free upgrade.

You can be pessimistic all you want and consider it something that Sony took away. But trust me, had it been an MS console and they somehow let you install windows on it but had to take that feature away for security, then you wouldn't even have the option to keep Other OS or play latest games, you would be out buying a new console if you wanted to play the latest games.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[betterunixthanunix]

Nothing Hotz has done has helped them in any way

...his work could have opened up the possibility of games from small development companies and individuals. You know, the sort of people who cannot afford Sony's fees.

His original hack led to the OtherOS removal

No, Sony removed it, because they have no respect for their customers or the countries they attempted to evade taxes in by using OtherOS to label the PS3 as a personal computer.

we got slews of updates as Sony tried to stay one step ahead, which was just a giant headache for people who just wanted to play a damn game.

Sounds like Sony is to blame for the headache. Frankly, not blaming Sony for botching their ECDSA implementation and opening the door to a simple cryptanalytic attack seems a bit preposterous to me. They could have used NSS, OpenSSL, Microsoft's implementation, or any of dozens of other vetted and widely reviewed cryptography libraries which wouldn't have that sort of glaring error.

I honestly cannot understand gamers who defend Sony, as if Sony was some kind of innocent company under siege from evil hackers. Sony has a history of disrespecting their customers, but you defend them. Hotz tried to open the PS3 up and tell other PS3 owners how to unlock their own property, and you blame him for Sony's actions.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[betterunixthanunix]

Yes, it is insane to want to pay $300 for a Cell system, when IBM wants thousands. What a bunch of whining children.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[BitZtream]

Early adopter? Maybe in 2000, its 2011 and it still holds true.

We remodeled one of our bathrooms, my wife decided on a low flow system ... after about two months, and several thousand dollars later, we had tradition system installed ... because the low flow crap is still fucking obnoxious, barely usable and ... we had a higher freaking water bill.

Theory and practical implementation are entirely different, I prefer to base my life in reality, I find the fact that I have imperial evidence to prove the theory bunk to be far more useful than listening to armchair douche bags on slashdot.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[WhitetailKitten]

Uh what? The PS3 Slim was a refresh of the PS3 with OtherOS and backwards compatibility removed out of the box, and this was stated up-front. What Sony did was remove advertised software functionality from products already lawfully purchased and in the possession of its customers. Well, okay, that's not true. It issued an ultimatum: Allow us to remove one feature (OtherOS), or we'll remove several features (online play, access to the PSN store, any games requiring updates after that update). The Playstation 3 is the only console I've ever seen to deliberately lose features on an ongoing basis in the middle of its normal lifecycle.

Yes, practically nobody developed for the original Xbox after the Xbox 360 came out, but the two are vastly different in terms of hardware capability. You trying to draw a comparison between two generations of Microsoft gaming hardware and the PS3/PS3 Slim change is disingenious, and if you can't see that you're too young or simple to be on the Internet. Let's compare the Xbox 360 to the new Xbox 360 Slim, if that's what you want to do. It is smaller, has a quieter fan, and has built-in wireless networking, which was not present without an accessory for the original 360. The two are fully compatible otherwise. No missing software, no limitations on playing new games, and as far as I know, it offers the same backwards compatibility title list as the original 360.

And if Microsoft had advertised installing your own OS, legally, on the 360, and then later removed that option unilaterally, I'd be pissed off at them, too. But they didn't, Sony did, and Sony is handling this with lawyers instead of brains.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

At least you are able to admit that Sony didn't make you do anything or force you to update your PS3. They offered you an update to continue using their latest services.

And you are right about MS, they would never do something like what Sony did. When MS want's to remove a feature they just discontinue the old model and create a new one, with no, or limited compatibility between. And they certainly wouldn't offer a free upgrade path, no matter how unpalatable the option is.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Labcoat Samurai]

You can swap the hard drive, for example. It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.

"device that supports piracy" I like it. next time I'm talking about a computer, That's what I'm going to refer to it as.

Ok, and the next time I describe a handgun you can legally own, I'll call it a weapon you can conceal.

the problem with the shotgun analogy is that the modification rule would have been set as a safety exception. there are reasonable safety grounds why the shotguns modification should be limited, this does not indicate that everything should have a limited modification allowance. Weapons are the exception to the rule of "your equipment is yours to do what you like with" for a very good reason. Is piracy really a good enough reason to have an exception?

Absurd. I don't need a nanny state telling me it's illegal for me to fuck around with some device I own because it might be dangerous. I'm arguing that it should be fine to modify your PS3, but that it should also be fine to modify your shotgun. I'm taking the principled stance that both should be ok, because they're your property to do with as you wish.

also, its not the company that made the shotgun that will get you into legal hot water.

Never said it was. I was even careful to avoid the term "illegal" when referring to modifying playstation hardware.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[WhitetailKitten]

Good God, you're stupid. I hope for your sake that you actually are a paid astroturfer, because then at least you'll be doing something that's useful to someone.

And you are right about MS, they would never do something like what Sony did. When MS want's to remove a feature they just discontinue the old model and create a new one, with no, or limited compatibility between. And they certainly wouldn't offer a free upgrade path, no matter how unpalatable the option is.

Oh! You mean like the PSP Go! Yeah, that does sound familiar.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[cromar]

The divisiveness of calling others "sheep" aside, making money is a goal of business. Business that does not serve those people who pay them will fail, unless of course they are backed by law (and therefore physical force) that is interested in protecting business over the very people law is meant to protect.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[aus_jackd]

I disagree in respects to their eReader. The Sony brand of eReaders are solid quality, much nicer than their plastic competitors. And they've very difficult to get a hold of. Sold out everywhere.

They might not have the tight integration to an online store like the kindle or nook, but their touch screen is fantastic.

Also, they are one of the most open eReaders out there. In fact, one of the main reasons I chose the Sony reader was the fact it can play basically any ebook format out there (kindle format excepted).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But as a gamer, I don't give a fuck.,/quote>

Wow. You openly admit that despite facts proving you are wrong, you just don't care you are wrong, and will continue to blame the wrong person.

I don't know what is worse. That selfish assholes who knowingly, willingly, and proudly IGNORE facts to cause harm to others.. Or the fact you actually got modded up 4 fucking times.

Yea, I guess since you already stated no facts will sway you to see what really is happening, no argument can be made by me to make you realize how wrong that is (or to realize anything for that matter)

I fear for the world that has people like you in it.
Why stop at blaming Hotz? Why should any of us believe you wouldn't go and kick the dog next door because you lost your little toy to play with. Or going on a shooting spree at the mall. After all, you have the facts and don't give a fuck, so it's obviously the dogs fault, supported by a shopping mall worth of people.

I sure hope you are arrested soon, before you go out on your shooting spree.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Alex Belits]

No one, actually. This is why keys are secret -- once they are disclosed, Sony has no legal way to assert any control over them.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the link below for the settlement. "Each party will bear its own fees and costs in connection with this action." And exactly why did they not have a shred of a case in CA? Most of the scary claims were federal and preempt state law.

What did Sony not get that they wanted? He's legally enjoined from hacking Sony equipment. Other hackers are scared that they will get sued into oblivion if they do the same. All of the law they relied upon is unchallenged (though not specifically upheld). The cat is obviously out of the bag with regard to the actual code. Hotz doesn't have enough money to be worth a fight, and suing him into bankruptcy would only alienate more customers. Win win win?

Why on earth is parent modded insightful?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Travelsonic]

... and what stops SONY from using something like Steam's VAC - catch them cheating, let people w/ modified consoles who don't hack keep playing?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never did give a shit about SONY's opinion of some kid hacker. Whether or not they've got all nicey-nice at a lawyer's love-in doesn't change the fact that SONY has taken away *the* feature which convinced me to buy a PS3 over an Xbox360. Now, because of their actions, you either have to choose between the ability to play blu rays, or the ability to run OtherOS.
SONY is still a bunch of common thieves, according to the feature set remaining on my box.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

Never been paid by Sony, and I'm not even a big fan of their products (Sony optical drives have to be the worst in the industry). I do own a PS3, and beyond the piss poor build quality of the first generation of PS3s and Sony's horrible repair policy, I've been pretty darn happy with my purchase (actually my slim seems a little buggy).

That being said, I still think both sides of this argument are full of a bunch of whiners. You have the pro cracking side that want's to claim fraud and abuse and all kinds mean nasty things. Then you have the pro walled garden side that bitches and moans when the go to an online community and find out it's full of cheating douche bags (a problem we didn't have the days when network games where played with people we actually knew in real life or ran entirely on a secure server). Both sides have a valid argument (and don't try and give me the whole BS that the PS3 would not have been hacked if they had left in Other OS, because that's complete crap) but whining about it is just freaking annoying.

And also notice, I'm not at all supporting Sony's case against George or any other crackers (Sorry I was in the scene back when hacker and cracker had different meanings). I also wish that my PS3 still had an Other OS option, or better yet, low level access to the cell processor (not worth playing with if you don't have machine code access).

All I am saying is that Sony gave people an option to either continue operating their Linux installs and playing their current games, or losing their Linux installs and being able to run the latest games and what they hoped would be cheating free online games. But rather than be happy with the options, we would rather bitch and moan because we didn't get the option we wanted.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work for me. I buy a few games here and there.
What I want is to dump my games on the disk, so I can not have to switch disk around. And also that I can read any kind of video on it, no codec bullshit and transcoding.
And for a few games, online play. I don't need to cheat in online game to feel better in life.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[dissy]

I don't own a PS3, so I really don't care one way or the other. But I thought the intended use for the PS3 was to play games.

For Hotz, it is quite obvious from his statements that his intended purpose was to run Linux. So by installing Linux on his PS3, he was using it for exactly it's intended purpose.

While the OP is obviously not the only one who bought the PS3, he's part of the majority of consumers that did. Which also happens to be the group that are using it for its intended purpose.

The OP very clearly stated he purchased a PS3 to play games.
While playing games is clearly the ops intended purpose for the PS3, neither the op nor Hotz qualify as 'everybody'

Once Sony put the device on the market for others to purchase, Sony's intended purpose no longer matters. (PS3's kept by Sony for their own use excluded of course)

Once you realize that there is no single 'intended purpose', and such a term is defined only by the purchaser, it will be less confusing.

Hotz is using it for Hotz intended purpose. Op is using it for the ops intended purpose.
I use it for my own intended purpose.
You, well I guess you don't have an intended purpose yet, as you have not bought one.

If there could only be one single 'intended purpose', than aren't you just as 'bad' as Hotz?
After all, Sony said it must be used for playing games.
Hotz bought one and did not play games on it. You did not buy one and did not play games on it.
Both of you are going against Sony's wishes.

Sony does not have the right to force Hotz to use his PS3 for games, any more than Sony has the right to force you to purchase a PS3 and play games on it, when you clearly do not wish to spend the money on one.

Maybe people should be pissed at the dip shits that tried to cheat with modified consoles rather than the company that was nice enough to allow the system to be hacked to begin with.

You are correct in that people should most definitely be pissed at the dip shits that are cheating with their console.
You are also correct with "rather than the company", which is exactly the same as "rather than Hotz" as well.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mywhitewolf]

also, its not the company that made the shotgun that will get you into legal hot water. Never said it was. I was even careful to avoid the term "illegal" when referring to modifying play-station hardware.

then its not relevent, if you modify something that causes it to break the law (like extracting DMT from plant bark) you get in trouble by the police. the owner of the DMT plant has no need to pursue you in court and in fact this would be a conflict of interest. Its a 3rd party enforcing the law, not the first party, this is important.

Ok, and the next time I describe a handgun you can legally own, I'll call it a weapon you can conceal.

this is fair enough, if your legally entitled to carry a concealed weapon, then there should be no problem having or making a saw off shotgun. and ideally this is how the system would work. however as there is no legitimate reason to change the class of your weapon retrospectively and that policing the changes is much more difficult than policing the release of concield weapons, then they have a legitimate reason to justify disallowing modifications.

I'm taking the principled stance that both should be ok, because they're your property to do with as you wish.

don't get me wrong, i have the same personal stance, but i certainly understand the EXCEPTION to being able to modify in the case of a shotgun, where as there is simply NO REASON to have the EXCEPTION for a PS3.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Lemmy Caution]

You really don't get where I'm drawing the line.

If Sony wants to shut off anyone who tinkers with their hardware from PSN, I'm OK with that. Using technology to prevent piracy and cheating, that's OK. With their onine services, I'm alright with "their house, their rules."

But mucking with the right of someone to tinker with hardware that they've already bought, so that they can use it in their own homes the way they want to (and share that with others) by filing charges, civil and even criminal, is Orwellian. It's such an over-reach of corporate arrogance and coopting of the legal system, it really needs to be shouted down as the backward-thinking anti-humanist gesture it really is. And that was the point of my post.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Lemmy Caution]

Look, Sony not-supporting someone who tries to get back Other OS is one thing. It was poor manners for Sony to use an update (which people usually just click through, because you can't really plop in a game without it pushing you to update) but within their rights. Going after someone who, on a system that they bought, finds out how to do it themselves is something else. That is the issue, more than anything else. Not seeing this is simply being an ostrich.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[exomondo]

imagine if your ability to use those devices for your own personal use was severely curtailed somehow. no jailbreaking on the iPhone. no modding/building/upgrading your PC. no open-app environment on Android devices.

It's simple, Sony removed otherOS, that pissed me off so i'm not going to buy the next Sony console and i buy PS3-exclusives second hand. I don't like it so I'll no longer support them. I'm not going to go and disrupt the experience of other customers - who don't care about otherOS removal - just because they don't see it from my point of view though.

what's being debated here is whether consumers should be dictating what corporations ultimately produce, or if corporations should ultimately dictate all of the things you can do with their "product".

No-one's taking that power from you, no-one says you have to buy their products, no-one says you can't build and sell your own free open-source console or phone.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, corporations make law all the time. What do you think congressmen do all day except take bribes from corporations?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its easily proven false too, different humans have different number of fingers.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If SCEA was ever interested in protecting consumers, they never would have brought suit against GeoHot in the first place.

That part is so they can act like part of the motivation is so people don't write hacks to their modded systems that lets them cheat at the on-line games.

