PS3 Hacker Raised All the Legal Funds Needed to Beat Sony in a Weekend

[Chibz]

So there it is. Where does it go from here? Well, two ways currently: First: Sony wins, people see it as a strike against "teh haxorz" and corporations get the ground they need to really shaft the customer (it's not slippery slope fallacy if it's true and has been known to happen. Once a company knows they can make money off of "X", they will. And others will join.), or 2: GeoHot wins, he's painted as Satan, internet security gets more draconian, old people get scared more, company's find even more legal ways to hurt you, BUT our right as consumers are restored. For a short time at least.

*Sorry for the late post*

On the bright side, this would only harm people who live in the US. 99% of the world won't care, won't notice.

There really is no way we, as consumers, can win here, though...

 

[JonnWood]

a) Halo 2 multiplayer requires expensive servers to upkeep, thus making it completely different. Other OS took money to REMOVE rather than money to SUPPORT it. Sony wasn't losing money on this feature, it spent money to remove it.

If they were spending money on a feature that not enough people were using to make it a good RoI, then they were losing money.

Also, if I remember correctly... Halo 2 for the PC is still playable online. Microsoft may have cut support of it for the XBox because it's too expensive to run, but if they had allowed fans to support it, the game would still be playable online.

He meant on the XBox and you know it. I cannot recall a console game that had fan servers.

Wrongly hacking the PS3? I'm sorry, I support information, and I support people who hack their consoles and their peripherals. 99% of the entertainment value garnered from the Kinect is because of hacks. The only complaints I hear about involving Kinect hacking is that some people think what they're doing is useless. Yet the second it involves a console everyone's up in arms screaming about piracy.

Because piracy follows cracked systems. The Kinect hacks are actually increasing the sales of the device, even if it's not being used for games.

Piracy is a problem, yes. But, we make it out to be a lot worse than it is.

"We" who, and exactly how bad do "we" make it out to be?

My other issue arrives when people support a company screwing over ALL of their consumers because of 'piracy'. Claiming that the company has a right to protect its IP.

They do. Similarly, the consumer has a right not to pay for their product if they do not like the terms under which it is provided. I personally don't think companies want crappy DRM, but they can't tell the shareholders they've done nothing.

Piracy isn't as big a problem as the companies tell us, and we all know it.

We do? Cause the last time I checked, most games were generally pirated at a rate of somewhere between 50% and 90% of all copies played, which sounds pretty serious to me.

And it does NOT justify them screwing over their paying customers.

I agree. However, pirates are not "paying customers". By definition.

The fact that people support them in screwing us while claiming pirates make it justified is a testament to how brainwashed we are.

Ad hominem, poisoning the well, no True Scotsman, etc.

Problem is, piracy dogs homebrews heels like a chihuahua following a guy who's shoes smell like Snausages; if you have homebrew, there's going to be piracy.

Problem is, people say piracy is supported by homebrew.[/quote]I didn't say that. I made a statement in terms of cause and effect;

if you have homebrew, there's going to be piracy.

See? You've straw-manned me.

But if you already own the games, why not allow them to be playable on your newer consoles via that.

Because you didn't buy them for the newer consoles. The consoles usually didn't even exist. If I own Blade Runner on Betamax, I don't get a free copy on Blu-Ray.

Hell, my PHONE has emulation apps. All it is, is Sony wanting absolute control over everything that's doable with their system. That's wrong.

Straw man. This man's actions resulted in piracy. How many PS3 mods has Sony taken someone to court over before?

Actually, if Sony hadn't removed the feature to begin with, and if Sony had supported homebrew to begin with, we would've had the pirates breaking the PS3, specifically FOR pirating. Whether it would've come sooner or later, I don't know. But there wouldn't have been any argument as to WHY it was broken open, no defense, and it would've been easy for Sony to take whatever asshat cracked the PS3 for pirating to court. The fact is, the PS3 would've eventually been cracked. And when Sony pissed off people by removing Other OS, they got people who install Linux on shit involved. Honestly, you KNOW they're going to break it open as soon as you involve them. Yeah, it takes time, but time and effort are all it took.

Victim-blaming.

Also, the idea of licensing your console is a very new one. That's the legal battle that's essentially being fought here. This isn't about piracy.

Yes it is. See, I can make unsubstantiated statements too!

This isn't even REALLY about the rootkey.

Uh...huh.

As for keeping their secret code, it is the easiest way to break the PS3 open so you CAN do what you want with it.

You just called it "their" code, I note.

And BTW, Sony gave it out themselves via Twitter anyways.

