Anonymous Halts Sony Attacks Affecting PSN Users

[A1]

I think it's nice that they acknowledge that they made an error in their offensive strategy and apologizes to the users affected.

Actually, as far as I can tell they haven't actually apologized to anyone. The words "sorry" or "apology" or "apologize" all seem to be conspicuously absent from their statements. Stating that something wasn't intended and apologizing for it are two very different things. They just seem to be covering their own asses.

 

[A1]

Well DUH! What do they think is going to come from unstrategic carpet bomb hacking? This is what I hate about Anon. Sure, it's fun to post big flashy press releases about attacking evil corporate suits for "wholly unforgivable" attempts to enforce lease agreements but when it comes down to it they have no real plan or endgame. They just launch a few attacks at whatever and it'll only ever be the low level employees and end users that get hurt.

Can anyone name bigtime execs who have ever been brought down because of Anon? Or is it just "Woot, we randomly inconvenienced part of the company for a while we're the heroes" and internet pundits gleefully adore them.

But it doesn't matter. Anon is becoming something worthless and obnoxious. Nothing but a chance for internet types to act smug and pretend they have a superhero on their side.

I very much agree. The people belonging to this "group" are not heroes or patriots in any real sense of the word. Hell, they don't even make decent rebels. They are by all accounts little more than a bunch of vain attention whores with way too much time on their hands.

 

[Da_Vane]

The fact that Sony will always be able to be protected by the people using their service is what gives Sony their power. No matter what the topic is about, it's always the same old defence - that the end result will affect the customers. This is just a ploy to turn the customer base against Sony's detractors, rather than having them face up to the actions of Sony and others.

Sony doesn't care about their customers, they care about their bottom line. Does anyone here actually know ANYTHING behind the whole Jailbreaking PS3s debate that caused this?

Sony's chief argument is that the jailbreaked PS3 will then be used for piracy purposes. It doesn't matter that not only has this not been proven, and there are lots of other uses for Jailbreaking a PS3, but by bringing the argument to piracy, Sony can therefore associate the idea that Jailbreaked PS3 will somehow affect the customer, rather than the truth which is that it affects their bottom line.

All the standard anti-piracy arguments come out, along with the anti-piracy advocates, all of which are those who are worried about their bottom lines. This garners Sony support for measures which they would have implemented anyway, that under normal circumstances may be resisted by customers.

Anti-piracy measures, indeed, most forms of law enforcement, are actually implemented in this way - they create the issue, spread fear about it, and then propose a solution which gets what they wanted through even though normally it would have been resisted by their consumer base in normal circumstances.

If the Jailbreaked PS3s are to be used for piracy, then the Sony should be prosecuting them for such, once they have committed said act. Because owning a jailbreaked PS3 is not illegal, piracy is. All this is showing is that Sony aren't selling you their consoles any more - they believe they are renting them to you. They think they still own the console, even after you've bought it.

Sony has the right to deny jailbreaked PS3 from accessing PSN, since this is a service, and there are terms and conditions to using said service which Sony can control. But they are SELLING a product - the console, and what people do with it after it has been sold is of no concern to Sony unless the activity itself is illegal. In which case, the standard process for trial for the illegal activity should apply.

What is next? Maybe they'll come round and sue anyone who puts stickers or other decals on their console, or who isn't correctly displaying the Sony corporate logo when it's stored away. Careful with that stack of magazines - they fall over covering the console and boom, it's jail time for you!

 

[Da_Vane]

Hotz can claim he doesn't pirate games. He can also claim he doesn't condone piracy. Good for him. But he's still left with the fact that 5,700 unique IP addresses in the State of California alone visited his website and downloaded his file with information and instructions on how to hack a PS3 and enable it to both run Linux and play pirated games. He can swear on a six-foot high stack of Bibles that he published his hack file only to allow others to run Linux but no sane person's gonna buy the possibility that there were all of 5,700 persons in the State of California alone who were interested in running Linux on their PS3s. And no sane person's gonna buy the possibility that ol' Georgie Boy didn't know that the vast majority of those 5,700 persons in California who were downloading his hack file were doing so in order to hack their PS3s in order to play pirated games rather than to run Linux. That story simply isn't credible. Hotz doesn't have to -- and no one should really expect him to -- admit that he knew full well that what he was doing was furthering piracy. But the fact still remains that there are 5,700 reasons to conclude that he was furthering piracy. And if the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that he was furthering piracy, then -- to put it in fancy legal terms -- he's fucked.