I'm of the opinion that it's 99% protecting of their IP/locking down the console, and 1% protecting consumers ... and even that only as a PR thing.

hack the Gibson muuuahhahaha.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[thunderclap]

However, it won't happen. Sony doesn't want you to just play games on it. If they did, the PSN wouldn't exist. They want you to hand them money every single day. Honestly anyone who just wanted to play games needs to leave unconnected. Then there is no problem. You wanted to play games on their network. He wanted people who have the functionality back that he paid for. Sorry if you were fine with your crippled machine. Ok, and I have boycotted Sony since the rootkits and go out of my way to not buy anything of theirs new or otherwise. Oh and no big company doesn't want the TOS die because they all know its unenforceable. And that was what would have happened if he won. And there would not have been a thing you could do about it. So when the day comes that they send the magic bullet to kill it will you still be happy? Don't think they won't because they still think they own it.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[exomondo]

This is why you always need the source and the signing keys to the software that runs on your devices. Always.

So you have the source and signing keys for every bit of software that runs on every device you have?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[thunderclap]

No I would want to know how to do it so I could myself. I don't drive and an empty street would be an awesome thing to walk on.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Labcoat Samurai]

also, its not the company that made the shotgun that will get you into legal hot water. Never said it was. I was even careful to avoid the term "illegal" when referring to modifying play-station hardware.

then its not relevent, if you modify something that causes it to break the law (like extracting DMT from plant bark) you get in trouble by the police. the owner of the DMT plant has no need to pursue you in court and in fact this would be a conflict of interest. Its a 3rd party enforcing the law, not the first party, this is important.

Eh, if the distinction matters to you, it's important. The way things are going these days it wouldn't shock me if Sony could purchase themselves a law that would remove the distinction (I kid.... sort of). Whether it's enforced in criminal or civil court doesn't really matter to me (though it would if I were being prosecuted), but I wouldn't presume to tell you what should matter to you.

Ok, and the next time I describe a handgun you can legally own, I'll call it a weapon you can conceal.

this is fair enough, if your legally entitled to carry a concealed weapon, then there should be no problem having or making a saw off shotgun. and ideally this is how the system would work.

Well actually, I'm not legally entitled to carry a concealed weapon, but I am legally entitled to purchase a handgun. So, analogously, I should be entitled to saw off a shotgun, just not carry it concealed.

however as there is no legitimate reason to change the class of your weapon retrospectively and that policing the changes is much more difficult than policing the release of concield weapons, then they have a legitimate reason to justify disallowing modifications.

Retrospectively? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean prospectively? And if you do, maybe you aren't sawing off the shotgun in order to conceal it on your person. Saying that there's no legitimate reason to modify a shotgun sounds an awful lot, to me, like those people who say there's no legitimate reason to mod a PS3. A modded PS3 could add Other OS functionality back rather than be used for piracy/cheating. A person might prefer a sawed off shotgun for home defense if he finds it easier to navigate close quarters.

don't get me wrong, i have the same personal stance, but i certainly understand the EXCEPTION to being able to modify in the case of a shotgun, where as there is simply NO REASON to have the EXCEPTION for a PS3.

I wouldn't say there's no reason. A lot of people *are* going to mod their consoles in order to pirate games. Other people are going to cheat (which, incidentally, makes playing online less fun for people like me who stay honest). So, there's a reason. Just not a good enough one to justify what they're doing.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Psykechan]

Not at all. If you , or anyone else wants to hack their PS3 great. But downloading someone else's work and applying it to your PS3 is not hacking nor is it knowing how to do so yourself. It's being a script kiddie.

I downloaded and applied Linux to my PS3 back in 2008. That means that... FUCK! It turns out I wasn't hacking at all, I was just being a script kiddie. :(

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[amnezick]

If I had 250k I would just give it to him and have a jailbreak spread like radiation and then see what's what.
I knew most Americans are ignorants (as in .. stupid) but they never cease to surprise me.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[HungryHobo]

and hotsz didn't do that until after sony had fucked over the OtherOS users.

If they hadn't fucked over their users in the first place there would have been no need to get the root key.

it all leads back to sony.
they dropped the ball.
they fucked up.

idiots and astroturfers like you blame the wrong person.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[rossz]

Sony is not preventing you from doing what you want with your own equipment. They are, however, actively preventing anyone running a hacked box on PSN. Feel free to mess with your PS3 all you want. Just don't make it public, don't connect it to PSN, and don't release a hack. Geohot made multiple mistakes. He's a major attention whore for starters. He just had to be the center of attention. Then he released enough info that multiple games became unplayable in a matter of days because they were overrun with cheaters and account hackers. Sony mostly responded properly. They started banning accounts when hacked boxes were detected. I'm a bit unsure if going after geohot was a good idea.

The douchebags who wanted to cheat and steal games reacted exactly as expected. Like small children they threw a temper tantrum and attempted to DDoS Sony. They said they weren't going after PSN, but that's a lie. They went after PSN big time. They failed, though. Their attacks were about the level of a fly buzzing in the room. A bit irritating, but nothing to be too concerned about. Just get out the flyswatter and deal with it.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

I was never actually disagreeing with your original statement, only the follow up comments. I think Sony is wrong for going after people who want to hack their own hardware or even software (and I make a living writing software), unless there is proof of overt violation of copyright (unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material), but so far that does not seem to be an issue. What I do take issue with is people whining about the loss of functionality after explicitly installing the firmware that removed the functionality, and not realizing that the solution to the cracking/cheating problem could have been a heck of a lot worse.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[vidnet]

I wonder if Anonymous will proceed with their anti-Sony campaign.

They're not too large to fail and if enough people say ENOUGH, they will either fail or they will change their ways and bring back the Sony we once knew.

Very true. I don't know about Anonymous, but I'm certainly keeping up my anti-Sony campaign.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

>the entire run was bad and became known for failing just after warranty
That's very common for Sony equipment, in my experience. So much so that a cynic might think it had been designed that way.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be the kind of guy who thinks shooting and murdering someone for trespassing is morally OK. After all, he deserves it. All the blame falls on the original party.

There was a right way to go about regaining OtherOS. Revealing the root key to the public wasn't part of those steps. fail0verflow said this themselves. The root key is only needed for cracking the device, something you never had access to in the first place.

Stop pretending it was justified by Sony's actions and simply admit you only care about jailbreaking. If you argued for control over one's own devices then you would have a much more persuasive argument. One which few would argue against.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[malkavian]

Well, my choice given that change of contract is "Well, I no longer have access to the service (full functionality) of the item, so I don't want you to have access to the money anymore. On average, I keep a console for 6 years, I've had it for 2. Refund me the 4 years worth of service I now don't have, and I'll pass you back the item that doesn't fulfil my requirement (other OS plus games) as you've just hamstrung it."

However, they don't allow you this, and they only get away with that one sided agreement because they're a massive industry against an individual. In the Japanese culture, this is highly dishonourable behaviour (the kind that could find you in hot water with the business laws if it were a deal between corporations).

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[malkavian]

If someone screws up a device that a large amount of people used to be happy using under "original contract", then I strongly suspect that some bright spark somewhere will obtain them and post them.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[AmiMoJo]

But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software.

I seriously doubt that. Contract law forbids certain things, such as buying a product only to be told later on you actually just licensed it under terms dictated entirely by Sony at the expense of your normal consumer rights.

Furthermore the law clearly states that if a device ceases to function you are entitled to compensation proportional to the loss of functionality and the device's expected lifetime. That is why Amazon had to give a refund for the removal of the Other OS feature. Doesn't the US have similar consumer protection laws?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[malkavian]

Right, so the device, as originally sold to a great many people remains unhacked while it has functionality of A + B.
Company removes the ability to do A + B. Device is then hacked, such that it can once again do A + B (that people paid for).
People who do A are inconvenienced by large amounts of updates that Company sends out to attempt to stay ahead of cracks (which are a direct consequence of Company's earlier action to remove functionality).
People are inconvenienced by cheating (which is attributed to a hack of the system, that only came about because Company removed initial functionality that people had paid for).

You, for some reason, follow the chain part of the way, but refuse to follow it all the way. Sony made money from selling A + B. That's a fact (they got my money instead of MS, or, more likely, nobody). They broke their end of the bargain. The consequence of this is someone had to break the security on the system (that had never previously been done while it worked as originally billed, because it did what everyone wanted without a hack) to make it work as wanted. The unintended consequence of this is that there is now cheating in multiplayer games.
The root cause of this is Sony's decision to screw a segment of their market over. Take that decision away, and there's a very strong chance all the rest of it would never have happened. Everyone would be happy; games makers would still make money. Sony would have a better name, games players would not be inconvenienced, OS tinkerers would have a shiny play thing. Win all round.
Instead, they chose to make a decision that instead made everyone lose.
If you really don't care about all this, and want it to just work, then attack the root cause. Complain to Sony that it is indeed all their fault (which it is) and they're irritating their majority market as a direct consequence of their actions.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[queBurro]

harsh, GeoHot's a boy, I'd shit myself if Sony came after me. Other than that, totally agree with you, I don't see why modding your ps3 is any different from flashing your phone/router etc, if Sony don't like it then they stop you using their network but in your own home at the end of the day it's your hardware.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[black_lbi]

I think you chose the wrong example. I imagine the water in any decorative fountain being in a closed circuit, with some pumps that move it around. It's not like leaving the tap running all day and pouring it all down the drain, if that's what you thought.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[JohhnyTHM]

Where is the fraud

Well I don't know if this would be called fraud, but in the UK it does break consumer protection laws.
In the UK, goods sold must be "as advertised" and "fit for purpose".
The PS3 update breaks both of these: the PS3 is now no longer "as advertised" or "fit for purpose" as the advertised OtherOS function has been removed.
Likewise, if you do not update, another advertised function (the ability to play on PSN) no longer works.
Giving the consumer the choice of which function to give up isn't much consolation (no pun). :)

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[bhtooefr]

The difference is between companies that view the people that pay them as customers, versus companies that view the people that pay them as consumers.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[zeroshade]

Except that the people who decided to keep the Other OS wouldn't have been able to continue to play their existing games they bought online, which is why this is different from "discontinuing the current console and releasing a new one". If they did release a "new" console and called it the PS4 and didn't have the OtherOS feature and offered that free upgrade as you, yea people might think differently, except if the people who didn't take the "free upgrade" kept the OtherOS but lost their ability to use the PSN there would be enormous uproar and this entire problem would have happened anyways. They made it so you either chose to keep a feature you paid for, or continued to play new games and use the PSN. It's just ridiculous.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[zeroshade]

Revealing the root key to the public was justified by Sony's actions by removing the OtherOS functionality. Helping the public have a way to reinstate a feature that Sony removed is completely reasonable and within the scope of "control over one's own devices". fail0verflow even stated they did it to reenable the OtherOS functionality, Hotz said the same thing. The if other people took Hotz's work and enabled piracy as a result, that's not his fault. No one blames the manufacturer of a knife when someone is stabbed.

The root key is only needed for cracking the device, something you never had access to in the first place

But something you needed access to, to re-enable the OtherOS functionality. I fail to see the problem here.

Stop pretending it was justified by Sony's actions and simply admit you only care about jailbreaking. If you argued for control over one's own devices then you would have a much more persuasive argument.

Jailbreaking IS arguing for control over one's own devices. Jailbreaking so I can install OtherOS or homebrew software should be perfectly legal, afterall it's legal to do it to my phone, why not my game console? I own the hardware.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[zeroshade]

Both sides have a valid argument (and don't try and give me the whole BS that the PS3 would not have been hacked if they had left in Other OS, because that's complete crap) but whining about it is just freaking annoying.

Except the PS3 was not broken so thoroughly and completely until they removed OtherOS. Both fail0verflow and Hotz stated outright that they started working on breaking the PS3 due to the removal of OtherOS. For 3 years, the PS3 went un-broken. Pristine. While other consoles fell, it stood high. 9 months after removing the OtherOS functionality, it got cracked. Everyone who cracked it stated removing OtherOS is the reason why, so please explain to me how that's complete crap.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Coren22]

If you bought the PS3 to play a game, then Sony removed the ability to run that game from the console, how would you feel? The OtherOS feature was something sold with the console, then SCEA decided to remove it, why should these people go out and purchase yet another device to do this? Why is the loss of functionality that they endured any less then the loss of functionality you endured? Maybe you should grow up and learn that your convenience does not override everyone else's convenience.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

Likewise, if you do not update, another advertised function (the ability to play on PSN) no longer works.

Are you implying that by UK law, if a game is labelled as having online capability the producer of the game has to keep online capability for eternity or else they are in violation of the law. If that's the case there are many game producers and console makers that should be receiving some hefty fines, and many consumers that should be receiving a refund.

I gather many products and services are available in the UK that contain the licensing clause that "features may change without notice." So this one particular claim is certainly not cut and dry. Again, if they had just named the PS3 Slim to be the PS4 there would probably be little claim here at all, and most people would agree that the laws are not about nomenclature.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[xero314]

except if the people who didn't take the "free upgrade" kept the OtherOS but lost their ability to use the PSN there would be enormous uproar and this entire problem would have happened anyways.

You mean kind of like when MS discontinued supplying xbox live servers for all original xbox games. Sometimes online support is discontinued for old devices and old software. In this case Sony could have easily said that PSN was being discontinued for the old console, but you could upgrade to the newer firmware to gain access to the new PSN. Oh wait that's what they did, they just didn't rename the PS3 Slim to PS4. Just interesting that when MS takes away a feature, with no option what so ever, no one is up in arms. But when Sony does so, with the option of keeping either this or that feature, people cry like babies.

I think your fooling yourself if you think people would really make an uproar over the cancellation of support for an old console, especially when they are offered a free upgrade to a newer console.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The pattern started when the ceo became an american rather than a nipponese. 'Loss of Face' was no longer an issue and short term profit maximization leveraged through brand name dilution became the order of the day.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[VxJasonxV]

What's the difference between a circumvention device for illegal purposes, and legal ("jailbreaking") purposes? Doesn't this fall under the realm of "jailbreaking is legal"?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Daniel Phillips]

Then came the real working hack. First we got slews of updates as Sony tried to stay one step ahead, which was just a giant headache for people who just wanted to play a damn game.

It's not our fault that Sony is evil. This is just one of the many reasons why owning a PS3 is a very unpleasant experience. Have you had to scroll through the multiple iterations of the online "user agreement"? One word for the experience: humiliating. I did not buy a PS3 to be humiliated. Nor did I buy it to spend hundreds of dollars on repairs that Sony should have made for free.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Lanteran]

But their loss was entirely pointless! Sony could have kept both as they did in, hm, let's see, the first 3 years of the console's life. And please, what benefit did the millions of owners get from having the choice to run linux removed?