Someone running a marketing Twitter gave it out, and is probably fired by now.

I think the reason that a lot of people associate piracy with Linux on the PS3 is because, well, emulation really. Piracy aside from emulation was never really a problem until AFTER this whole fiasco.

Emulation largely includes piracy.

And honestly, a lot of people own old games that over time got stolen, or the console broke, etc.

I've had a broken DS mid-repair for months now, yet I've somehow resisted the furious urge to emulate the games I own. Weird.

Let's face it, none of us want piracy. But we also know it will continue to happen despite everything. However, we also know that piracy isn't as big a problem as it is claimed to be. If it was, we wouldn't have a growing gaming industry.

Unless it was growing in spite of piracy. If a man is running, and you shoot him in the kneecap, and he starts crawling, he's still making forward progress.

The point is, you cannot own a number. Sony's code is nothing more than a number.

So is your social security number, bank account number, PIN number, and address. You can't own them, so please post them in this thread right now.

Whether this code is be used for piracy is completely irrelevant. If a perfectly functioning car is used to commit a murder you don't sue Ford.

No, you prosecute the guy driving the car, not the people who made it. In this case, it would be Geo.

Whether GeoHot is perpetuating piracy, cheating, or anything else beyond cracking your system, is beyond the point.

According to?

Piracy IS an issue with video games. No matter how you slice it, a pirated copy IS a lost sale. You are enjoying a product that cost money, without someone footing the bill for you. End of story. What piracy inherently ISN'T is lost revenue. This is something that we as a community need to understand and separate. Piracy=lost sale, but piracy =/= lost revenue.

What piracy is is a violation of people's rights. That's all I need to know, really.

But once again, piracy in this case is a non-issue. We did not put the founder of Colt Munitions in prison the first time his product was used to kill someone.

What was that about gun analogies earlier?

You do not blame the distributor for misuse of his product on someones' behalf.

No, you blame the people who misused the product. Oh, wait, that'd be hackers.

Let's face it, Sony screwed up. I'm not going to claim I wanted it for some great purpose. Before they removed the feature I was signing up for a class at the community college to learn Linux so I could play PC exclusive games on my PS3. The day my money was due or I would have to drop the class, Sony took that ability away. In the end, the only thing it did to hurt me was convince me a piece of knowledge was no longer worth gaining.

You kind of scuppered your cred thar.

So what do we do here? Well, it IS wrong that Sony took a function away from us and told us if we wanted it we can't play new games or play online. But all they did there was shoot themselves in the foot. Anyone worth their weight in salt in programming knowledge, got both. They got Linux, new games, PSN access, and at the current rates, cheat online. However the fact that when I bought it, it had it, means I should get it back.

That seems like a childish and infantile view. Plenty of games have had servers shut down. Should they have stayed up forever?

Therefore the argument of loss vs gain is irrelevant. Why can't I have what I planned on using? Why do I have to have something I plan on not using (notice the wording, there is a difference in not planning to, and planning not to)? The simple answer is that Sony was protecting their assets. But, now someone with programming knowledge is mad at Sony, and all they've done is encourage the breaking, the piracy, and the PSN hacking. You know what would help more? Better PSN security.

Four years. Most systems are open in less than one. This was good security.

So there it is. Where does it go from here? Well, two ways currently: First: Sony wins, people see it as a strike against "teh haxorz" and corporations get the ground they need to really shaft the customer (it's not slippery slope fallacy if it's true and has been known to happen.

Examples please.

Once a company knows they can make money off of "X", they will. And others will join.),

I can just see the wave of highly public lawsuits which require Sony to admit that someone cracked their security.

 

[Speakercone]

I've used this comparison before, but if I buy a Volkswagen, VW is not allowed to tell me what I can and cannot do to my vehicle. They are also not allowed to alter my vehicle in any way without my consent after sale, because it belongs to me.

Figuratively speaking, Sony is contending that they should be allowed to come to my house, take out the engine, and replace it with a less powerful engine. They also contend that unless I agree to this change, they will make sure I can't use my vehicle at all.

This is a ludicrous argument.

You are correct, your argument is ludicrous.

But responding to it, Sony's issue is not that he hacked his own console, on his own. Its that he posted the root key and instructions on the internet for everyone to access. You are absolutely able to do what YOU want to YOUR property, on your own, as long as you don't go online, because the PSN is Sony's network.

The real issue here is, that Sony is suing because they believe that the root key is Sony's property and it is not George Hotz's to give away to the public. Almost all these post here seem to not understand that, including this article's author and apparently George Hotz.

