Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5-billion, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s single life, or pot pies, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
Some people feel that Sony is an innocent victim with its recent PlayStation Network service disruption. Others feel that the company was asking for it. What do you think? On one hand, the company is losing millions — some say billions — of dollars restoring PSN and compensating its customers; certainly the company didn’t do anything immoral to warrant the hacker attack. On the other hand, a lot of pundits feel that Sony’s hard-line stance against hackers prompted the attack. To paraphrase Nietzsche, if Sony didn’t act like dicks to hackers then it wouldn’t have gotten dicked by hackers.
I can see both sides, but I haven’t made up my mind about the situation (the PSN situation, not Jersey Shore Situation). Naturally, I want to hear what you think! Is Sony just a victim here? Or was the company asking for it?
If you play with fire you will get burned. That's pretty simple. I don't think it was ethical or moral for any hackers to take the actions they did, but Sony should not have been playing with fire in the first place. I suppose if they want to piss off the hacker community then that is their business to an extent, but they have to pay the consequences of those actions later as well as protect their paying customers (anyone who bought their product and uses their services, paid or free).
If Sony would have taken a better stance on the GeoHotz issue then I doubt we would be at this situation now. They played with the hacker community and they got burned.
With the proper precautions… it is extremely possible to play with fire and not get burned.
It fits into the analogy of this situation rather well too.
The idea that they didn't have the right to protect themselves and their partners from a hacking mod that allowed people to play pirated games was "asking for it" is absurd. That's like saying, "Don't try and stop a car thief, he'll just take your car next time." That doesn't make what happened to them right by any stretch of the imagination.
I mean, what would the better stance with GeoHotz have been? "Sure everyone can keep their hacked PS3's that can play games that are pirated, effectively allowing you all to steal from us and our partners? We don't want any trouble…." That's the absurd notion – the idea that they shouldn't have acted. But they absolutely should have been better prepared for an attack.
Who said anything about it being right? That wasn't the question. If Sony handled its business with hackers in a smarter and less antagonistic way, could this have been avoided? That's the question.
Sometimes you do what’s right even if it is antagonistic.
You're still missing the point. Clearly there was a smarter way for Sony to have gone about this. You're thinking it black-and-white terms.
The smarter way was to be better prepared for an attack – which I already said. If the other option was to just let this kind of stuff go on mostly unchallenged (or not take a stand where one should be taken), than it's not the right option.
Again, it's not like there were only two options. Think broader.
“Is Sony just a victim here? Or was the company asking for it?”
That was the question. That’s a pretty black and white question. I don’t know why a black and white answer isn’t good enough for you.
There are plenty of times when the world can be seen in shades of grey. But if someone is stealing from you, you don’t kindly ask them to stop. You make them stop. And then you call ADT.
My answer to the question was neutral grey.
Those were two questions. Your explanation was limited.
Who stole what? What numbers can you point to? How much revenue did Sony lose? If you take legal action against hackers, should you post about it on the company blog? Why highlight the issue and empower a community that you can't defend against?
You're saying Sony was completely right in how it went about the GeoHot situation. Obviously you're wrong. The company suffered for the "how" not the "what" of its actions. There was a much smarter way to do it.
Now you're just putting words into my mouth. At no point did I say that their methods were flawless. I said they were right to go after the people who had cracked their systems. There's always a better way, even when everything works out fine. But that doesn't mean they were wrong.
And you know as well as I do that you can't point to any numbers related to piracy with any sort of real confidence because it's all guess work. Does that mean you don't act against potential piracy because you can't give an exact number due to the inexact science of determining the number? That seems invalid to me.
Remember when you said, "Sometimes you do what’s right even if it is antagonistic." Is that putting words in your mouth? That's the stance that I think is dumb. Sony could have done what was "right" and avoided conflict with the hacker community by being less public.
Let's not kid ourselves on that one Ray. That's just a naive stance. The moment they acted, even if they'd never said a word about it, they would have opened themselves up to retribution.
Yeah, that excuses the stupidity of writing about it on Playstation Blog.
No it doesn't. But don't kid yourself into thinking that someone wouldn't have found an excuse to do what they did based on the slightest big of antagonism. If we all shied away from doing what was right despite potential consequences, nothing in this world would ever get done.
Okay, here's a new quirky analogy that goes along the "playing with fire" motif we've been using:
It's more like standing by a campfire, naked, with no tools what-so-ever, and the fire needs to be extinguished.