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[mywhitewolf]

Re: shotgun argument, it's really falling apart as its not a good analog, but i'll try and roll anyway.

purchasing a shotgun and intending to use it in close quarters would not justify the modification (legally) when the option to purchase a smaller weapon would have been required for the task. when you purchase the weapon they have an opportunity to run background checks etc, and only certain type of people would be able to purchase a handgun where as some may only be legally entitled to purchase a shotgun, (TBH i don't really know the laws surrounding gun ownership in America, Australias system is very different).

so the system is designed to have a barrier to gaining access to a concealable weapon at the point of purchasing the weapon, not at the hardware store. This justifies an exception to being able to modify your own effects in the name of better gun control. I'll say again The only justification in stopping people from modifying eqiupment that they own is if there is a significant risk to life, same reason why its illegal to tamper with airbags or seat belts. The ps3 in no way shape or form can possibly apply for this exception with their device.

I wouldn't say there's no reason. A lot of people *are* going to mod their consoles in order to pirate games. Other people are going to cheat (which, incidentally, makes playing online less fun for people like me who stay honest). So, there's a reason. Just not a good enough one to justify what they're doing.

oh, they think they have a valid reason. but there isn't any exception that would allow them to go against the law of "if i purchase something, i can do with it what i chose".

Retrospectively?

as in, after they purchased the weapon, they then change it. the court would say there is no valid reason to modify it when there is apropriately sized weapons available with all the required checks and safety measures in place.

i don't think it makes much difference though, we both agree on the same thing, its just the semantics of the analogy.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Thing 1]

Now, you could (rightfully) claim that Hotz wasn't responsible for any of this.

You could rightfully claim that Sony is responsible for all of this. And you'd be right.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Thing 1]

Yes, but they were outnumbered by 1,000,000:1 (or higher) and common good and conscience dictated that their loss was preferable to the losses of the millions of owners who didn't buy it for that reason.

The ratio of wronged doesn't matter when a contract is broken. Yes, some worlds are binary.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony all the time looks forward in introducing new products with multiple enhanced features.

--------
ashle

Youtube Converter

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[The End Of Days]

Did you mean to respond to me? I'm not sure how what you said is relevant to anything... like, at all.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[bingoUV]

Anti-customer is in the very DNA of Sony.

You might find Made in Japan instructive and enjoyable. It is written by a founder of Sony.

He explains how, even in its early days, Sony refused to get into price wars with competing electronics manufacturers. Note that price-war, while reducing corporate profits, are extremely beneficial for customers.

During early days, there was not much demand for Sony items at high prices because those days, Japanese manufacturing was considered inferior to American and European. But Sony refused to let their retailers sell Sony branded items cheap, even if no one was buying them. Logic was that a high price suggests a "premium" product to customers, regardless of quality.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[bhtooefr]

OK, to extend the explanation:

A good company is one that understands that if they treat their customers right, they'll keep coming back.

A bad company is one that understands that if they treat their customers badly, but keep making things that they want/need, they'll STILL keep coming back, and then bases their business model upon that understanding.

Or, another example of a bad company is one that extends that model into treating their actual customers as their product, and their actual product as something to keep their customers around, to sell their customers on.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[Qubit]

This is why you always need the source and the signing keys to the software that runs on your devices. Always.

So you have the source and signing keys for every bit of software that runs on every device you have?

Nope. I wish that I did, though.

Key point is that if I ever get burned because I don't have the source to something, then I know that I probably should have tried harder to get the source, or I shouldn't have purchased the item in the first place.

I guess I'd be willing to view a major appliance like a refrigerator and a game console as different beasts. With one, I'm out a few hundred bucks in food if it's off for a few hours. With the other, it's generally okay to shut it off for a month or more.

But if we do view the game console as more of a "Black Box of Fun", then we need to treat it differently than the fridge or our personal computers. We need to take a bit of a hostile view towards it, and perhaps put it in a different subnet that can't just go poke at the ports on our other devices. We need to remember to not put our personal information on it, or trust that just because it can play game X today it will be able to play game X tomorrow.

If we can live with that kind of relationship with the game console, then great! I'm just suggesting that we put that discussion up front, and not have it be a surprise to us when the external entity decides to change the rules on how we may use our Black Box of Fun.

Re:Oh, stuff it.

[the simurgh]

fyi when pitching the job they actually listed apple as a client

Wow....

[grub]

I'm amazed at the comments on the linked Playstation page.

Some folks are (almost) calling for Hotz' head. And people think Apple's fans drink the KoolAid...

Re:Wow....

[discord5]

Some folks are (almost) calling for Hotz' head. And people think Apple's fans drink the KoolAid...

And I'm pretty sure that Sony isn't posting comments on their own website. Right? They would never do such a thing.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed at the comments on the linked Playstation page.

Some folks are (almost) calling for Hotz' head. And people think Apple's fans drink the KoolAid...

You see people identify with products all over the place - and if you look closely at your life, you may be doing it too.

I've seen people base their identities on what they have; which is quite a childish thing to do if you ask a developmental psychologist - basing your identity on what you do means you're stuck in adolescence by the way.

Go to a photo site and you'll see people get all riled up if you say anything against "their" brand of camera. Same goes for power tools - you'll see Ridgid and DeWalt fanboys.

Cars - same thing.

Apple's fanboys have nothing on the Harley Davidson fanboys.

Re:Wow....

[Shimdaddy]

I don't think it's Sony astroturfing. I think it's just gamers who see action like GeoHotz's as a gateway to piracy -- if they spend a good deal of their time in online games (which can be totally ruined by cheaters), I think their comments are understandable (though I still don't agree with them).

Re:Wow....

[elashish14]

All the commenters have PSN accounts and are reading what appears to be the official PS blog. In other words, they must be in KoolAid up to the ears.

Re:Wow....

[flimflammer]

The reason they're so out for blood is because they don't actually understand what was happening or what this case was really about.

They all assumed that Hotz was basically allowing games to be hacked and crap, ruining their online experience, when Hotz work actually had nothing to do with it.

Ignorance is leading the farmers with pitchforks and fire, like it always does.

Re:Wow....

[MrHanky]

It's just that those people don't care about the fact that they don't own what they've bought -- they're more afraid of being owned when playing games. The console is theirs in that they get to keep it permanently, and apart from that it's just a gateway to a games service. They were never going to use it for anything but further consumption of things they don't own. Come to think of it, Sony and Apple are pretty much the same in that regard.

Re:Wow....

[kimvette]

Go to a photo site and you'll see people get all riled up if you say anything against "their" brand of camera. Same goes for power tools - you'll see Ridgid and DeWalt fanboys.

So true - go to any Nikon forum and you'll see Canon fans posting crap, go to Canon forums and see Nikon fans posting crap - usually in the form of gross misinformation to "prove" their choice of camera is better, completely ignoring the fact that they're just tools and there is no one single BFH that works for all situations.

It seems every market has that kind of blind follower - be it cars (okay admittedly my username includes my favorite car, but I don't make excuses for GM. GM sucks and should have been allowed to fail, IMHO), computers (witness Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux crap here on a daily basis), phones (witness iPhone vs. Android crap here on a daily basis), sports (Sox suck! No, Yankees suck! No, you suck! No, you suck!), and so on. People like something and raise them to the level if idols and worship them for some reason. They forget sports is just entertainment, that technology is just tools, and cars are tools with an artistic shell.

  I hate most Mercedes vehicles, but that doesn't mean I need to go trolling about how much greater the cars I like are better than Mercedes - because the cars I choose for my purposes would not fit the purposes or tastes of the next person. Likewise, in the past I have chosen vehicles I HATED because they were practical for my purpose and at the time 99% of my driving was for business, and no matter how you try, you simply can't haul a load of servers in a sportscar or even a sports sedan.

Irrational people will be irrational, douchebags will be douchebags, and rational people will be rational (although generally rational people may on occasion seek irrational enjoyment from mocking douchebags and trolls). Some people feel the irrational need to support the idea that the product/team/person/thing/place they like/bought/watch/live is best, and therefore everyone else makes the wrong decision because their choice sucks.

But, let me wrap this up by saying that Sony sucks - and I am not being irrational here. ;)

Re:Wow....

[Sir_Sri]

In their defence, the whole purpose for the vast majority of users when buying a PS3 was to have a gaming machine and some semblance of fair competition in multiplayer. The forums are naturally more full of fanboys than anywhere else. Any PS3 hack directly interferes with the notion of a fair playing session against other people. As much as it got Sony free press, PS2 linux... I'm sorry PS3 linux was only ever there to try and skirt around EU import tariffs. It didn't work. Sony really doesn't want you using PS3's for astrophysics clusters or airforce research (I helped build a cluster for astrophysics work). They sell at a loss because they want you to buy games. I'm sure the airforce cluster is great press, but the vast majority of the research just costs them money they don't get a tax break for.

All MMO's go after botters. Shouldn't I be able to run whatever software I want on my own machine?

The olympics go after people who have too much cold medication or whatever else. Shouldn't you be allowed to take whatever your doctor recommends for your health?

The US congress thought steroid use in baseball was so important they dragged barry bonds and co. to washington to talk to them. This is when they are trying to deal with a trillion dollar deficit, they're willing to waste days of peoples time on steroids in baseball. And you think sony fanboys are overreacting to a hack? At least the sony fanboys are actually participating in, and affected by cheaters directly.

Not that Sony is blameless. They should never have allowed 'other OS linux' on the PS3 in the first place, they should not have gone around threatening to sue everyone under the sun who might have been intrigued by geohot. But if you're a MMO player, you're glad to see the banhammer go out to gold farmers, botters etc. Sony is trying to balance on one hand the developers and hardcore gamers (who roughly have aligned interests in terms of security), and hacker types who should be free to toy with their own stuff, but not at the expense of the network experience of everyone else.

Lets be honest. Sure, a PS3 jailbreak hack lets you run homebrew games, and may re-enable partially functional PS2 emulation, and brings back linux support. But it also lets you mess with the memory state of your machine and hack the game as you're running and it lets you pirated games. Homebrew has no real value on a PS3. PS2 emulation, I'm not sure on, I'm betting sony didn't just take it out for the fun of it, it's probably really hard, if not impossible to do properly and provide a good experience. Linux... well it shipped with linux so I guess they should still support it. But that goes into the next problem, which is the whole network experience of 40 odd million players (obviously not all of whom actually use the network functionality) can be easily disrupted by even a handful of people hacking which is really a serious problem. Avoiding that is sort of the point of having a console in the first place, and being able to steal stuff from the playstation store isn't exactly something I support either. I don't think pirated games (blu-ray/DVD) is a huge issue, though I could be wrong, I suppose once the hack is out here some cheap PS3 game knockoff manufacturers could pose problems if they want to get into that business.

Re:Wow....

[Narishma]

It's not just the PS Blog. Go to just about any gaming website and read the comments about this story and you'll see the vast majority support Sony. It's just on tech websites like /. or ars technica that you see a lot of people against Sony.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything the Astroturfing is from Microsoft trying to gain some free Sony-hate now they are stuck in last place....

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

This quote hits the nail on the head:

"You know what's so elegant about this little game, Jake? Nobody knows what the enemy is. They don't even know he exists. He's in every...one of their heads. And they trust him. Because they think they are him. If you try to destroy him... to save them,... they'll destroy you... to save him. Ahh... it's beautiful man... You have to admire the opponent's elegance."
-- Revolver (2005, Guy Richie)

Re:Wow....

[Hatta]

Suckle on the teat of the powerful for long enough, and you begin to believe that what is good for them is good for you.

Re:Wow....

[tophermeyer]

I saw someone else post this point elsewhere on the thread.

Gamers want a smooth gaming experience. Most gamers expect that to entail an online network free from hackers exploiting games and not being required to sit through 20-30 minute updates every two weeks. The majority of gamers see Hotz as opening doors for hackers/exploiters and as being responsible for Sony's prevention measures.

Outside of the pro-Linux "software should be free" crowds, most people just want to see Hotz go away.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

You see people identify with products all over the place - and if you look closely at your life, you may be doing it too.

I've seen people base their identities on what they have; which is quite a childish thing to do if you ask a developmental psychologist - basing your identity on what you do means you're stuck in adolescence by the way.

Funny, I don't remember seeing Piaget cover anything of the sort. Or, for that matter, anyone outside of pop-psych.

Re:Wow....

[Nikker]

Comparing Harley owners to Apple fanboys, that is at least worth one internet.

Re:Wow....

[Seumas]

Homebrew has no real value on a PS3.

Who are you to determine what value there is or isn't in someone using a piece of property that they own in the way they wish? And how would you feel if the same claim was made about using home media server software (like PS3 Media Server) to stream content to your PS3 from your computer? How about universities and the military buying PS3s in the thousands to use as commodity clustered server solutions for projects? How about we apply this to PCs and take you to court, because you installed linux on your laptop?

Re:Wow....

[quickgold192]

Like shimdaddy said, you have to understand their perspective. If you're reading slashdot, there's a good chance that you like to tinker with stuff and zap yourself. If you're reading the PS3 blog, you're probably a gamer who has probably dealt with cheating before. When they hear "modded box," they automatically think "aimbot" because that's been their only experience with modded consoles. When we hear "modded box" we think of a job well done. They can't understand why someone would *want* to modify their box unless they wanted to cheat.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-gamers have no idea of the immense, deep hatred and loathing gamers have for cheaters and hackers. No, really... people have been assaulted and even stabbed after being suspected of cheating. Traditionally, gaming companies have always hit hard against people who subvert the gaming experience in any way. E.g. see Blizzard vs. the WoW Glider company.

So, for gamers, this case was about a gaming company versus cheaters/hackers. For the tech crowd, this case was about a hardware company wanting to enforce control on hardware even after they've been legally bought, or about restricting one's freedom to hack with their own legally bought hardware. Both crowds missed the bigger picture.

In the bigger picture, I think Sony was right in their wish to control sold PS3 hardware for the very reason that people who hack it facilitate cheating, and Sony's customers are the gamers who call for the blood of cheaters. And of course, hacked consoles also facilitate piracy, which was probably the bigger concern for Sony, except it happened to gel pretty well with their customers' concerns.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's fanboys have nothing on the Harley Davidson fanboys.

That's right! Those dentists could mess your teeth up if you're not into the harley! That family lawyer with the harley is gonna screw up your divorce papers if you don't like that chrome!