And he's fucked in a very real sense because he'll be liable for contributory infringement (i.e., facilitating the infringement by others of a copyrighted work), the minimum penalty for which is $250 per instance of infringement and, if we charitably subtract from the 5,700 downloaders 1,000 downloaders on the assumption that those 1,000 downloaders were in fact persons who were interested in running Linux and not interested in pirating games, and then multiple the remaining 4,700 downloaders by the $250 minimum penalty, on the assumption that those downloaders were interested in playing pirated games and had no interest in running Linux and did in fact use the download to play pirated games, ol' Georgie Boy's looking at more than $1,000,000 in penalties. Ouch! And that calculation is based on the possible infringers in California alone, it doesn't include possible infringers in the other 49 states. But I'm sure that if Georgie Boy looks under his sofa cushions, he'll find more than enough loose change to cover his multi-million dollar penalties.

Welcome to the land of the free! Where justice, liberty, and democracy reign supreme! Where innocent until proven guilty is an established human right enshrined under a written constitution.

What's going to happen is Sony is going to throw money at this thing until they win. That's it - pure and simple. It doesn't matter that logically, it only takes one exception to disprove a rule, and therefore as long as there is one other legitimate reason for jailbreaking a PS3, GeoHotz should be found innocent, because there is grounds for reasonable doubt.

Now, unfortunately for Sony, they provided that reason themselves - running linux was a listed feature in the early press releases, and there have been articles in tech journals and websites about the impossible of using the linux-enabled PS3 as a cheap server. Sony disabled this feature, and GeoHotz jailbreaked it to re-enabled it. It's fairly straight forward, if you use reason, logic, and justice to determine the outcome.

But that won't happen - instead Sony will throw money at the issue until they win. Because that's how things truly work.

Anonymous is rather irrelevant, since they generally do the same thing with everyone they perceive as pissing them off - hack them into oblivion. The only way this would have an effect is if it somehow affects Sony's bottom line, depriving them of their money, and preventing them from throwing money at getting their way over justice. This will inconvenience PSN fans - alienating Anonymous. But then, since when did the people too busy playing their games consoles really care about what was really going on, as long as they get their games?

I bet if people stopped using PSN for a while - maybe shifted to another console, or something else, Sony would soon change their minds when their revenue begins to drop off. However, too many people already buy into Sony and their arguments that the customers are affected, and already condemned GeoHotz as a hacker and a pirate because this is what Sony wants you to believe.

That's how Sony preserve their power - they use the customers as their shields whenever something comes along that might hurt them, their control, and their bottom line.

 

[JDKJ]

Hotz can claim he doesn't pirate games. He can also claim he doesn't condone piracy. Good for him. But he's still left with the fact that 5,700 unique IP addresses in the State of California alone visited his website and downloaded his file with information and instructions on how to hack a PS3 and enable it to both run Linux and play pirated games. He can swear on a six-foot high stack of Bibles that he published his hack file only to allow others to run Linux but no sane person's gonna buy the possibility that there were all of 5,700 persons in the State of California alone who were interested in running Linux on their PS3s. And no sane person's gonna buy the possibility that ol' Georgie Boy didn't know that the vast majority of those 5,700 persons in California who were downloading his hack file were doing so in order to hack their PS3s in order to play pirated games rather than to run Linux. That story simply isn't credible. Hotz doesn't have to -- and no one should really expect him to -- admit that he knew full well that what he was doing was furthering piracy. But the fact still remains that there are 5,700 reasons to conclude that he was furthering piracy. And if the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that he was furthering piracy, then -- to put it in fancy legal terms -- he's fucked.

And he's fucked in a very real sense because he'll be liable for contributory infringement (i.e., facilitating the infringement by others of a copyrighted work), the minimum penalty for which is $250 per instance of infringement and, if we charitably subtract from the 5,700 downloaders 1,000 downloaders on the assumption that those 1,000 downloaders were in fact persons who were interested in running Linux and not interested in pirating games, and then multiple the remaining 4,700 downloaders by the $250 minimum penalty, on the assumption that those downloaders were interested in playing pirated games and had no interest in running Linux and did in fact use the download to play pirated games, ol' Georgie Boy's looking at more than $1,000,000 in penalties. Ouch! And that calculation is based on the possible infringers in California alone, it doesn't include possible infringers in the other 49 states. But I'm sure that if Georgie Boy looks under his sofa cushions, he'll find more than enough loose change to cover his multi-million dollar penalties.