Some people may choose to big belly splash the fire and roll on it until it's all smothered out. Other people may wait patiently until they have pee, then piss out the fire. Some people may slowly and methodically spit at the fire until it's out. All of these methods serve the same means to the same end and the freedom of choice is up to them. None of them are wrong because it comes down to opinion.
Granted, I may look at the dude rolling on the fire naked like he was eating paste in third grade, but if he's tough enough to take it, more power to him.
In short… Nightshade can't be wrong because it's an opinion. The way someone forms an opinion could be based on misinformation… but the opinion itself cannot be wrong.
Or I could just wait for Ray to voice an opinion and side with him. But where would be the fun in that?!?
The GeoHotz affair is half right.
If they are going after the bastards who broke the walls down (not to be confused with Jerichoholics Anonymous), yeah… Sony would be totally in the right.
Sony is half wrong because when a consumer pays for something, they own it. If I wanted to buy 100 copies of LBP2 to use for skeet shooting practice (using it for something they didn't intend while changing the physical form of the product)… Sony would have no grievance. They can't tell you what to do with your property, nobody can.
They're half right given that it's attached to a network and could allow users to steal games. However, they could ban the consoles from the network and possibly PSN ID.
There's another company that saw this down the pike and prepared themselves a while ago. Who was it?…. they have alot of networking experience… they probably know more about piracy and hacker bastards more than anyone else… are primarily known for their software…. OH YEAH!, Microsoft.
Hence why I said, ” I don’t think it was ethical or moral for any hackers to take the actions they did.” I’m not trying to condone the actions of any hackers involved. And when was anything about Sony not having the right to protect themselves and their partners?? They have every right to do so, they just failed miserably.
And actually a better stance to take with GeoHotz would be to not take one person to court for something they are doing on their own console. In addition to that I don’t agree with a lot of people in any entertainment industry about what piracy is and is not, so I don’t feel it was necessary for Sony to act so aggressively in the first place. If they were determined to go after GeoHotz though (which obviously they were), I think they acted way too aggressively in the matter.
I agree with this.
But, I think that in the particular case of GeoHotz, going to court was a good thing. It's possible that it could blow up in Sony's face and the law could stand as "You bought the machine, do what you want with it.".
If anything, this outage being as widely spread as it is and bringing the larger issue of hacking in general to be a hot button topic (like it is) has plausibly helped Sony's chances of winning the GeoHotz case.
So, my new question to rock the world is…..
…
What if Sony faked it?
Hacking has always been a term used as the boogeyman for the technical illiterate. You still have people who won't use a computer because someone could go all CSI on that keyboard and pull up their life history, bank account, shoe size, and how many fillings they have in about 10 seconds. It's a bastardized term really. If you were to tell someone about what Steve Wozniak talks about in iWoz, they'd call him a hacker and put a malicious slant on it. They'd be wrong. Woz is the best.
I think we are about 2 generations from something like this having a fair chance in court. I actually thought Hotz's chances were pretty good if he were to have a jury. Preponderance is easier to get I know, but I think Sony realized they could really open a can of worms here and decided to just drop the case in return for him saying "sorry brah".
Not just a can of worms… I mean if it becomes a court record that “you bought it, you own it” and people aren’t afraid to mod consoles the way Geo Hotz did… the entire industry would lose billions.
If Sony failed there…. DAMN!
I think they lose all say so of what you do with the machine once you purchase it. Not allowing those machines on PSN is one thing, but you can’t tell me what to do with the hardware.
I think it’s too broad to assume that everyone interested in having an open console/machine was going to steal content.
Sorry, that's a bogus argument for me. If the mod was only intended to bring back Linux functionality or whatever, then they acted like a bunch of tools. But that[s not what it did. As such, having the hack on your console – even if you weren't going to use it for the pirated games – was playing with fire.
How exactly did you think they were going to get linux on the machine w/o superuser or root access? I'm not naive. There are probably plenty of people out there that would have used pirated materials on it. They are going to do that regardless though. If Sony actually thought it wouldn't happen then that explains why their security was crap. They were too arrogant about the situations.
Indeed both sides were getting warm…but Sony dropped that case because the fire it was f'n with was going to be very severe.