Harley got neutered, Harley got rich.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I had some mod points. This post was cribbed straight outta my brain.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at those comments, I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a few Sony employees and stooges posting on there!

Re:Wow....

[Dogtanian]

see Nikon fans posting crap - usually in the form of gross misinformation to "prove" their choice of camera is better, completely ignoring the fact that they're just tools

Hey, even complete tools are allowed to have opinions!

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

(okay admittedly my username includes my favorite car, but I don't make excuses for GM. GM sucks and should have been allowed to fail, IMHO),

You love the Chevette too? ;-)

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, the whole reason WHY OtherOS was removed, was because GeoHot was using it to try and break the PS3 open to piracy.

Re:Wow....

[Anubis IV]

Apple's fanboys have nothing on the Harley Davidson fanboys.

Pshaw. Those bikers don't hold a candle to us iFanboys of the Cult of Steve. Their bikes aren't made of brushed aluminum, their carbon footprint is disgusting, and I think they might even use paint rather than anodization for their coloration process. How last century.

I'd go on, but I just got a call on my iPhone. Apparently there's a social event being put on by the local Mac User Group tonight, and I need time to load my (PRODUCT) RED iPod (to show my support for eliminating AIDS in Africa, of course) with my favorite tunes. Plus, choosing which black turtleneck to wear can be such a pain sometimes. If only there was an app for that...

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Such idiotic comments, but with fully-formed sentences, is a sure sign of astroturfing at its finest.

Re:Wow....

[LordLimecat]

Rights, chilling effects, and Sony being an all-around douche aside, it IS a gateway to piracy.

Lets be realistic here, we know how 80% of the system tinkerers use their hacked consoles, and most of the time its not to run Linux, or to cheat. Im sure its wonderful that some niche folks are running OtherOS again, but if you think you represent the majority of PS3 tinkerers, youre badly mistaken.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

basing your identity on what you do

you mean: "on what you own" ??

Re:Wow....

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I disagree.

Homebrew has great potential on a console.

However, the problem is that the benefits do NOT outweigh the costs and downfalls. I'd rather have no homebrew and no cheating than homebrew and cheating.

Re:Wow....

[Lost Race]

I think GP meant that identifying with what you have is childish, and identifying with what you do is adolescent. Presumably adults are supposed to base their identities on something else. I'm curious what GP thinks that something else might be. Who you know, maybe?

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except near monthly 20-30 minute updates have been the standard for the PS3 since launch.

The "majority of gamers" are either simply astroturfing or trolling.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

All MMO's go after botters. Shouldn't I be able to run whatever software I want on my own machine?

      Yes, and you can. However, if you want to participate in the MMO, you can't use bot software.

The olympics go after people who have too much cold medication or whatever else. Shouldn't you be allowed to take whatever your doctor recommends for your health?

      Yes, and you can. However, if you want to participate in the Olympics, you can't use those medicines.

  Lets be honest. Sure, a PS3 jailbreak hack lets you run homebrew games, and may re-enable partially functional PS2 emulation, and brings back linux support. But it also lets you mess with the memory state of your machine and hack the game as you're running and it lets you pirated games. Homebrew has no real value on a PS3. PS2 emulation, I'm not sure on, I'm betting sony didn't just take it out for the fun of it, it's probably really hard, if not impossible to do properly and provide a good experience. Linux... well it shipped with linux so I guess they should still support it. But that goes into the next problem, which is the whole network experience of 40 odd million players (obviously not all of whom actually use the network functionality) can be easily disrupted by even a handful of people hacking which is really a serious problem. Avoiding that is sort of the point of having a console in the first place, and being able to steal stuff from the playstation store isn't exactly something I support either. I don't think pirated games (blu-ray/DVD) is a huge issue, though I could be wrong, I suppose once the hack is out here some cheap PS3 game knockoff manufacturers could pose problems if they want to get into that business.

      Yes, to protect an arbitrarily generated business model, let's change civil and property rights to help ensure that that business model works!

Re:Wow....

[westlake]

I'm amazed at the comments on the linked Playstation page.

I can't imagine why.

This is the core constituency for the PS3:

49 million consoles. 69 million PSN accounts. 17 million PlayStation Home accounts. 4 million MOVE controllers.

There have been seven firmware upgrades since 3,21 in April of last year - an entire Christmas shopping season has come and gone.

In which the departure of the OtherOS had no visible impact on sales.

The 2,843 Walmart Supercenters in the U.S. position the PS3 Slim at the center of a golden triangle of console video games, HDTVs , DVD and Blu-Ray videos.

Which is where it belongs.

The OtherOS implies dual booting and a DIY Linux install.

That and maintaining two operating systems, software libraries and skill sets has all the mass market appeal of root canal.

The geek talks about his "right" to mod his own hardware.

In the real world, the high-end video game console or HDTV set is a big-ticket home appliance that is shared with other family members -

and when they have the final say,

The Yellow Dog always gets voted off the island.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

They sell at a loss

Not true, each PS3 is sold at a profit now

Re:Wow....

[Travelsonic]

No, you SPECULATED that you know how, but unless we have any hard number, any guess can be just as valid or invalid. And being a gateway to piracy.... means what? Torrent technology is used for piracy, P2P is too, and FTP, but the protocols are not outlawed because they have substantial non-infringing uses too.

Re:Wow....

[Nyder]

In their defence, the whole purpose for the vast majority of users when buying a PS3 was to have a gaming machine and some semblance of fair competition in multiplayer. The forums are naturally more full of fanboys than anywhere else. Any PS3 hack directly interferes with the notion of a fair playing session against other people. As much as it got Sony free press, PS2 linux... I'm sorry PS3 linux was only ever there to try and skirt around EU import tariffs. It didn't work. Sony really doesn't want you using PS3's for astrophysics clusters or airforce research (I helped build a cluster for astrophysics work). They sell at a loss because they want you to buy games. I'm sure the airforce cluster is great press, but the vast majority of the research just costs them money they don't get a tax break for.

All MMO's go after botters. Shouldn't I be able to run whatever software I want on my own machine?

The olympics go after people who have too much cold medication or whatever else. Shouldn't you be allowed to take whatever your doctor recommends for your health?

The US congress thought steroid use in baseball was so important they dragged barry bonds and co. to washington to talk to them. This is when they are trying to deal with a trillion dollar deficit, they're willing to waste days of peoples time on steroids in baseball. And you think sony fanboys are overreacting to a hack? At least the sony fanboys are actually participating in, and affected by cheaters directly.

Not that Sony is blameless. They should never have allowed 'other OS linux' on the PS3 in the first place, they should not have gone around threatening to sue everyone under the sun who might have been intrigued by geohot. But if you're a MMO player, you're glad to see the banhammer go out to gold farmers, botters etc. Sony is trying to balance on one hand the developers and hardcore gamers (who roughly have aligned interests in terms of security), and hacker types who should be free to toy with their own stuff, but not at the expense of the network experience of everyone else.

Lets be honest. Sure, a PS3 jailbreak hack lets you run homebrew games, and may re-enable partially functional PS2 emulation, and brings back linux support. But it also lets you mess with the memory state of your machine and hack the game as you're running and it lets you pirated games. Homebrew has no real value on a PS3. PS2 emulation, I'm not sure on, I'm betting sony didn't just take it out for the fun of it, it's probably really hard, if not impossible to do properly and provide a good experience. Linux... well it shipped with linux so I guess they should still support it. But that goes into the next problem, which is the whole network experience of 40 odd million players (obviously not all of whom actually use the network functionality) can be easily disrupted by even a handful of people hacking which is really a serious problem. Avoiding that is sort of the point of having a console in the first place, and being able to steal stuff from the playstation store isn't exactly something I support either. I don't think pirated games (blu-ray/DVD) is a huge issue, though I could be wrong, I suppose once the hack is out here some cheap PS3 game knockoff manufacturers could pose problems if they want to get into that business.

You missed the point.

First off, not all MMO go after botters. I've been playing EQ2 for 5 years, I bot, have multiable accounts, and do not hide the fact i bot. I've pointed out a lot of people to use the software I use (innerspace & isxeq2).

Here's teh kicker, it's owned by Sony. If Sony went after the "botters" then they'd lose 1/3 or more of their business. Now plat farmers, no, they don't like.

You said that it's not Sonys fault, they should of never included the OtherOS option. What? Seriously? Are you high? They included it. They should support it.

Also, what Sony did in regards to the PS3 being hacked is called a fit. They wigged the fuck out, threw a fucking fit, and started raging on everyone that had something to do with it. Sony over reacted and deserved what they got.

Do I feel bad for the customers that got effected, like PSN? Nope, wake up and smell reality.

Re:Wow....

[Alsee]

If you're reading the PS3 blog, you're probably a gamer who has probably dealt with cheating before.

Yes, if you're reading the PS3 blog you've probably dealt with LOTS cheating before. In particular let me run down the forms you cheating you deal with on a daily basis, and the approximate percentage of each category:

Cheating category 1, 55%:
You (meaning the PS3 typical blog reader bitching about cheating) are a clueless loser and you got your ass handed to you by some player who has no-life... a player who has 500 hours of game experience... a player who has expert game knowledge. In your non-existent game knowledge and non-existent game skills you know of no way to do what the expert player did. And obviously it's not possible for anyone to be that much better than you. Obviously they cheated.

Cheating category 2, 37%:
You have no clue how the internet works, and you don't understand how internet lag and packet loss can cause strange behavior in games, so every time there's a lag glitch or packet loss glitch in the game and the game-effect is bad for you / helps your opponent, obviously they cheated.

Cheating category 3, 8%:
People actually cheating by exploiting bugs in the game itself.

Cheating category 4, ZERO PERCENT:
People actually cheating in any way that is even remotely related to Geohot.

-

Re:Wow....

[sabt-pestnu]

> In their defence, the whole purpose for the vast majority of users when buying a PS3 was to have a gaming machine and some semblance of fair competition in multiplayer.

The purpose for the vast majority of users who bought the PS3 to use the "OtherOS" was to use Linux on the PS3. Enough of them felt that you should be able to use Linux AND play games on the PS3 that they have formed a class action lawsuit.

> They sell at a loss because they want you to buy games.

And yet, they sell them at a loss. If they didn't want to sell them at a loss, they would not do so.

>Homebrew has no real value on a PS3.
Odd you should say that after posting that you'd worked on an astrophysics cluster project using PS3s. Especially since you use "Homebrew" as a placeholder for "not approved by Sony".

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

If I own something, it should be under my control. That principle is more important than the entire entertainment industry, let alone the "network experience" of a few gamers.

Re:Wow....

[shutdown -p now]

It's not any different from how the majority supports free speech only until they hear something that they don't like to hear (such as neo-Nazis).

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the number of people with "Harley Davidson" engraved into their body ( a.k.a. tatoo) is higher than the number associated with all Apple products combined. So while Apple has many fans I think Harley has more cultists.

Re:Wow....

[index0]

I only read the first few sentences of your reply but have to say that cheating on ps3 existed before piracy on ps3.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not any different from how the majority supports free speech only until they hear something that they don't like to hear (such as neo-Nazis).

Of course it is, people buy into the PS3 system (PSN, console, etc...) expecting to not be able to exercise some freedoms (like being able to modify the console hardware and/or software), no-one forces you to buy a PS3 and if you went in expecting that you could do whatever you want then you're an idiot.
Don't expect to be able to come into my house, verbally abuse me and have me accept that because it's 'free speech'.

Re:Wow....

[tixxit]

Basing your identity on what you don't base your identity on is probably childish too then. However, what I do and my identity are definitely linked. Seriously, I stare at a computer and program for about half my waking life. If you think that I can somehow completely separate that part of myself from the other half, you have to be nuts.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand Sony's need to keep cheaters off of PSN, in fact I'm glad they are doing it. Cheaters have always been the worst part of online gaming. The problem I have is that instead of just banning all the modded users from PSN like Microsoft did from Xbox Live they have started suing the people who jailbreak their console. I don't own any of the current gen consoles, but if I did I would want to be able to do whatever I want to it; it's my property. I don't expect Sony/Nintendo/MS to allow me on their private network if I do mod it, but I also think I should be able to do this without being sued.

What also bothers me is how Sony just up and removed OtherOS and made legitimate users decide between playing current games, which needed the firmware update that removed OtherOS, or using OtherOS. It was advertised that you could do both, run Linux and play PS3 games, not you can only do one or the other.

Sure a lot of people will mod for piracy and cheating, but there are people who do want Linux and PS2 emulation(especially this one, having one console set up in the living room instead of two is quite nice) and who will not even go on PSN with their systems after modding and those people should be able to do whatever they want with their systems.

Re:Wow....

[shutdown -p now]

Sony is free to lock down PS3 to make cheating harder, I don't have a problem with that. Furthermore, they are free to ban players who cheat from their network - this is the correct counterpart to your "come into my house" analogy. But the notion that they should have a law protecting their scheme, allowing them to actually sue people who mod their consoles as is their right as owners, is obviously wrong.

I could accept them suing the guy for breaking the terms of PSN EULA. But, so far as I know, he claims that he did not agree (or did anything that would indicate agreement) with that, and Sony could not prove otherwise.

By the way, as you rightly note, no-one forces you to buy a PS3. You do so in full knowledge that it - as any other electronic device - can be modified to do what the owner wants, depending only on one's skills. If you want to prevent people from doing so by enacting restrictive laws, you're not any better than a guy next door who wants to ban hate speech so that Nazis, commies and other undesirables that personally annoy him would be silenced. Which is to say, there's nothing wrong with disliking Nazis, just don't ask the government to go and jail them for the sake of your sensitivities.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

They were never going to use it for anything but further consumption of things they don't own.

Why the fuck would i care if i own it once i've 'consumed' it?!

Re:Wow....

[exomondo]

Do I feel bad for the customers that got effected, like PSN? Nope, wake up and smell reality.

So you feel it's ok for people to be punished simply because they don't share your point of view?

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheating category 4, ZERO PERCENT: People actually cheating in any way that is even remotely related to Geohot.

-

Translation:
"I love geohot and even though i have no idea what he did none of it could be the basis for anything bad"

Re:Wow....

[kimvette]

Well, at least it's rear wheel drive! ;)

Re:Wow....