Sony is NOT contending that they should be allowed to come to your house, and mess with your PS3. They simply don't want YOU giving away to THEIR root keys to EVERYONE! Is that such an evil thing to want? to keep THEIR secret code a secret? I believe not.

Reading this article and its subsequent posts, I notice that everyone here keeps avoiding the real issue, and making it about Sony invading your houses.

This is a fair point, but I feel that I could clarify my position somewhat. I am not contending that George Hotz is in the right. I am contending that Sony has been acting in bad faith toward their customers and that this is the likely cause of their problems. Keep in mind that Mr. Hotz made no attempts to derive the root key of the PS3 before OtherOS was removed from the PS3. After this point, he and his team were able to derive and distribute it in a very short space of time. This indicates that nowhere in the world did hackers care enough to try to derive root on this device. Mr. Hotz is no doubt very good at what he does, but others are also very good. No one cared to hack their systems because they were happy with the functionality therein. Once functionality was taken from them, they found a way to restore it and tell all their friends (read, the internet).

None of this means that Mr. Hotz is justified in publishing a proprietary root key, but it does mean that he will likely be playing a "white knight" defense along similar lines to my car analogy above. All he wants is what his machine did when he bought it and Sony was wrong to alter his machine after the point of purchase. Some combination of this with "the root key alone doesn't mean you're a pirate, it means you have the capability to be a pirate if you choose to. I have not facilitated theft, I have provided tools to better operate your system. It's up to specific users what they use their tools to do. If a man uses a hammer to kill someone, the manufacturer of the hammer is not guilty of 'facilitating murder'" This will likely be a compelling argument against an argument which, in essence, boils down to "yeah, but it's mine!"

This all represents my own opinion on the matter and nothing more. I will of course grant that my original analogy was incomplete, but it was largely meant to express only my distaste for Sony's actions in a flippant manner.

 

[Illyasviel]

I'm going to take a minute and play arbiter, because there only seems to be two extremes here.

Question. I'll present you with a scenario and you tell me what will happen.

They keys are out and piracy is given the green light.

Sony does the following:
Restores Other OS, releases a reasonably priced ( USD300 or less, I believe this was the pricing on the Unreal dev kit before it went free ) or free dev kit and promises to continue delivering value to its consumers while not secretly planning to fuck them up the ass. The third part, of course, is a given because as long as Nintendo and Microsoft are around, that's simply the name of the game, but hey. Its nice to have it in writing.

Linux boxers and homebrewers are satisfied and consumers are assured their trust is well placed.

In return:
A way is found that causes your PS3 to automatically brick itself when attempting to play a non legitimate game copy. As in as long as you put in an off the shelf, legitimate copy of a game, it will play without problem. It doesn't matter if its a friend's copy or even if it was stolen off the shelf. It is a hardware fix, and everybody is required to install this. The code on the chip is made open so other programmers and independent consumer rights organizations can make sure its up to no other business. The chip cannot be bypassed. This is, of course, hypothetical, but let's assume its possible. The second half is more possible. GeoHot is given a court order banning him from the use of any device that shares capabilities with a personal computer. This includes any device with a microprocessor and / or an editor, e.g. a notebook, tablet, smartphone ( he may use an extremely antiquated cellphone circa 1990 ), etc.. Furthermore, he may not partake in any activities related to computer science and he may not acquire any materials on the topic. This ban lasts fifteen years with no provisions for probation or early termination. There are provisions to increase the ban as necessary ( tbd, but we'll assume for violating the ban and for other serious crimes e.g. armed robbery, murder, rape, etc. ) and to encompass additional wannabe GeoHots as necessary. GeoHot may continue to live his life in any other way as he pleases. There are no terms for prison sentences. The goal is to simply take him out of the game and to keep him out. No public servitude, no nothing.

Nobody has lost any rights that they do legally had an expectation to ( except GeoHot ) and both sides arrive "happy."

Who do you think will break their side of the agreement first? Business or people? Just curious.

 

[arithine]

I hope he wins, it is our right to do what we want to the PS3 after we buy it, I remember one time when I was delivering Pizza, the people were playing Super Mario All stars on their PS3. They looked like they were having lots of fun, now they can't cause Sony are asshoes

Uh, no they have no right to be playing SMAS on their PS3. No matter if the game is fun, they pirated the game and hacked the console? Thats like double the offense.

If someone pirates a game and says they're having "fun" doesn't suddenly pardon them.

It is perfectly legal to download and play any ROMs of any game you physically own. I don't know if this applies to modern games but SNES type emulation is quite popular.