Welcome to the land of the free! Where justice, liberty, and democracy reign supreme! Where innocent until proven guilty is an established human right enshrined under a written constitution.

What's going to happen is Sony is going to throw money at this thing until they win. That's it - pure and simple. It doesn't matter that logically, it only takes one exception to disprove a rule, and therefore as long as there is one other legitimate reason for jailbreaking a PS3, GeoHotz should be found innocent, because there is grounds for reasonable doubt.

Now, unfortunately for Sony, they provided that reason themselves - running linux was a listed feature in the early press releases, and there have been articles in tech journals and websites about the impossible of using the linux-enabled PS3 as a cheap server. Sony disabled this feature, and GeoHotz jailbreaked it to re-enabled it. It's fairly straight forward, if you use reason, logic, and justice to determine the outcome.

But that won't happen - instead Sony will throw money at the issue until they win. Because that's how things truly work.

Anonymous is rather irrelevant, since they generally do the same thing with everyone they perceive as pissing them off - hack them into oblivion. The only way this would have an effect is if it somehow affects Sony's bottom line, depriving them of their money, and preventing them from throwing money at getting their way over justice. This will inconvenience PSN fans - alienating Anonymous. But then, since when did the people too busy playing their games consoles really care about what was really going on, as long as they get their games?

I bet if people stopped using PSN for a while - maybe shifted to another console, or something else, Sony would soon change their minds when their revenue begins to drop off. However, too many people already buy into Sony and their arguments that the customers are affected, and already condemned GeoHotz as a hacker and a pirate because this is what Sony wants you to believe.

That's how Sony preserve their power - they use the customers as their shields whenever something comes along that might hurt them, their control, and their bottom line.

Thank, God! Finally there's someone who realizes that a console is not an essential item that anyone "must" have. If you ain't happy with Sony and the way they conduct their business, I would have thought that the obvious response was to not do business with them. Keep your money in your pocket and let Sony keep their goods and services. Then you'll have nothing to ***** about. And then Sony might actually get to wondering why their sales are down and might actually change the way they do business.

And I'm not buying into Sony's argument that Georgie's a hacker in violation of numerous laws (and they don't, I don't think, ever claim he's a pirate, just that he's a hacker who has enable others to be pirates with his hack) simply because they claim so. I don't tend to buy into anything that anyone tells me just because they're telling it to me. Rather, I tend to look at the objective evidence and draw my own conclusions. And the evidence that I've seen thus far suggest to me that Sony has a very good case against Georgie. Yes, they may be suing in order to make an example out of him to others but the fact remains that, as best as I can tell, he put himself in the position to be made an example. That's on him, not Sony.

 

[JDKJ]

The fact that Sony will always be able to be protected by the people using their service is what gives Sony their power. No matter what the topic is about, it's always the same old defence - that the end result will affect the customers. This is just a ploy to turn the customer base against Sony's detractors, rather than having them face up to the actions of Sony and others.

Sony doesn't care about their customers, they care about their bottom line. Does anyone here actually know ANYTHING behind the whole Jailbreaking PS3s debate that caused this?

Sony's chief argument is that the jailbreaked PS3 will then be used for piracy purposes. It doesn't matter that not only has this not been proven, and there are lots of other uses for Jailbreaking a PS3, but by bringing the argument to piracy, Sony can therefore associate the idea that Jailbreaked PS3 will somehow affect the customer, rather than the truth which is that it affects their bottom line.

All the standard anti-piracy arguments come out, along with the anti-piracy advocates, all of which are those who are worried about their bottom lines. This garners Sony support for measures which they would have implemented anyway, that under normal circumstances may be resisted by customers.

Anti-piracy measures, indeed, most forms of law enforcement, are actually implemented in this way - they create the issue, spread fear about it, and then propose a solution which gets what they wanted through even though normally it would have been resisted by their consumer base in normal circumstances.

If the Jailbreaked PS3s are to be used for piracy, then the Sony should be prosecuting them for such, once they have committed said act. Because owning a jailbreaked PS3 is not illegal, piracy is. All this is showing is that Sony aren't selling you their consoles any more - they believe they are renting them to you. They think they still own the console, even after you've bought it.