[Sir_Sri]

They've ported everything off the cluster I built, I have since gone to another institution. We build the cluster about 3.5 years ago, and ported everything to GPU computing 3 years ago, because a single 400 dollar GPU (nvidia specifically) outperformed the 4 machine cluster by about a factor of 2. it was a waste of our money and sony's. Now I do some PS3 development stuff (through official channels) and that's bad enough, trying to do it without all of the libraries they provide is an enormous undertaking from scratch, to accomplish a task better done a million other ways.

Don't get me wrong. I distinguish between Sony should still be supporting Linux, and Geohot's taking that into his own hands and then some. Sony sold it with PS3 linux, they shouln't take it out (at least on the machines it was sold with, new versions without it are fine). But they shouldn't let someone hack the system either, that violates the entire integrity and the point of the system in the first place.

Sure, a small handful of people bought those machines to hack them (again, separate from running linux officially), but that shouldn't give them free reign to damage the experience for everyone else.

Re:Wow....

[Sir_Sri]

yes. and they patch fairly regularly to fix it.

Nor do I think piracy is a major issue, even from this hack. it is a potential vague future threat. But in the immediate present the goal is to cut off cheating (and some of the serious security problems that come with unfettered access to the PSN via a PS3 homebrew).

Re:Wow....

[Lemmy Caution]

Remember, these are people for whom being beaten at a game by a cheater is one of the the worst thing that's happened in their lives. You can't really expect a lot of perspective.

Re:Wow....

[Lemmy Caution]

What is depressing is when you see this kind of corporate-brand fandom in adults. Almost always males, and usually very neurotic and often under-sexed. Paraphilias for sexually frustrated people is nothing new: cathexis into a brand is.

Re:Wow....

[Lemmy Caution]

I would rather have no homebrew, lots of cheating, and a modicum of dignity and civil rights.

Re:Wow....

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The US congress thought steroid use in baseball was so important they dragged barry bonds and co. to washington to talk to them. This is when they are trying to deal with a trillion dollar deficit, they're willing to waste days of peoples time on steroids in baseball. And you think sony fanboys are overreacting to a hack? At least the sony fanboys are actually participating in, and affected by cheaters directly.

To be fair, it's a multimillion dollar federal drug issue at stake here, not just some meatheads smacking balls around.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a PS3 and know nothing about it... but if you're talking about downloadable content modding to create cheats, that's not always possible depending on the game (and whether content is protected/signed) or it's not as effective (if texture/mdls/etc are only accessible, but not program). Of course, if you have access to any of it you can exploit a program flaw and gain total access (depending on architecture) but that's more difficult.

Or maybe you meant packet modification or interference... the latter is always possible but alteration isn't necessarily without a ROM dump to figure out decryption scheme.

Anyway... let's just say it's usually a LOT easier with an 0wned machine.

Re:Wow....

[Sir_Sri]

Actually I said it's not that sony is blameless. Perhaps the double negative was confusing. They shouldn't have included the other OS option. It was doomed to failure. They did, and they should be stuck with it, but putting it in in the first place was colossally stupid.

from the sounds of it you're multiboxing. not botting. Those are two different things. Multiboxing is running multiple copies of the game at once, and using tools to manage each of those windows at once. Botting is using a computer program to automate play with you not there (typically for plat/gold farming). As you say, the latter is nearly universally frowned upon. Multiboxing is another matter entirely.

hacking and supporting PS3 linux are not the same thing. Sony should still officially support linux - even if that is expensive and hard. I'm sympathetic that a failed attempt to save customers money (and make them money) is going to end up costing them a pile of cash, but that's beside the point. Allowing hacking, which gives unfettered access to the memory of the system and into the inner workings of their PSN and running game memory is a whole other ball game. Even hacking to restore PS3 functionality is vigilanty justice at best, with all of the consequences that brings.

Re:Wow....

[vegiVamp]

> the whole purpose for the vast majority of users when buying a PS3 was to have a gaming machine

Irrelevant. Why I buy their hardware is none of their business. I buy what is essentially a piece of computer equipment, I'm damn well allowed do to whatever the fuck I want to it.

> Any PS3 hack directly interferes with the notion of a fair playing session against other people.

Incorrect to the point of lying. "Any knife directly interferes with the notion of not hurting other people." How does that sound?

> All MMO's go after botters. Shouldn't I be able to run whatever software I want on my own machine?

Yes, you should. MMO's don't forbid you to run bots, they forbid you to have bots acting on their servers, as is their right. The distinction may be subtle, but it is very important.

> The olympics go after people who have too much cold medication or whatever else. Shouldn't you be allowed to take whatever your doctor recommends for your health?

In the same vein; you *are* allowed to take whatever is recommended for your health. It is also the Olympic Committee's right to decide that you are not allowed to participate if you are using stimulants. The committee does not forbid you from taking the drugs, it forbids you from participating in THEIR events if you take them. Important distinction.

> They should never have allowed 'other OS linux' on the PS3 in the first place

Regardless of that, they have, which makes their later, unilateral removal of it fraud.

> But it also lets you mess with the memory state of your machine and hack the game as you're running

There you go again with the overdrawn conclusions. Let's forbid cars - sure, they take you places, but they also let you run over people.

> Homebrew has no real value on a PS3.

Kind of obvious, given that there hasn't been much effort put into it, yet. Have a look at what you get on the Wii or DS for a look at what homebrew can add to a console. This should be encouraged, sanctioned and properly channeled instead of criminalized - it's free added value, for Pete's sake. The iToys are doing killer business with what is essentially a pseudo-homebrew app store.

> PS2 emulation, I'm not sure on, I'm betting sony didn't just take it out for the fun of it, it's probably really hard, if not impossible to do properly and provide a good experience.

Oh my, it's hard, let's not do it? Dude, what are you smoking?

FYI, the original release of the PS3 had the actual PS2 hardware built-in. Not hard, it just works. Subsequent runs had software emulation. Not 100% perfect, but worked pretty fine for most of the games I tried. So, they had two good solutions, the latter of which didn't actually cost them any more money to build the console, and they still removed it from the newest models. I cannot fathom why.

On the other hand, unlike OtherOS, PS2 emulation hasn't been retroactively removed from existing consoles, so there's really no blame to put there except a silly decision.

> the whole network experience of 40 odd million players can be easily disrupted by even a handful of people hacking

More utter bullshit. The PS3 uses the same internet as the rest of the world. You don't even need a PS3 if you want to kill PSN, just aim LOIC at the servers. If you want to bring PSN down, hacking the PS3 is pointless effort. If you're hacking the PS3, it'll probably not be to disrupt PSN.

> being able to steal stuff from the playstation store

WHAT ? Dude, you're floating on a different planet. If running custom software on the PS3 is all you need to get free stuff out of the store, I have to wonder how all those other web stores survive. Amazon, how do you manage?

Yes, your precious PS3 store is nothing but a webstore, albeit one with a horrendously slow and annoying interface. Now stop making cheap excuses for Sony, fanboi.

Re:Wow....

[tehcyder]

Some folks are (almost) calling for Hotz' head. And people think Apple's fans drink the KoolAid...

And I'm pretty sure that Sony isn't posting comments on their own website. Right? They would never do such a thing.

Yes, because Sony's satisfied customer base is entirely composed of Sony employees, and anyone who disagrees with the slashdot "Sony is evil" groupthink must be a paid shill.
Amazingly, most people on a Sony product forum like that Sony product. What else would you expect?

Re:Wow....

[tehcyder]

It's not any different from how the majority supports free speech only until they hear something that they don't like to hear (such as neo-Nazis).

Back here in the real world, we recognise that there are limits on free speech when it begins to impact on actual people. Whatever the absolute libertarians might say, if someone calls for specific, actual violence and murder, that has gone beyond just being speech.

Also, your analogy is fucking ridiculous. If you equate hackers with poor misunderstood neo-Nazis, you're not doing the hackers much of a favour.

Re:Wow....

[thetoadwarrior]

Clearly you've never seen console fanboys beat on each other. Sony doesn't need to fake comments.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as it got Sony free press, PS2 linux... I'm sorry PS3 linux was only ever there to try and skirt around EU import tariffs. It didn't work. Sony really doesn't want you using PS3's for astrophysics clusters or airforce research (I helped build a cluster for astrophysics work). They sell at a loss because they want you to buy games. I'm sure the airforce cluster is great press, but the vast majority of the research just costs them money they don't get a tax break for.

The fact that you mention PS2 Linux means that you apparently know the story but are muddling it up with the PS3 story.

The whole PS2 can run Linux so it's a computer thing was so they could get around tariffs is true, but Sony was slapped down on that before the PS3 was launched. Running OtherOS (Linux) on the PS3 was a direct marketing effort to get publicity. It succeeded. It also was to get the price of the unit down due to economics of scale and to have an initial burst of sales to researchers that Sony then claimed was part of its install base.

All three of these succeeded, but the problem was that developers were seeing low attach rates, i.e. a PS3 purchased to sit in a cluster is not going to be purchased with games, and had issues. The PS3 slim not having OtherOS was directly to address the developer fears.

When the flaw was found in the hypervisor, Sony decided that OtherOS had served its purpose and was no longer needed so they dropped it. They could have fixed the flaw but this was easier.

Re:Wow....

[MimeticLie]

I would lay the blame for the cheating in PS3 games squarely at the feet of the developers. The Modern Warfare games where apparently "unplayable" after Geohotz published the keys.

The closed environment on consoles made developers lazy and they forgot rule number 1: DON'T TRUST THE CLIENT. PS3 gamers should be mad, but their anger is focused in the wrong place.

Re:Wow....

[Americium]

If it's not locked down, and it's becomes really easy to pirate games, nobody will release them for ps3, they'll just put them out for xbox360. So if you are a Sony fanboy of course you are pissed, these hackers are unwanted by the video game community.

Now Sony should have never let linux run on ps3, that really opened the can of worms, and attracted hackers the world over to play with their system. What did they think was going to happen?

MS Xbox has the right idea, although it's less open than the ps3 in some respects. Proprietary charging ports for the controllers and not using bluetooth for the wireless controllers. But there's the xbox indie arcade that let's anyone write programs for $100/yr, what does Sony have?

I still think Sony handled the situation atrociously, and what positive effect did this have at all?

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what flavor of colored beverage might you be drinking?

On Anonymous

[trollertron3000]

I'm sure Anonymous will now go away. They're known for being lenient in cases like this. Oh wait, no. You gonna get raped.

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, no. You gonna get raped.

Indeed. Such cruel, inhumane measures as a 1-day boycott will be carried out without mercy.

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking they'll still turn up for the sit-in but when they realise they have noting to protest, it'll turn into a shopping trip.

Re:On Anonymous

[jbonomi]

I don't think "anonymous" has proven effective against anything but Scientologists. I don't think Sony has much to worry about.

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard from Tunisia, Egypt and a few other Arab/Muslim countries?

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't, their internet was down due to a DoS.

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard from Tunisia, Egypt and a few other Arab/Muslim countries?

Yeah, you mean the countries with protests fueled by Facebook and Twitter, where people actually went out to do some protesting in the streets and managed to accomplish something for democracy and freedom beyond throwing a public hissy fit? I've heard of those, yeah. So what's that got to do with Anonymous, again?

Re:On Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll get distracted and do something else next week. Like they always do.

money back!

[SuperDre]

So do people who donated money for Geohotz defense now get their money back? because this settlement isn't what people donated money for, the money was for going through to the end so a real verdict was set.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was stated from the start that any unused donations would go to the EFF, actually.

It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to the free world's, and the USA's imaginary property tulipmania, it's understandable.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

He did say that he'd give any left over to the EFF, so no, but don't worry, it's for a good cause.

Re:money back!

[Scott64]

He had already stated that funds not needed for his case would be donated to the EFF.

Re:money back!

[c0d3g33k]

It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to that of the free world, [*snip*] it's understandable.

Are the court systems of the 'free world' really that much less corrupt than that of the US? It seems to me they are all dysfunctional in one way or the other and could all stand to be improved. What I learned of the court system in Italy while watching a murder trial last year made me hope I never have to stand trial for a crime there. Free world or not, the best way to be assured of the potential of a fair trial is to avoid committing any offense - the fairness goes away once you actually set foot in a courtroom.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

The one good thing about the USA, their world police hype, their media industry, their idiotic laws and everything else is that if we pretend it doesn't exist, it disappears.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

What I learned of the court system in Italy while watching a murder trial last year made me hope I never have to stand trial for a crime there.

LOL. I was just thinking of Italy because I just watched a Dateline NBC episode from last week that demonstrated how crappy their courts were. It was about a mother who was declared an unfit mother twice (both in the US and Italy), had kidnapped her child twice (in both the US and Italy...kidnapped him right out of the Italian courthouse), yet the Italian courts choose to leave this child with the mother. They eventually put him in an orphanage, but then let the mother (who they said is unfit) take him out of the orphanage daily, while the father gets 1 hour visitation per month. They rule that the father should get custody, but yet years later still refuse to grant him that custody. There's really too many things wrong with the story to list out, so check out the episode on their website:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/vp/42414682#42414682

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly not really the case. They're fond of turning up in nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with jet fighter flyovers for a bit of "look who is really in charge here" in my country. And I'm in northern europe!

Re:money back!

[Raenex]

It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to the free world's

Is that so? Where do you live that is such a paradise? I'm sure I can dig up a list of injustices.

the USA's imaginary property tulipmania, it's understandable.

Most countries recognize patents and copyrights. The EU has "database rights", a right that the US doesn't recognize. Europe and Canada has royalty collection societies. I'm not happy with the DMCA or the disgusting state of the patent system, but don't pretend that other countries are so different.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA's court system has upheld nonsense like "corporate personhood" (something completely unnecessary for limitation of liability). It's corrupted in the sense of code that's been subverted.

I'm not sure you know what tulipmania means, either. Other countries still have imaginary property bullshit, yes, but only in the USA is it revered and speculated on to such an extent.

Re:money back!

[alexo]

given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to the free world's

What is this "free world" you speak about and what planet is it on?

Re:money back!

[Raenex]

The USA's court system has upheld nonsense like "corporate personhood" (something completely unnecessary for limitation of liability).

There's lot of bullshit to go around. Tell me the country you live in, Anonymous Coward, and I'll dig it up.

I'm not sure you know what tulipmania means, either. Other countries still have imaginary property bullshit, yes, but only in the USA is it revered and speculated on to such an extent.