As I said, if that was all it did, then I wouldn’t give a crap. if it’s not possible to do without unlocking the system, then that’s the risk you take and you live with the consequences – or you just move on so that you’re not on the wrong end of a legal ass-kicking.
It was possible initially…but Sony stoked the fire first. I'm more of a PC gamer and I can assure you that every PC in my house is able to pirate and ripoff any time of media used currently. I buy my games and I'm happy that Intel and Apple haven't decided to sue me because my machines have the ability to do harm to other forms of entertainment.
@nightshade
Actually…wouldn't it have been more prudent of Sony to just put the option back in? I'm not sure what the numbers are or were but from personal use I used Linux twice on my PS3 and PSHome 0 times.
Just sayin…maybe if they would have just added the functionality back that people were clamoring over and yelling about as why they needed root access then there would be a better ending here.
Sure, that would have been prudent. I think them taking away Linux when it was orrignally offered as part of the package was not right. Some people bought the system because of that.
But – that doesn't mean that there wasn't a more prudent response from the people who wanted Linux back other than cracking their systems to the point that they can now steal games. That's where you lose me.
Sometimes you can't have one without the other. I'm definitely biased in my view here though.
Ok, if you can't have one without the other then you do without or you should expect to face the consequences. To be outraged that they took action when you should have been expecting it seems silly to me.
I agree…but I don't think a DMCA violation and a trip to court across the country is an appropriate consequence for someone hacking their own system….a system that was never on the network allegedly.
They really should have gone all the way here to change my mind. I think they had to prove this guy was doing something with ill intent.
I don't know if I want to equate it to a decision between drinking and driving consequences lol.
(thanks for making the last half of my day go by smooth. now I get to go home and deal with a flooring contractor)
Has anyone here played the game Nail'd? I have found myself getting bored in slayer matches in halo and driving around in the mongoose or warthog the entire match instead, and I liked the game Pure well enough. I think Nail'd is only $20 now so I thought if it was any good it might be worthing looking at.
@ Body Slam
I tried to play Nail'd and found it to feel like the bare foot step child of Pure. Did you pick it up?
@Big Blak
no I didn't, I was thinking of going to gamestop and seeing what they had that looked good for cheap. I was just thinking that since I already played Pure, that Nail'd might be a better alternative than pissing more people of in Halo by not really playing the slayer matches. I've tried playing Bayonetta some more but just can't really get into it. Still will probably try that one again, but I kinda wanna find something else that's good without spending the money on a new game. I like the description for Nail'd though! haha
DR2!
What about this perspective, what if Sony's security was top of the line and it still got hacked?
^ I read that somewhere ^ If that was the case what does this mean for all corporations going into a more digital age? What if their best of the best isn't good enough to stop hackers?
No, it wasn’t top of the line. For some reason in the last 20 years or so we see steady revenues as hateful and call anything but revenue growth a failure. So I’m sure corners were cut in search of the thick bottom line, i.e. revenue growth.
Wasn't the 80s a time of huge growth? Stock market was booming, everyone was getting rich on wall street, etc. I could see how after a time of extreme growth like that simply having a steady increase in revenue would be seen as less than desirable.
I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of security was a way to cut costs, as well.
Damn…I should have qualified my time frame reference with the fact that MBAs are more abundant now. :)
If it got hacked then clearly it wasn't 'top of the line' because there would be better defenses out there in place to keep whatever exploitations they used at bay. Maybe they thought it was top of the line, but by having their infrastructure hacked they proved it wasn't as good as it could be. Something can always be better, but I do see your point, and that just tells me that Sony should think about making some new hires to their security team.
It DEFINITELY wasn't top of the line. If so, we'd hear about the same guys hacking banks daily.
True.
Sony was asking for something to happen, but their anti-hacker actions definitely didn't warrant this. I mean, this is nothing compared to Nintendo's anti-hack 3DS policy of "If you connect to the internet with a hacked device, we'll brick it." That's a bit over-the-top, don't you think?
The best way to say "Don't fight the hackers!" would be to show how harmless they are, not to crash a multi-million $ online store. Now, the hackers are asking for it.
I agree with everything you said.
The only way I could see big N being right to do that is if you sign something with that clause in it when you buy it.
I feel for Nintendo though. I mean, DS games got/still get pirated on a massive level.
Don;t you usually have to click an agreement the first time you sign online? Seems like that pretty much covers that – you're agreeing to that when you click that most likely. I don;t have a 3DS, so I'm not 100% sure. But that does seem likely.
