In what appears to be a preemptive legal salvo, Sony Computer Entertainment America has filed a complaint for injunctive relief and damages against various PlayStation 3 jailbreak coders. According to Engadget managing editor Nilay Patel, the complaint is likely a prelude to a formal lawsuit. Dude went to law school, so he’s as good a person to quote as anyone:
This isn’t a “lawsuit” in the traditional sense, since Sony hasn’t filed a complaint for copyright infringement or whatever against Geohot and friends. Instead, the company appears to be trying to shove the genie back in the bottle and have the jailbreak and any information about the jailbreak removed from the web by filing a temporary restraining order. That might work in the short term — Geohot’s already pulled his pages down — but history suggests that the forces of paperwork rarely triumph over the righteous anger of nerds, and that this code is out there for good. That said, we’ll see what the court says tomorrow; although we very much doubt Sony’s melodramatic proposed motion and order will be granted as written, we wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of order is eventually granted — and then from there a formal lawsuit is likely just a few days away.
In the past, Sony has responded to various hacks with software updates. The most recent round of jailbreak solutions by coders like Geohot and the fail0verflow group appear to have found a method that can’t be countered by software. Since a hardware change to combat piracy would be costly and take time, legal action seems like the only card Sony has left.
How about give up? Sony has clearly lost and it was their own fault that it happened. Acting like the man certainly won't draw in costumers or stop what has started. The best they can do right now is fight unauthorized firmware updates using PSN firmware checks and by ignoring the situation. The more attention they give to this the more people find out about it. It's better to leave niche modding groups alone and let them burn themselves out than to fuel the fire.
Why bother fighting this? If I buy the machine, I can do what I want with it. If that means tampering with the software or hardware to suit my needs then so be it.
Rooting Android, Jailbreaking iOS are not illegal so I don't see where this is coming from honestly.
That's what makes the legal action so interesting. The latest jailbreaks must have the potential to wreak havoc with PS3 ecosystem or Sony wouldn't be making such a big deal about it, right?
More havoc than an Android or iOS root/JB?
I honestly think most ppl would ignore this anyway. If anything it probably hurts their relationships with the music and movie content providers on the PSN. The entertainment industry gets ridiculous.
That's not really comparable for reasons Iceman already gave. Enabling pirated disc is also a concern. I do agree that a very small amount of users would bother with such hacks.
Well, not that I care what Sony thinks, but they really don't have any legal leg to stand on when it comes to consumers tinkering with their hardware, HOWEVER, in true corporate fashion, they will attempt to spin this as the company trying to protect their online players from evil, cheating hackers that ruin the multiplayer games for everyone.
In that sense, they do have some credibility. If modders can rig the console or games to have an advantage over other players on the PSN, then the online gaming community will demand that Sony do something about it.
-M
@Ray
Pirates don't matter. They were never going to buy the content anyway so it's hard for me to quantify those as lost sales. BD discs aren't cheap like a DVD9 either.
Now loading the whole game on the HDD would be the way to go haha.
Aside from multiplayer integrity I can't see a point. Then again Sony uses dedicated servers so cheating isn't as rampant on PSN.
You'll never find a publisher — let alone a console manufacturer — that will agree with your stance on piracy.
You are absolutely right, but that doesn't take away from smartguy's point. It just means that the publishers and manufacturers would rather ignore that point and choose to keep moving in a direction far from that point (which I also strongly agree with- I never would have purchased any of the things that I may or may not have downloaded through rapidshare).
@Ray
Of course not because the entertainment industry isn't necessarily operating in reality. Furthermore the heart, soul, and passion of the game industry itself aren't in positions high enough to agree with me for it to be relevant :)
The suit and tie shills (this reminds me of that woman from Nintendo) who just read a spreadsheet while kissing the board's ass will always point to the music industry as proof that piracy matters. I of course disagree but that is another Coffee Talk for another time perhaps.
This somewhat fits here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/f…
Massive Asses 5?? There are 4 earlier gems in this series lol. Porn sequels amaze me. "Teen Anal Camp 7".