Just like those "database rights" that EU adopted, and all the royalty collection that goes on, like taxes collected on televisions and blank media, to the point of idiocy where somebody playing a radio in an office owes a license fee.

Re:money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm sure I can dig up a list of injustices.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Re:money back!

[Raenex]

It's valid in this case because the US system was being compared to the rest of the "free world". If you want to claim a superiority, then you have to do the comparison.

Unsuccessful discovery?

[Dachannien]

Dollars to donuts says that SCEA's ridiculous discovery campaign (under the pretense of a jurisdictional dispute) either already turned up less than they'd hoped or was starting to draw enough opposition from the subpoena targets to make this an extremely expensive battle that could never possibly achieve their desired result.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dollars to donuts says that SCEA's ridiculous discovery campaign (under the pretense of a jurisdictional dispute) either already turned up less than they'd hoped or was starting to draw enough opposition from the subpoena targets to make this an extremely expensive battle that could never possibly achieve their desired result.

So why would geohot agree to settle if he didn't feel they had anything on him?

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[characterZer0]

Maybe the settlement involved Sony paying him to make him go away while looking like they won?

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[melikamp]

Why not? He doesn't get anything out of the prolonged litigation. The permanent injunction is not a loss, but just a way for Sony to save face. It's almost a way of paying Sony for crediting him and publicizing his discovery to such a wide audience. Basically a victory for Hotz and everyone who wanted to mod their hardware.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Jeek Elemental]

My first thought also, this is a full retreat by sony.
Would have liked to see geohot win in court but he probably didnt want to spend years there, which is understandable...

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Omnifarious]

I suspect that Sony also didn't really want to tangle with Anonymous. Mostly because it would be inconvenient and expensive, and their customers would suffer.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Eponymous Coward]

I believe Sony settled because there was a significant chance they would lose. When Sony removed the OtherOS feature from the PS3, they opened the door to a legitimate purpose for hacking the PS3. They established a significant non-infringing use of a hacked console. Without that, it would have been fairly easy for Sony to convince the court that the hack was a violation of the DMCA.

This ends Hotz' problems but does nothing to fix Sony's.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[cheeks5965]

Dollars to donuts says that SCEA's ridiculous discovery campaign

Unfortunately donuts cost about a dollar these days (at least in CA), so this expression has less utility than it used to.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sony wanted the case to go away, they would have just dropped it. Geohot agreed to settle. He's the one who caved.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[jimicus]

I seriously doubt it. Even if Sony couldn't find anything in particular to go after him for, one of the curious aspects of the legal system is that you can tie someone up in it for years and the legal profession on the whole doesn't see anything wrong with doing this. Which is fantastically expensive - and while Geohot may have had some donations now he's in the media spotlight, it's questionable how long these would continue. It winds up being a competition to see who's going to stop paying lawyers first.

Faced with the prospect of either:

1. Losing a very expensive lawsuit and either declaring myself bankrupt or being beholden to Sony for the rest of my natural life (Would bankruptcy even work? Does bankruptcy get you out of court judgements in the US?)
2. Winning a very expensive lawsuit only to be faced with appeal after appeal until such time as I say "Enough! What sort of settlement will shut you up?"

I'd consider early settlement - even quite an expensive one - to be a very favourable outcome. If Geohot's got away with agreeing to never doing anything similar with a Sony product again, Sony have had their publicity "pour encourager les autres", I'd say he did alright.

Re:Unsuccessful discovery?

[Eponymous Coward]

I disagree. Sony ultimately wants to scare other hobbyists from tinkering with their PS3's. Walking away would have removed any fear of being sued. By coming to a secret settlement, they leave a lot of uncertainty about what their customers can do with their PS3's.

If Sony is the big winner, why not disclose all the details of the settlement?

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So... win/win right?

[dleemaas]

It seems to me that this is the best possible outcome, honestly. Sony gets to keep their closed system (for now) which is, like it or not, what they want; and GeoHotz doesn't get the wrath of some huge fine levied against him, which is probably what Sony would have done if they could have.

Re:So... win/win right?

[3vi1]

>> Sony gets to keep their closed system

Right. Because when Hotz settled, all the keys magically disappeared from the systems of the hackers who had already downloaded them - and fail0verflow ceased to exist.

Re:So... win/win right?

[Overzeetop]

I suspect that his legal bills may or may not be completely covered by donations (don't know how much he actually collected). A full legal battle would have bankrupted him, almost certainly. I consider this a win, of sorts, and - as someone who donated - would be happy if he turned over any remaining funds to the EFF.

Re:So... win/win right?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much should I donate?
Put it this way, Sony has 5 lawyers, I have 2. I'd like to level the playing field, and really get some hard hitters in there. I have already racked up over 10k in legal bills; donate whatever you feel like. Leftover donations at the end of all this will be donated to the EFF.

Re:So... win/win right?

[sadness203]

Like it was said in earlier comment. All the unspent money is going to EFF. So, there's no scamming. :)

Re:So... win/win right?

[dleemaas]

Right, that's what the "(for now)" was about. Companies should realize that they can never "build the best lock" as it were. Someone will always pick the lock.

Re:So... win/win right?

[hedwards]

I'm wondering what the injunction actually covers. It sounds like Geohotz has agreed to make permanent the injunction against his distributing the key and posting details of his work with regards to producing the key. It sounds like he probably agreed on the basis that it's a moot point, that particular horse is already out of the barn and drinking SCEA's milk.

Re:So... win/win right?

[mrchaotica]

No. The best possible outcome would have been a precedent-setting judgement against Sony. Property law -- up to and including the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA -- was on Hotz's side, but until that gets made clear in court companies like Sony will continue to pretend that their Imaginary Property rights somehow trump device owners' actual property rights. And the longer that pretense is allowed to persist, the more people might actually start to believe it.

permanent injunction?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Horse is out of the barn, now we are going to nail the door shut. Or am I missing something?

Re:permanent injunction?

[tophermeyer]

Or am I missing something?

Probably something like sending a message to the other horses in case they were thinking about getting out too.

Having an injunction in this highly publicized case might make it easier for them to sue the next hacker into oblivion.

Re:permanent injunction?

[hedwards]

Unlikely, the court lacks the jurisdiction to go that far. He may however be barred from writing or talking about the details of what he did or how he did it with respect to the final PS3 cracking.

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And the comments on the Sony web site...

[jgreco]

Wow, what a bunch of Sony fanbois.

Re:And the comments on the Sony web site...

[gstoddart]

Wow, what a bunch of Sony fanbois.

Well, given that it's a self-selected sample of people who have signed up for a Sony website, and probably have accounts on the PSN, are you surprised?

I mean, if I go onto an Xbox Live forum where I'd need to have an XBox Live account (and therefore quite likely an XBox) ... I would expect fanbois to be all over that as well, and the prevailing belief would be that it's the Best Thing Ever.

It was never going to be an unbiased group, not on playstation.com -- I suspect if you went on there and repeatedly bashed the Playstation they'd ban your account.

Re:And the comments on the Sony web site...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really reinforces the notion that a lot of consumers are just dumb sheep who readily believe anything big corporations tell them. To some extent it's quite funny actually. It's also fairly normal. Why do you think so many vote for corrupt, lieing politicians? People are stupid and love to be lied to.

Re:And the comments on the Sony web site...

[tophermeyer]

Wow, what a bunch of Sony fanbois.

Well yeah. It's an official Sony blog that requires you to be signed in with your PSN tag to post. There would be no reason to go there if you weren't a fan of the products. It's like calling attendees at a Star Trek convention or customers in an Apple store fanbois.

permanent injunction?

[softWare3ngineer]

obviously this mean that he cant write any more ps3 hacks, but does it also extend to writing about the issues involved. e.g. holtz is never again able to write / talk about anything with the word Playstation in it?

The legal system is not your private investigator

[zill]

What about all the IP addresses that Sony managed to collect? When will a settlement be reached for that?

Think of the children!

[Mister Fright]

Sure, it's protecting your intellectual property. But how is something like this protecting consumers? From what?

Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[erroneus]

When you have a super-heavyweight company like Sony coming after you, issues such as "merit" simply don't matter as much as how much hurt they can put on you.

Meanwhile, Sony wouldn't have settled so easily if they didn't have something to lose in all of this. I hope our "hero" Geohot was aware of this. It was kind of like our hero, "Lindows" who fought back against Microsoft and won, for the most part, by threatening Microsoft's trademark over Windows. So I have to wonder if anyone else can pick up this ball where Geohot left it. It's not like the secret isn't out.

What Sony Really Said

[Anonymous Coward]

[COMPELLED TRUTH=ON]'Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property from our consumers.’[/TRUTH]

Re:What Sony Really Said

[shentino]

No no...

COMPELLED is the tag.

TRUTH is an attribute with the value of ON

The appropriate closing tag is COMPELLED, not TRUTH

Pretty nice actually

[rsilvergun]

Geohot doesn't suffer any real financial penalties (I hope) and Sony plugs a leak in a nice way. I'm sure they'll be lots of teeth-gnashing here but overall I think they handled this alright. It reminds me of Bleem. So long as it wasn't a commercial product Sony left the emulators alone. I think people forget the role easy piracy played in killing the Dreamcast. Anyone remember the Famicom Disk System :(.

Re:Pretty nice actually

[chammy]

Sony didn't plug any leak. The ps3 master keys don't go away with a ruling by some court. Softmods, homebrew, etc will still continue coming out like they were prior to the settlement. Some people might be scared but others probably still have an axe to grind.

Re:Pretty nice actually

[PRMan]

I went to Fry's this weekend and asked the guys at the desk for hand sanitizer when I realized that I had accidentally touched a Sony product.

Re:Pretty nice actually

[countertrolling]

Unfortunately all those 'sanitizers' only make the disease more resistant. Then you will have flesh eating Super Sonys that will be impossible to wipe out.

looking for these?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:looking for these?

[Anonymous Coward]

My eyes! The goggles! They do NOTHING!

Re:looking for these?

[TheRaven64]

Mod parent down. There's no point in modding it up, because now that Sony has 'achieved [its] goal' no one will possibly be able to read the parent post nor make use of its contents, no matter how high it is moderated.

Re:looking for these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of date, a patch issued ages to prevent these keys.

Re:looking for these?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... "Achieved it's goal" is to try to make an EXAMPLE of GeoHot- which they only sort of succeeded at.

Re:looking for these?

[Covalent]

I get about 640,000 hits when I look up this information... Sony, meet the Streisand Effect. Streisand Effect...Sony.

Re:looking for these?

[Anonymous Coward]

>no one will possibly be able to read the parent post

I was able to read the parent post.

Re:looking for these?

[jonwil]

Actually, the METLDR keys are in the PS3 low level bootloader and cant be changed by Sony except with a new hardware revision with a new low level bootloader and new METLDR keys.
And if you have the METLDR keys, you can decrypt, modify and resign any other part of the PS3 system software.

Re:looking for these?

[NitroWolf]

As a PS3 Owner it's my right to own theese and use them on my hardware as I see fit.

And you are the kind of fuckwit that keeps companies like Sony in business. They keep pulling this shit and it's people like you who are directly to blame. What Sony is doing is YOUR fault.

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[account_deleted]

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Abragsa Jahsmas

[Anonymous Coward]

jizzaloo wizzaloos cummalo wummalos

Donations

[Anonymous Coward]

I donated $50 to fight sony, not to settle with them. I hope geohot passes these funds on to someone who has some balls.

Re:Donations

[SeNtM]

I wonder how much Sony gave him...

Re:Donations

[blair1q]

Interesting point.

Probably about 10^6 less than if he'd gone to them before releasing the codes.

Re:Donations

[kcbnac]

EFF gets anything not used in his legal bills, as he stated long ago.

Re:Donations

[Surt]

He's passing them onto the EFF.

Re:Dear Sony staffer

[CelticWhisper]

And they're active here too, modding your comment down.

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Anonymous was worth a shit, they'd have done something to help Geohot fight the legal battle until he won on the merits, instead of just throwing a tantrum at a Sony server.

I want my donations back

[future assassin]

I was hoping for some serious Sony whoop ass and was willing to donate more but looks like Sony saw the writing on the wall and "agreed to settle" to save face. Oh well back to not buying anything with Sony on it.

Re:I want my donations back

[Anonymous Coward]

As somebody who donated, I hope he follows through with his promise to donate his legal funds to the EFF.

I can sort of understand why he settled...

[anomnomnomymous]

I can sort of understand why he settled: Hell, I'd settle if I realised it would likely take years of my life, if not thousands of dollars to fight.
But still, the rant, as seen on Geohot's site, still gives me a bit of a feeling of dealing with a hypocrite.

Then again, I'm a big hypocrite for wanting someone else to pursue something, which I would probably also settle as soon as possible.

Re:I can sort of understand why he settled...

[Lemmy Caution]

Like I mention up-thread, I wonder if the campaign to identify and harass the families of Sony executives compelled him to settle. It looked like he was ready to go to the trenches until that started.

Re:I can sort of understand why he settled...

[shentino]

Indeed, I think all Anonymous did was give more ammo to Sony.

And it backfired.

Re:I can sort of understand why he settled...

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I think once the playing field widened beyond what SONY had expected, there was as much motivation on them as there was on Hotz. I'd say Anonymous merely upped the stakes past what SONY's people were willing to endure. Plus, from what I've seen, SONY's reputation is shit (passionately shit) with a lot of expressive people; SONY knows that it will cost them sales in the long run, but more importantly, it has opened sales to competitors. Althoughy they are willing to treat their customers as disposable fuel sources, the last thing they want is more competition.

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"settlement"? under duress!

[countertrolling]

He got an offer he couldn't refuse.

Re:"settlement"? under duress!

[gmhowell]

Unless there is a literal gun to your head or knife to your throat, you can't claim 'duress'. The threat of being made a pauper is no threat in the eyes of the law. Welcome to the the USA.

Re:"settlement"? under duress!

[countertrolling]

There may have been a gun. Don't put anything past 'em. I mean, who's gonna believe it if he said there was?

Or maybe 'discovery' discovered something else that ol' boy wants to keep out of the press.

Re:Dear Sony staffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe there's actually some people who dislike GeoHot? Don't assume that everyone is on your side.

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Anonymous was worth a shit, they'd have done something to help Geohot fight the legal battle until he won on the merits, instead of just throwing a tantrum at a Sony server.

If Anonymous were composed of adults rather than whiny children (including whiny children trapped in adult bodies), maybe they would have done something other than thrown a tantrum.

