Sony is clearly not happy.
As any business hoping to turn a profit should, Sony goes to great lengths to stop both the act of piracy and other practices that may encourage or enable piracy on their systems. They bullied “Bleem!” out of business for producing a Playstation 1 emulator for the PC and Dreamcast, and have raided and shut down hundreds of retailers selling hardware that enables the ability to play illegally copied software. March of 2010 saw Sony remove the ability to install the alternative Linux operating system on the Playstation 3, over potential piracy woes. In August, a hack for the Playstation 3 rapidly spread that allowed any USB device to force the PS3 in to a special debug mode that allowed the execution of unauthorized software. Sony quickly issued a patch to fix that exploit. That may have been enough for pirates, as a few weeks ago, a group calling themselves “fail0verflow” revealed they had fully cracked the Playstation 3′s copy protection method. To sum it up, not since the Sega Dreamcast has a game console’s copy protection been so thoroughly cracked, and short of releasing a Playstation 4, there is very little Sony can do about it at this point.
But that’s not stopping them from trying. Yesterday, January 11th, Sony issued two documents to the “fail0verflow” group – a grand total of 36 pages worth of legal jargon. “fail0verflow” member George Hotz (“Geohot”) has posted both for public view on his personal website. Sony means business, as evidenced by part of the legal threat that is literally a restraining order against distributing information about the “fail0verflow” hack. Given that one of the documents is named “Proposed Order”, it is likely that Sony’s legal team has not actually registered an official lawsuit with “fail0verflow”, and is simply threatening potential action. They have made it clear, however, that should the “fail0verflow” team ignore these legal threats, Sony will hit them hard in an effort to curb this as quickly as possible.
The law may be on the side of “fail0verflow”, however. As we reported on earlier, Microsoft recently lost a case regarding a man installing homebrew-modified Xbox 360 hardware as the plaintiffs could not sufficiently prove the defendant’s legal intent. And in July 2010, a federal court ruled that “jailbreaking” an iPhone to run typically unauthorized software was perfectly legal. In the end, it may be Sony’s insistence on calling the Playstation 3 a “Computer Entertainment System” that could be their undoing – the definition of a “computer” conjures up images of Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, which are typically open for anyone to develop software for, free of charge.
That’s not to say Sony is above playing dirty, however. In the aforementioned “Bleem!” lawsuits, Sony alleged production of a retail Playstation emulator for the PC was illegal. Sony launched multiple simultaneous lawsuits against “Bleem!”, and “Bleem!” won every single one – but the extensive legal costs of so many lawsuits took their toll, forcing the company to file for bankruptcy. Regardless of how legal or illegal “Bleem!” was, Sony still ended up having the last laugh. “fail0verflow” may win their battle, but they could still end up losing the war.
Only time will tell how this all pans out, but it could have serious ramifications either way – stay tuned.
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I HATE hackers
I buy my ps3 just to avoid hackers, free online, quality of games (Metal Gear 4,God Of War 3 etc).
And theeeeeeeere’s the other shoe drop. See, that’s the thing. The hacking community jeers and claims Sony can’t do anything about it, but there’s ALWAYS something that can be done. If the loop can’t be closed, well then there are lawsuits; and no hacker is going to have the deep pockets Sony does. They’ve poked the hornets nest.
Sony’s bringing out the lawyers, so yeah, they’re definitely pissed off. Previously they seemed content to just patch whatever exploits hackers found in a back and forth game they usually managed to keep ahead of. Now they’ve lost control of the situation entirely and their system is basically open to being hacked to hell.
I wonder how much this might force Sony’s hand. The PSP, they’re probably not worried about; by all accounts, the PSP2 is well on it’s way, so this late in the game it probably doesn’t matter much. The PS3, however, they’ve been banking on to last ten years. Now it’s busted wide open – and really, for every honest homebrew creator there are three or four guys who just want iso loaders for free games – so they may have no choice but to push forward a PS4.
Perhaps another option is a new model – as opposed to a patch – that changes these things? It seems to be how they kept the PSP under thumb. The 3000 model was effectively locked down until very, very recently. Assuming it’s an option, it may be their only one.
To keep up to date with the the PS3 hacking news visit ps3hax.net
Oh great now leaderboards for PS3 games get the joy of being filled with cheating assholes with horrid names.
I’m really sick of the moral high ground these hackers tend to stand on, it’s about how they act like this isn’t for piracy instead it’s for some vaguely defined greater good or whatever, If they came out and said “yep we’re doing this for piracy” I wouldn’t mind
@Dr.Eggfang
Hackers don’t need reasons to break security systems. They do it for the fun. For the lulz. There’s no “moral high ground”. For most of the hackers, piracy is a consequence, not an objective.
Just thought I should have said it.
@Dr. Eggfang
Not to put you down or anything, but I have to agree with lucaspc. Most hackers in the world today just do it so they can say that they have hacked Sony, NCSoft, Microsoft, Nintendo, or Apple for that matter. It’s all a challenge.
Yeah, hacking is a hobby. Some people bake cakes, some hack systems. While I don’t condone theft usually, some companies are just begging for it. especially companies like Sony who withold awesome games to be downloadable from PSN. The people who just wanna play games, who are more than willing to pay for, can’t without “piracy” methods. And being able to put apps of your own on a hacked system is a great thing, IMO. Cheating a derving company out of their money, however, is not.
“I HATE hackers
I buy my ps3 just to avoid hackers, free online, quality of games (Metal Gear 4,God Of War 3 etc).”
>PS3
>Quality games
>laughing_juri.gif
@Juri Han
You can’t see quality in Metal Gear 4 , God Of War 3 , Ninokuni , or in future Last Guardian (the creators of shadow of the colossus)
You just ignore love in game.
You just ignore the ART of games.
If you ignore Mario Galaxy, Braid, Street Fighter 4 etc
You ignore the ART of games.
You really like games?
@Ryan Bloom
quote: … “fail0verflow” member George Hotz (“Geohot”) …
Geohot is NOT a member of fail0verflow!
Fail.
@Needlemouse
I’m generally going by what was written in the Sony documents, which includes everybody together as a group.