Because it's physical hardware and not a service. Nintendo shouldn't have the right to break your stuff because it disagrees with your practice. Banning the console from online play is cool, bricking it is not.
It's like the Gibson company coming to your house and smashing your Les Paul because you tweaked the bridge and played a cover tune.
And the best part is, with Streetpass on, it automatically connects to the internet. So, basically, if you want to use your hacked 3DS, the only way to do it is non-portable at home or out in the middle of nowhere.
Here's another one that's funny, "But if someone is stealing from you, you don’t kindly ask them to stop. You make them stop." And if the robber shoots you then it's on you. Again, it's not the smartest way to go about it.
Annoying video game tendencies #1) main character slowing down to a dead walk whenever using a comm system. Offenders—Batman: AA, Army of Two. #2) poor camera angles resulting in not being able to hide behind cover and stay hidden like I want. Offenders—Batman: AA, Gears of War series. #3) Jerky character movements. Offenders—Batman: AA, can't think of another right now. #4) Very quiet dialog with tiny subtitles. Offenders—Batman: AA.
I'm actually really liking this game, but there are a few things that are pissing me off about it. I'm hoping my one playthrough won't take too long, it was cheap at gamestop but maybe if I finish quickly enough I will just return it instead of getting screwed over on a trade in (maybe it won't be too bad on this game though since it seems like it was popular enough).
Did anyone here like Brutal Legend? That was really cheap at my gamestop and I almost picked it up. I'd really like to pick up DR: 2 to play with N8R and Iceman, but CoD: Black Ops sounds tempting to play with some friends and Tokz too. I just don't like how expensive the CoD games stay. MW2 is still $60 and I won't pay that for a game that old which I only would get in order to finish up the star missions.
@bsu
I really enjoyed brutal legend. Also do the challenge rooms and riddler challenge.
I enjoyed it. You have to be expecting the way the gameplay switches on you mid game or else you can be kinda taken aback. But it was entertaining enough, and it's really cheap then it's definitely worth picking up.
Thanks guys, I might have to try that one out next. I think it's only $12 used so that's not too bad at all. I've just heard mixed things about it in the past.
@BSU
It's an action RTS if that makes any sense. I believe some people were too caught up in the strategy part. You can definitely coordinate and you will have to to a degree but nothing detrimental to the experience. Akin to assigning squad members to zerg something while you take care of something big lol.
Great writing, great characters, great music. I felt the game was made for me.
@bsu
Amazon has some used copies of black ops for less than 40 including shipping.
I like those prices better, I might have to pick that up then. Everywhere else I've looked it's just still so expensive and I haven't felt like I should be spending $60 on a game for a while.
It also might help if I traded back some of my games because I play such a small percentage of them, but I just can't bear to let them go. Since I'm out of school maybe I will finally read 'Atlas Shrugged' and then beat Bioshock like Iceman suggested so I can trade it in, lol.
I’m all for their zero tolerance stance on the issue of hacking. However… when you go to war, you not only need the firepower, but the armor as well. This is where Sony screwed the pooch. They went full steam against a community and didn’t have the resources to protect themselves against retaliation.
It would be like talking shit to Mike Tyson’s mother to his face while you have no real fight training to speak of.
So, my answer to the question is that I think it was a combination of both. If I walk around ethnic neighborhoods shouting racial slurs, I will be both the victim of a violent crime as well asking for it since I should have thought it through before I left the house.
I think that is more what I was trying to say above with the 'play with fire' analogy and everything.
A trip to the ethnic neighborhood to find that three guys who broke into your car ans stole your stereo doesn't warrant everyone in the neighborhood kicking your ass.
It would be more like looking for the guys who pimped my ride in colors I hated while I was sleeping.
If in the process of looking for the guys, I accidentally offend people in the neighborhood with my actions… I should have watched my f**kin' mouth.
Depending on the neighborhood, your presence may have been offense enough.
In which case, I should have thought about that before I left the house. No matter what, I am accountable for my actions as is everyone.
Ignorance does not exempt accountability.
The hacker attack against Sony was wrong, no question… but so are ethnics beating me for any reason including shouting racial slurs or being generally offensive. You should know that the bad thing is coming even though it's bad. That's nature.
Example: Killing anybody is wrong…. but Osama was asking for it.