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Intimidation vs. precedent

[fprefect]

I'm sure if Geohot hadn't been so diligent about his methods and avoiding the various license traps, they'd have gladly pushed this through to the bitter end and made an example out of him.

Clearly Sony is happy to use the legal system to intimidate modders, but isn't interested it taking this case far enough to establish a legal precedent that runs contrary their own interests. Must be nice to have deep enough pockets that you can throw lawyers at a problem until it goes away, or you lose interest and "settle".

Congrats?

[Chewbacon]

Seems like a waste of everyone's time. Worst lawsuit EVER!

Only Sony makes Rickrolls

[tepples]

here isn't one thing sony makes that ONLY sony makes.

Only Sony makes "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

you can live a sony-free life pretty easily.

How do I go into a grocery store without hearing Sony music?

Re:Only Sony makes Rickrolls

[fotbr]

Shop at farmers' markets. 'round here, they usually don't have music playing.

Re:Only Sony makes Rickrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

earplugs, or your own MP3 player.

Re:Only Sony makes Rickrolls

[tepples]

But I'm still paying for the store's license to play Sony music as a fraction of what I pay for the groceries.

anonymous

[LoganDzwon]

someone is retarded... He wonders is Anonymous will continue their anti-sony campaign? Really? Well, let me answer that for you. Some will, some wont.

Injunction against what?

[stating_the_obvious]

Hotz agreed to a permanent injunction against what, exactly?

God, I'm going to miss Groklaw for explaining all interesting things legal... I'm afraid for how the legal discussions at /. are going to spiral down into "IANAL but here's my completely unjustified and narrow view of how this particular issue related to me".

Thank you, Pamela Jones.

That's just a terribly poor analogy

[name_already_taken]

Your analogy doesn't work. In some cases, it is illegal to modify something you own. Going with the weapon theme, a sawed-off shotgun comes to mind. Even if you have a legitimate reason to make the modification, it's still illegal, in the US, to reduce the length of a shotgun to less than 26" overall and an 18" barrel. Doesn't matter if such a modification could make the weapon more useful during legal use.

Wait a minute - you're comparing wanting to use product features that were advertised by the manufacturer and then taken away, to something that is specifically prohibited by Federal law?

Shotguns are not advertised as having the feature of being able to saw off the barrels to a shorter length. Many people do saw off the barrels to the legal length, but no shotgun manufacturer advertises this as a selling point, regardless of how useful it might be.

Sony advertised that the PS3 product could both run "Other Operating Systems" such as linux, and it could also use the PlayStation Network. Those are both useful features, and they are not violations of Federal law (which your shotgun example would be).

They then updated the software on the product (PS3) such that you could either choose to retain the Other OS functionality, or the PSN functionality, but not both. That is stealing, or if it's not, it's at least the intentional introduction of a defect into the product. Customers should either retain all the advertised functionality of the product, or be compensated for the loss of that functionality.

Here's a car analogy:

You buy a new Toyota Boringmobile. It gets cold where you live, so you buy it based on Toyota advertising that it has heated seats. They also advertise that is has the ability to safely transport you and your family from place to place. Those are two advertised features: 1. Safe transportation, 2. heated seats.

You pay money for the car. Toyota gives you title to, and possession of, the car. You drive it home. You are happy.

Toyota sends you a notice: "Bring your Boringmobile into any Toyota dealership for a free service to make sure it continues to fulfill it's promise of safe (if rather dull) transportation". There's a recall on the tires or something like that.

You visit your Toyota dealership, and they replace the tires with new ones which work exactly like the old ones, but you needed to do that for safety's sake - Toyota's notice to you more or less said so. At the same time, Toyota disables the heated seats.

Wait a minute! You paid for heated seats! But they don't work any more. Toyota says "Well, you agreed to that in the terms of service - it was on page 38 of the agreement you agreed to by driving to the dealership"

But wait a minute, contract law doesn't work like that - they can't take features back without compensating you (Generally in a contract, "consideration" i.e. money, has to change hands in exchange for taking or providing goods and/or services). You take Toyota to court (most likely as part of a class action), and get either money or your heated seat functionality back.

What has happened here is that Sony has stolen functionality from the owners of a physical product that was bought and paid for.

The proper shotgun analogy is that you had a double-barreled shotgun and you could shoot both barrels, or just use them to store two shotgun rounds if you chose to never fire the shotgun. After an update, your Sony shotgun will now only fire the first barrel. The second barrel is now just for storing a spare round. Don't like that your gun doesn't work as advertised any more? Sorry, it had to be done so that you could continue to use Sony ammunition. Except that it didn't, did it?

Re:That's just a terribly poor analogy

[nurb432]

Sorry, it had to be done so that you could continue to use Sony ammunition

And if you decide to use non-Sony ammunition in your own private range, and tell others about it, you get sued into oblivion.

Value of homebrew

[tepples]

Homebrew has no real value on a PS3.

Could you explain why not?

Re:Value of homebrew

[Lumpy]

Because it's something he cant do or incapable of learning and is worthless to him so it must be worthless to everyone else.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Sir_Sri]

Because with homebrew you'd have terrible access to the hardware, and the hardware isn't all that compelling (it's not any better than a PC, which is equally tied to your living room). There's no substantial media functionality that's missing, and anything that is missing is prohibitively expensive to add when it is, again, better done on something other than a PS3.

The Cell isn't all that great. Seriously, it isn't. You need a lot of money, time and people to make proper use of it. And then there's the GPU which you don't have great access to. If you want to homebrew up a game it's far easier to just use a PC. And if you want to do cell development, well, why? The only people actually doing anything with the cell are supercomputing clusters, and even they're abandoning cell left right and centre for GPU computing (which you can't do on the PS3's gpu).

Homebrew on a handheld is a whole other ball game. You can actually take that with you which you can't do with a PC. Even if you don't get access to decent tools or all the hardware being able to 'take it with you' is pretty compelling. Being able to play on my TV is a matter of buying a $20 cable for my PC.

Re:Value of homebrew

[smelch]

Dude, you're a complete dipshit asshole. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to tell you the truth here. When I was in Algebra with my first graphing calculator I wrote all kinds of games for it, not because the hardware was real advanced or because I could get good performance out of it, but because it was there and the platform was neat. I made something fun on a calculator that I can take everywhere and send to other people. How cool is that? Of course I could have written something much faster with color on a PC, but who gives a shit?

Now I write a lot of XNA stuff, not because the Xbox is faster or more suitable for anything but because I want to write a game on the XBox, its a cool platform. Sure, it also runs on windows when I do that, but I only test on Windows before pushing to the 360, and often have to tweak things that worked on windows but not on the 360. Its not about how close to the hardware I am, or using PPC or the gamepad even. Its a platform, I want to know how to use it. Just because you aren't interested in it doesn't mean anything. Its cool to do something like that on a game console.

I wrote stuff for my Droid when I first got it too. I wrote a little app that pulled the list of videos from my computer and I could play or queue them up to be played on the PC and it also had basic remote-like functionality (Stop, pause, rewind, fast forward). I have never, ever used it beyond testing. So why do it? Because I fucking wanted to and it was mine and it was interesting and it was an end unto itself. Nobody gives a shit what you think about homebrew or anything else they want to do with their property. Its their property so fuck Sony and fuck you. Have you ever considered the brewing itself is the reward? Clearly you don't do any development, or you're a pretty shitty one if you don't get that.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Anonymous Coward]

lol an XNA C# newb thinking his experience translates to the Cell. That's like comparing Flash programmers to Ada programmers.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft == cool. Never thought I'd see the day. How things have changed over the years (for the worse, I might add.) Why, on GGE, are you supporting MS, considering their history?

Re:Value of homebrew

[Sir_Sri]

I was asked why, in my opinion, homebrew on hacked PS3's was worthless, I answered. I stand by it. It's not worth the effort. Exactly as you said, XNA is a better solution. The cell is expensive, complicated, and because the whole architecture is atypical you're looking at writing all of the tools without complete information from scratch. Sony has literally dozens of people who spent years writing it with full information. By the time you get anything useful as a development framework that will do much of anything the PS4 will be half way through its lifecycle.

And even then you're developing into a technology that's dead. Not because it's bad, but because it sits between the CPU and GPU in terms of what it does conceptually, and problems tend to lend themselves much better to either the CPU or GPU than to the cell. As a result even sony is jumping ship to ARM for their PSP2.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Sir_Sri]

Honestly I think that's the weakness of the cell. A graphing calculator you can understand all the parts. I spent nearly a year and a half on cell development, which was summarily tossed when we got GPU computing and CUDA. Even with official documentation written by a bunch of PhD's at sony it was quite a challenge to re-envision problems into the cell way. And then the GPU computing way comes along, which is very similar, but substantially better. And unless you're a game developer (which I sort of am now) trying to do anything on the Cell would be like trying to rewrite flash in Ada for the fun of it.

My assertion of homebrew being worthless is less philosophical and more practical. By the time you've managed anything useful on a jailbroken ps3, and, importantly, anything you couldn't do vastly better other places it will be long dead.

Re:Value of homebrew

[tehcyder]

There is a slight difference between playing around with your own property, and creating ways for other people to play with property that is not yours - i.e. you have absolutely no fucking right, legal or moral, to do so.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cell still has a PowerPC processor at its core, so you could still use the PS3 like a low power PC for some purposes. So what about the practical consideration that you might not have anything else suitable connected to your TV and don't want to buy another PC and have an extra box there.

Re:Value of homebrew

[Anonymous Coward]

What so providing others with tools to use on their property and educating them on what they can do is somehow wrong? Unless the instruction is how to perform some illegal act, then they certainly have a legal and moral right to do so, I would go so far as to say it is immoral to stop one person helping another out in this way.

Re:Value of homebrew

[uninformedLuddite]

Is having FUN worthless? Fsck a duck some people just don't get it.

Re:Value of homebrew

[uninformedLuddite]

There is NO difference between playing around with your own property, and creating ways for other people to play with THEIR property which they and you have absolutely every fucking right, legal and/or moral, to do so. - Fixed that for you

Happy PS authoritarians are safely in their box

[Anonymous Coward]

For a laugh, read the comments on the Play-stashun blog. "If he was innocent, he would not have been sued," "I'm so comforted that Sony remains firmly in control of my destiny," "thinking for myself uses too much glucose," etc.

Re:Dear Sony staffer

[CelticWhisper]

And mine too, apparently. Really cowardly way to go about supporting the company, guys.

Annoyed

[pokyo]

I'm a little annoyed by this. I'm guessing that Geohot's lawyers encouraged him to accept the settlement. I would guess that either Sony wasn't confident that they could win, or they just wanted to scare other modders (those that would keep up with these articles). The comments along the lines of "way to be nice Sony" on the blog make me angry. I was really hoping that if Geohot had won this lawsuit, general ownership rights questions would begin to favor consumers across all electronic devices. I actually own a Samsung blu-ray player that advertises Netflix, DIVX, and other compressed format support and the player currently supports NONE of this due to firmware updates. Samsung suggested buying their more expensive hardware as a solution to this. Back to Geohot. What a missed opportunity. It looks like he begged people for money to fight Sony, but then decides it isn't worth both the financial and time effort. I count this as a win for SONY.

Re:Annoyed

[pokyo]

After some cool-down time I guess my post above was a little harsh. I don't know the details of the settlement and haven't been in a situation like this. I change my mood from annoyed to indifferent :)

Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[polyp2000]

Didnt take long for the details to get leaked..

Here is the info you are looking for
127-stipulation.pdf

N :)

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[AnonymmousCoward]

So to sum this up, basically Hotz lost. Sony has specifically barred him from doing anything with the ps3 (besides playing it; unless I missed something?), and in return the lawsuit is dropped, but essentially Hotz won nothing. I say he, and all his donors, got the shaft.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Brandano]

So, essentially Geohotz can no longer try and read the console's bios, that's it. And even that is disputable, since the terms of an agreement can be trumped by any overriding law. Doesn't look like such a victory for Sony. Err, SCEA.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[pokyo]

Didn't it say any SONY PRODUCT? That is a fairly wide range.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[jank1887]

can I get the /. summary version? psx-scene is blocked...

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks pretty one-sided at a glance. What did sony give up?

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[monk]

Isn't it amazing how you can read the personalities involved just by looking at their signatures? Or is it that you can tell who types all day and who signs things all day?

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

It's awful. So, basically Hotz agrees not to do all the things he was previously doing with PS3 hardware and software/firmware regarding circumvention, and he agrees that if he starts doing any of them, the (steep!) penalties are already defined and that California courts will have jurisdiction. It's basically a complete surrender with each party paying their own legal costs.

If I were him my reaction would be to tip all the PS3-related gear into the local trash bin, because he won't be able to do anything useful with that junk anymore.

But I'm not him. So, instead I'll just notch my opinion of Sony down even lower than it was already, assume all of their stuff is useless junk because tinkering isn't possible or welcome, and continue the boycott I've had against their gear for at least another 10 years.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

So.. Sony won?

They took him out of the "scene", made CA the jurisdiction for any future issues, and basically raped him by making sure he had to pay his own legal costs.

Why would he agree to this when he had them over a barrel?

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[slinches]

I do find it odd how it could end that suddenly and with those terms. I think one of two things happened.

Sony decided they couldn't win and were planning to drop the case, but settled on these terms so that geohot doesn't have to worry about being sued again at a later date and so Sony could save some face.

or

There are terms that aren't in the stipulation. The only way we'll know that is if Other OS suddenly appears in a firmware update (or something similar).

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[sabt-pestnu]

I find that interesting in that there are four copies of the signature page, each signed by a separate person, and none signed by the judge.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[SheeEttin]

The best part of that document?
Hotz' title, under his signature.

GEORGE HOTZ
E-ttorney at law(TM)

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I'll spend my free time doing something that's actually fun. Reading is for nerds and dweebs.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Stunning. They must've waterboarded him and his lawyer, 'cause he got hosed big time. Every single sentence gives Sony all the advantages and Hotz nothing but obligation. I can't imagine a sane lawyer advising a client to sign anything that says "For the purposes of the Order below, Technological Protection Measures or TPMs shall mean anything whatsoever, including but not limited to any.....". Poor guy's a bitch now, 'cause Sony can screw him any time they want.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Vektuz]

He didn't have them over a barrel. They had bottomless pockets and could keep him coming back to court every day for the rest of his life, and it wouldn't even make them flinch. This is how big money uses the legal system. He was backed into a corner by sheer weight of cash, and got a terrible one sided deal out of it.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[vegiVamp]

So if I read that right, GeoHot is now
  * bound by any Sony eula, regardless of wether he ever saw it
  * prohibited from opening up any Sony product even to simply replace a fuse

Well played, Sony.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Hotz rolled over. I can't say I blame him, faced with Sonys deep pockets to spend on lawyers I would want to get out of court asap...