 

[arithine]

I hope he wins, it is our right to do what we want to the PS3 after we buy it, I remember one time when I was delivering Pizza, the people were playing Super Mario All stars on their PS3. They looked like they were having lots of fun, now they can't cause Sony are asshoes

If you buy a gun is it your right to do anything you want with it? Is it your right to do anything you want with a PC? No, you have to abide by the laws and rules. Simple as that.
All this talk condoning Sony is naive jibberish. Geohotz simply allowed pirating to occur on the PS3. That means developers and publishers lose out because some kid thinks it's his god-given right to do what he wants. Sorry, that's not how the world works.

People seem to be forgetting that this particular hack DOES NOT allow you to play pirated games, you can not play pirated games solely by using this hack.

 

[arithine]

Console modding stores/products have been BANNED in Australia for a very logical reason. It changes what the console was DESIGNED for. "Super Mario" is not owned by Sony, it's owned by Nintendo. Therefore, playing a Nintendo game on a Sony product is.. Well.. It's definitely illegal. That's a completely different court case.

Right, so that means i can't download wine and play halo 2 on my mac, because halo was never made to be played on the mac. By doing so I do not fully support the developer (in this case Microsoft) because I'm not playing it on a windows machine, I'm playing it using a competitors hardware/software.

COME ON this argument is ridiculous, here in the US emulators have already been ruled legal, as are roms if you actually own the game.

 

[dWintermut3]

To all the people saying that this will cripple online gaming due to cheats:

I play PC, and very few games have had SERIOUS cheat problems in years. If Sony loses the case that will *never* stop them from using proprietary encryption for their socket layer or obfuscating network signals to make it hard to hack, it will just stop them from banning you or trying to HAVE YOU ARRESTED for daring to use software that they don't want you to use.

Imagine if you could go to jail for installing Linux on your laptop because Dell only wants you to to use Windows 7. That's what we're talking about here, not hacking games, not piracy, but the right to install the software you want on a machine you bought.


Lets extend the principle even further. Could they make it illegal to use cable TV service with your television because they want you to use satellite instead? If manufacturers can make it so you can only use the product how they want you to where does it end? It's dangerous.

If the price is online hacking in games, then they need to find a way (like PCs did and have) to prevent hacking that doesn't trample on my property rights.

 

[SomeBoredGuy]

It seems a little odd to me that they'd give this much money in order to allow themselves to pirate games. It seems like it'd be a whole lot more simple to actually buy the games.

 

[arithine]

It seems a little odd to me that they'd give this much money in order to allow themselves to pirate games. It seems like it'd be a whole lot more simple to actually buy the games.

They are not funding his defense to pirate games, they are giving him money because he is in the right. People who hack their systems are not all evil pirates. Many people donate to those who make them something cool and post it online for free.

Hacking the system is not about pirating the game, it's about extending the consoles capabilities.

(lets not forget XBMC, a media center made for the xbox which has expanded and spawned many great media centers, such as boxee and plex while still going strong. That is what hacking a system is about.)

 

[SomeBoredGuy]

It seems a little odd to me that they'd give this much money in order to allow themselves to pirate games. It seems like it'd be a whole lot more simple to actually buy the games.

They are not funding his defense to pirate games, they are giving him money because he is in the right. People who hack their systems are not all evil pirates. Many people donate to those who make them something cool and post it online for free.

Hacking the system is not about pirating the game, it's about extending the consoles capabilities.

(lets not forget XBMC, a media center made for the xbox which has expanded and spawned many great media centers, such as boxee and plex while still going strong. That is what hacking a system is about.)

Ah, shweet. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[arithine]

it's a simple misconception about the hacking world, it is not full of cheaters and pirates, and people need to focus on the cheaters and pirates and not the people who are doing nothing wrong.

 

[SomeBoredGuy]

It seems a little odd to me that they'd give this much money in order to allow themselves to pirate games. It seems like it'd be a whole lot more simple to actually buy the games.

That is not what they are giving him money for. They are giving him the money because he has done nothing wrong and has enabled the capabilities of the PS3 to grow. The hacking community is not just a bunch of pirates and cheaters. Most of them are upstanding people who just want to get the most out of their systems. As such they donate to people they believe deserve the money for giving them what they want and for making good products.

Take XBMC, a media center which was originally created for use on a hacked xbox, now xbmc has expanded to all the major OS's and has spawned other great media centers such as boxee and plex. That is what hacking is about, extending the capabilities of a console and creating amazing third party applications.

Once again, thanks for correcting me.