Sony has the right to deny jailbreaked PS3 from accessing PSN, since this is a service, and there are terms and conditions to using said service which Sony can control. But they are SELLING a product - the console, and what people do with it after it has been sold is of no concern to Sony unless the activity itself is illegal. In which case, the standard process for trial for the illegal activity should apply.

What is next? Maybe they'll come round and sue anyone who puts stickers or other decals on their console, or who isn't correctly displaying the Sony corporate logo when it's stored away. Careful with that stack of magazines - they fall over covering the console and boom, it's jail time for you!

They aren't "selling" or "renting" the software in the console. They're licensing it for use. That much is clear from the license agreement that governs their console and to which all users agree -- whether they think they've agreed or not. And like everyone else who licenses software, they impose restrictions on your use of that software. That doesn't at all make them unique. That's standard practice in the software industry. Ninety-nine percent of all software licensors do the exact same thing in their license agreements.

And if you hack Sony's software so as to allow bypassing of the mechanism that prevents a pirated game from being played with it and also distribute that hack to others who then hack their consoles and play pirated games, there's a real good possibility that you've done so in violation of the DMCA and other copyright laws. Yes, Sony can pursue the actual pirates rather than the hacker, but there's no law that says they have to limit themselves to one or the other. The choice of who to sue is theirs to make. And, if you ask me, Hotz made himself an easy target for Sony by publicly disclosing his real identity and the fact of his hack and by his well-publicized distribution of his hack. And then, to top it all off, he sets up a PayPal account for "donations to fund his scientific research." He might as well have just stood in front of Sony's corporate offices with a bullhorn, shouting, "Hey, Sony!! Look at me!! I hacked your shit!! Na-nah-na-na-nah!!" If he'd kept his big-ass mouth shut and not gone off on a publicity campaign, he wouldn't be dangling on Sony's meat-hook. And, much to my amazement, he still continues to run his big-ass mouth. His attorney ought to tell him to shut the fuck up and lay off the blogging and the television interviews and the rap videos posted to youtube. After all, it's not like he comes off as a sympathetic victim. He comes off as an arrogant, egotistical jerk-wad.

"You should have kept your mouth shut, they'd have thought you was a horse and let you out." -- Tony Montana to Manny in "Scarface."

 

[Da_Vane]

End User License Agreements have already been ruled non-binding in a court of law. This is because they provide no suitable alternative to opt out - by the time you get to read it and agree to it, you have already bought the product, opened it, and are therefore unable to return it for a full refund.

While this is standard practice for the Software industry, the fact remains that the Software industry has been eroding consumer rights for decades now. They claim this is to "counter piracy" yet consumer concerns are quickly becoming the biggest contributor towards the cause of piracy.

Now, if GeoHotz did the jailbreaking to allow linux to be installed on their OS, which is open source and therefore not owned by anyone, this can be classed as a rejection of the software contained within the hardware. GeoHotz, and others own the hardware that they are selling, but do not want the software that comes with it, licensed as it is.

If Sony is suing GeoHotz because of a "hack" that potentially allows them to play pirated games, than people have the right to sue Sony because there are electronic components in the PS3 that can be used for destructive purposes. The fact that they sell the PS3 in shops adds to this. If potential is what a case is based on, rather than the fact, then Sony is in more danger than GeoHotz - but because Sony have more money and power, who's going to win against them in such a class action?

There's every indication that GeoHotz will be found innocent if previous court precedents are used, although that is rarely how things in the States. It's not justice, it's trial by money.

Personally, I don't have a PS3 - I don't have any consoles. PC gaming for the win, because there is inherently less control with the medium. Perhaps this is why developers and manufacturers are flocking to consoles - they WANT the control. They want to be able to tell the mindless sheep on the other end of the controllers when to buy their product, and only their product. That said, DRM and digital distribution is becoming increasingly pervasive and controlling with the PC, and it's turning gaming everywhere into a conflict of control. Gone are the days when "if you build it, they will come" - now you have to make them come, or threaten to deprive them of their games. I dread the days when the gaming PC becomes an overpriced console.

 

[Lionsfan]

What exactly did you fix? If you are referring to Anonymous=Terrorists then don't bother. You can't fix what aint broke. To use unlawful attacks against an institution in order to get retribution or to change policy is terrorism.

I was just joking around with you're official definition. By definition they are terrorist's, I can't stand them and the supposed "great work" they do.