Still, at least the lawyers win!

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what happened was that Hotz just did not care anymore.
He has (largely) done what was necessary to break PS3 Security. The details are out for anyone to find. He probably had enough donations to cover his costs.
Therefore, his main goal probably was to be left alone by Sony, which this settlement achieves. Of course, he must not hack any Sony devices in the future - but why should he care? There are many other interesting playgrounds out there.

He will never buy a Sony product again and can otherwise just get on with his life. Sounds like a win for him.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[thetoadwarrior]

Only an idiot would have donated money and no realised he'd settle in a second if it meant removing the risk of years fighting and being made bankrupt.

Re:Leaked PDF detailing the injunction terms

[Anonymous Coward]

E-ttorney at law?

Good grief

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Read through the posts on that link, it's disgusting how little they actually understand about the suit.
I could probably be pegged as a sony fanboy, but even I'm not that bloody stupid, what does that make these people?

What about the Class Action?

[Brandano]

I wonder if this settlement is in any way related to the ongoing Class Action ( http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110402000830503 ) that Sony (actually SCEA) would really want closed as well. The judge in that case is starting to ask uncomfortable questions, and I suspect they would not want to fight two battles that would result damaging to Sony's reputation, if they have any left after the rootkit case from a few years back. I also suspect that SCEA's views are not Sony's, and perhaps the parent company is asking for them to lower the tones.

Re:What about the Class Action?

[shentino]

I think it's because of the Anonymous hack attacks turning Geohot into an unwilling scapegoat. Sony could bludgeon him pretty hard with trumped up felony hacking charges.

Re:What about the Class Action?

[DCFusor]

As was pointed out on Groklaw, there were some very serious lies being told to one court or the other when comparing the two cases. They had to drop one or lose both and get caught lying (again), or just lose the GeoHot case anyway, after spending a lot more money. They were trying to play a corporate shell game. In one case, it's all SCEA, the other they claim it's all SCEI -- for the same stuff. Has to be one or the other, and Groklaw (those pesky kids) did the world yet another service by pointing that out.

Do they feel proud now?

[kjblue]

So they take a law suite against an 18 year old kid and win, they must really feel right up there. It's almost like taking candy from a baby for them, except they take the ps3's and his computers, which is totally absurd. As for making an example out of a kid to stop hackers, or so Sony thinks, there will always be someone out there that can crack their code and modify it to do whatever the moder pleases. Realistically speaking, Sony is fighting a loosing battle, there in the wrong business if they really think they can stop hackers. Its a vicious cycle, we know Sony makes good games, but consumers want them for free. If I was head of Sony I wouldn't stand for it as well, however I'm not an complete moron, I may loose sales but really if Sony would stop making such a big deal about one kid, I'm sure not much people would have been aware that Sony software could be modified and hacked, but with all publicity with GeoHotz, I can guarantee that more people are interested in PS3 modifications now, them before they started this whole law suite thing. Sony is digging their own grave, yes stealing is wrong, yes they may loose sales in their products, but don't involved the consumers, saying that we need to be protected! protected from what I wonder, more like censor from the fact that their products are vulnerable to mods, and like i said before with this law suite there doing the exact opposite of what their trying to do. I can only think that with the GeoHotz hacks they got from his computer that they will patch whatever they can to prevent hacking but seriously Sony making yourself scarce and just accepting the fact that people will hack your product will be much better then parading that your products have holes in them, It will only attract unwanted attention.

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Surt]

I'm sure there are probably some stand-up folks who are "Anonymous." But I tend to think that for the most part Anonymous lacks the courage of their convictions—if they believed in the causes they trumpet, they would do so openly.

Why so? Anonymous civil disobedience might actually be more effective than public. If you believe in a cause, you should do what is most effective to support it.

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Lemmy Caution]

To be honest, Geohot strikes me as principled and ethical. He may have also been horrified at the targeting of the families of Sony execs by that Anonymous splinter group, and decided to step back, accept this compromise, and let it end.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Dear Sony staffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all.

It's in this jar here.

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/3000/900/23908/23908.strip.gif

it's very likely payed astroturfing, marketing, PR

[decora]

dude. do you really think they are going to let comments critical of sony on the playstation.com website?

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Boston Tea Party comes to mind.

Re:Dear Sony staffer

[jdgeorge]

And mine too, apparently. Really cowardly way to go about supporting the company, guys.

You made an unsubstantiated, inflamatory implication in your post, accusing Sony of astroturfing their forums. As if there aren't plenty of Sony fanboys who would do that for Sony, for free.

Your comment was modded 40% Troll (and 40% Interesting and 10% Insightful, so far) as a result. You seriously think it's Sony employees/fans who are modding your Slashdot post down?

I'd speculate that the Troll mods on your post have nothing to do with supporting Sony.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The damage is done, Sony is not an ethical company. I am part of anonymous now, and I am getting rid of my ps3. Sony can also shove the NGP and the Xperia play up their lawyers asses.

Thanks a lot Anonymous

[shentino]

Interesting this settlement came so soon after the Anonymous attacks on Sony, and that the settlement "absolves geohot of wrongdoing"

I think what happened is that Sony's lawyers in the Hotz case got wind of the attack, and decided to blame it on Geohot and his jailbreak, and took a gamble that they could pin responsibility for it on him and get away with it.

With Hotz facing a whopping new batch of potential felony charges, it wouldn't be surprising to see him back down.

There is no way in hell Hotz backed down willingly. Sony had something very ugly on him, and I bet it's Anonymous letting Geohot assume the role of scapegoat.

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[account_deleted]

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Can they make him stop rapping?

[toxonix]

I can only hope that the injunction calls for the end of his rapping for all eternity. Because I think this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg After having to sit through that awful experience, I was all "Git 'im and make him stop!"

Disappointed

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one slightly disappointed by this? I mean, I can't blame Geohot for settling as it could be fairly expensive for him but I kind of wanted to see Sony get their asses kicked. But then, they probably knew they wouldn't win. Oh well.

Lessons learned

[Anonymous Coward]

The lessons learned are this: Sony, going forward, will simply be less open with the PS4. Problem solved.

Re:Lessons learned

[Travelsonic]

Less open means jack shit - if there is a computer system out there, people will find a way to hack it, mod it, burn it,m crush it, kick it, stomp it, make it do things others never thought it could do, etc.

Blow Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the irony... you tell those opposed to Sony's actions to grow up, your entire post is nothing but a baseless characterization? Grow up yourself, you fucking hypocrite. God damn.

Re:Blow Me

[Kenshin]

Did you even read the parent to my post?

Oh, I guess not.

I Feel Protected Now.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers."

They've protected me from ever buying another Sony product. I'm glad they were there for me!

GeoHot settlement info...

[sortadan]

The settlement was posted here

It basically says that Hotz (ans associates) can't mess with Sony's shit (distribute a 'circumvention device') or encourage other to do so any more unless congress or an other court rules that Sony's terms of service aren't legal or enforceable. If he does then he has to pay 10k each time, up to a cap of 250k. It also says that if there are further disputes about this from they will be California, and from Hotz they will be in New Jersey.

From BlogSpot comments...
"George Hotz said... I will address the donations in a forthcoming post, and I think people will be happy"

why not

[luther349]

his hack is out and cant be patched. he has no reasion to mess with the ps3 anymore/

Sony gave people a choice?

[Qubit]

Where is the fraud.

Sony said "buy this widget X, and it can do Y" where X = the PS3 and Y = run Linux.

Then Sony pushed an update to the machine that prevented it from doing Y. Sounds like pulling the rug out from underneath people to me!

Sony advertised a machine that could play some video games...and would also run other compatible OSes. If you lost the first feature then your machine is broken and you should get it repaired. If you lost the second one it was your own choice and you probably did it in exchange for being able to access an even larger library of games

Hold on a second: What's the difference between the 1st feature and the 2nd feature? Did Sony ever make a distinction on the box or in the marketing materials that the PS3 would always play video games but might stop being able to run Linux with the OtherOS feature?

Here are a few relevant questions:

Did Sony claim that the original PS3 could run Linux?

Did Sony make it clear that they might disable this feature?

Did Sony push automatic updates to PS3s?

Did Sony tell its users that upgrading the firmware past a certain point would disable the OtherOS functionality?

Did Sony provide a mechanism for owners who were using the OtherOS feature to update their firmware to resolve "security updates"/critical bugfixes? (even allowing for a mechanism that would have disabled the ability to play games on the unit)

---

If Sony transformed a legitimately-purchased working device into a non-working device without properly informing the user, I believe that the user might have several remedies available under our current (US) legal system.

Re:Sony gave people a choice?

[xero314]

Then Sony pushed an update to the machine that prevented it from doing Y

Sony pushed an update to your system? I don't recall any update being pushed to my PS3, I have had to download and install each an every one. I remember the one that removed Other OS, and how it was clearly noted and how I explicitly clicked "I agree" and "Install now" (Or something along those lines). If I'm wrong on this and someones machine was updated without authorization (which I had never heard of before today) then I'd be happy to change my mind on the issue, but so far that has yet to be shown.

Did Sony claim that the original PS3 could run Linux?

Yes, and unless you explicitly installed a firmware that removed that feature then the original PS3s still have that feature.

Did Sony make it clear that they might disable this feature?

Yes, in all their end user license agreements it states very clearly that features may change without notice.

Did Sony push automatic updates to PS3s?

Maybe, but as of yet they have not automatically pushed any updates that removed any features (unless there is some flag in the OS that the user can select to allow automatic updates but I have not seen one).

Did Sony tell its users that upgrading the firmware past a certain point would disable the OtherOS functionality?

Yes, the firmware update that removed Other OS said explicitly that it was going to do so, and you have to explicitly agree to the install.

Did Sony provide a mechanism for owners who were using the OtherOS feature to update their firmware to resolve "security updates"/critical bugfixes?

Yes. If your Other OS was already installed then you would have been able to update your OS with what ever latest patches you wanted. And if you chose to keep the Other OS option you lost connectivity to PSN so there was little reason if any to go online outside of your Other OS so security of the Game OS was a non-issue.

If Sony transformed a legitimately-purchased working device into a non-working device without properly informing the user, I believe that the user might have several remedies available under our current (US) legal system.

When and if Sony does that, then I'm sure people will have a legal means for a remedy, but until that day comes, it's really a moot point.

Bottom line:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Each party will bear its own fees and costs in connection with this action"

The rest basically says if he touches a ps3 again hes toast. Kinda pointless though since the beans have already been completely spilled.

Sony wins at forcing Hotz to stop, permanently.
Hotz wins by not having to endure what could be years of litigation, and costs in the hundreds of thousands.
The consumer wins by realizing what a bunch of douche bags Sony are, and I plan on happily boycotting all their products

I could never buy sony ever again.

[Anonymous Coward]

What feature are they going to sell me ant then take away again.
Burn me once shame on you burn me twice shame on me.

As was pointed out on (sigh) Groklaw

[DCFusor]

Sony had to either give this one up or the class action against them for removing other OS. They were telling one court this, and another that -- and people like PJ were pointing out that both couldn't be true at once. If they'd continued to push their line on Geo, it would have devastated their defense in the class action.

Pure corporate calculation -- where do we have more to lose, won out. Again.

STill never going to do any business with Sony ever.

Please read the following sentances

[Falconhell]

The importance of capitalization.

I helped my uncle jack off his horse.

I helped my uncle Jack off his horse.

Oh and *WHOOOSH*

Not a consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a fucking consumer!!! I am a customer, and I want to be treated with some level of courtesy. When did it become normal for treating your customers as mere feeders, who "consume" anything they are given. Every time I see the word consumer, I see nothing more than some pigs lining up at the trough to feed on what their caretaker chooses to give them.

Enough with the consumer bullshit!! We deserve at least some respect in exchange for our money, regardless of whether the product we purchase, and pay for, is of any worth or not.

If I am a "consumer", then I am not buying any of your "shit".

Most people don't connect PCs to TVs

[tepples]

with homebrew you'd have terrible access to the hardware, and the hardware isn't all that compelling (it's not any better than a PC, which is equally tied to your living room)

Sometimes tied to your living room is exactly what you want. A lot of households have the PC and the TV in separate rooms or otherwise so far away that a cable won't reach. Most people don't connect PCs to TVs. It's mostly something that only other geeks do.

If you want to homebrew up a game it's far easier to just use a PC.

And if your game is in a genre that traditionally uses two to four gamepads and one large monitor rather than two to four separate machines and monitors, such as fighting games as opposed to FPS/RTS, you end up with no audience.

Being able to play on my TV is a matter of buying a $20 cable for my PC.

For a lot of people, it would involve buying another $400 PC to put next to the TV.

Re:Dear Sony staffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear CarsonChittom,

I can assure you that there are no Sony staffers making such comments on the press release. We outsource all such activity.

Also, what is this "soul" thing of which you speak?

Regards,
B. Shilling
Sony PR Drone

So.....

[benmarvin]

Sony spent how much money in legal fees just to prevent one kid from touching a Playstation again?

This is why the law belongs to those with money

[Anonymous Coward]

The terms of the (leaked) injunction are basically one sided, basically he can't touch a SONY product ever again with any intent to hack it at all and if he does anything at all that can be even vaguely linked to any kind of breach of their security, even a LEGAL breach of their security on his own stuff, even without agreeing to anything, ever, in his entire life, he has "agreed" to give them huge sums of money even in the absence of any damages.

He gets nothing in return.

There's no way a person accepts these one sided "deals" unless basically given an 'offer they can't refuse', that is, obey or be squashed, with no way out. The law might not consider this under duress, but it's more or less the person 'surrendering' when someone's boot is on their throat.

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Surt]

You have one name, out of 7000.

Re:Bullied into settlement. Nice.

[Surt]

The underground railroad, the french resistance, the chinese democracy movement. There have been many times throughout history where anonymous resistance was far more effective because the force being resisted was more than willing to incapacitate the resistance by murder or imprisonment, and no amount of calls to arms would motivate the rest of the populace.