Sony Hacker Lawsuits Earn the Wrath of Anonymous [UPDATED]

[Defense]

Acting like a fucking child isn't going to fix everything. The members of Anonymous should grow up.

This is really the most ridiculous argument Ive ever hear. The "I bought it legally so I can do what I want with it" argument is extremely shallow thinking. I buy a knife legally, does that mean I'm allowed to stab people in my own home cuz I bought that too so its mine and had my own set of rules completely separate from the rest of world right?

And I'm sorry but this really bothered me. Isn't it more apt to I having bought a knife set one day go into my kitchen to find the company I got it from replacing my chef knife with a knife they say will be better. But when i discover I hate the piece of shit cause it's only a glorified giant butter knife and I want my old knife back so i can cook, I'm told no, you can't have it, and if you try to get one we'll take you to court for it. Well I'm sorry I want to eat.

Peace

If you're talking about Geohot, you should realize that he unlocked almost all of the root keys on the PS3. Fail0verflow restored OtherOS only but I don't remember him getting sued.

Anyways, hardware and software are entirely different from utensils.

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

thinking it in terms of legality, anonymous is participating in illegal activities.
thinking in terms of good vs bad, sony appears to be wearing the horns and anonymous is the knight in shining armor.

i strongly support those who wish to modify their own equipment, and ignoring any form of legality and politics, i can certainly see anonymous's point of view. sony is outright abusing the system.

Thinking in terms of legality, Anonymous is breaking the law.
Thanking in terms of good vs. bad, Anonymous is breaking the law.

Almost all hackers or modders who want to modify their systems do it to enable piracy or to use the hardware in a way that it is not intended. These things are not allowed if you read that nifty little contract you have to accept before going online with your PS3. You can hack the system all you want if you stay offline with it but once you go online, your hacking and piracy gives you an unfair advantage against other players and is a breach of the contract I mentioned above and Sony is well within their right to brick your console and they are only protecting their other customers by doing so. And before people try to dispute this, what exactly would the "innocent" hack be on the PS3? It has web capabilities, plays DVDs and Blu Rays and already lets you access pictures, music and movies from your PC. What exactly do you need to hack this to do additionally? except play pirated games, of course.

 

[ProtoChimp]

Oh... wow, I just don't care anymore.

 

[Illyasviel]

Oh... wow, I just don't care anymore.

I really, really, really, really hope most other people adopt the same policy.

The ridiculous knee jerk reactions of primarily ignorant ( both willfully and legitimately ) or uninformed people kinda make me sad. Are we really that bad about these type of things? There was a dude calling the judicial system communist and everything.

 

[JDKJ]

I disagree with the fact that people shouldn't be allowed to mod their products because they might use it for piracy. That's like saying we shouldn't sell people knives because they might cut others.

I agree in theory. But there's a potential to really screw up other people's gaming experience since that modded product can still intermingle with a greater community. There's a balance here that Sony is likely trying to preserve. The majority of PS3 gamers are just folks who want to plug into the community and have fun interacting (I'm guessing). A modded box can really stink that up.

If some guy modded his car with armor plating and gun turrets, the cops wouldn't let him drive it to work. And if they did, I sure as hell wouldn't want to see him every day on my morning commute. Sony (the police) is trying keep the public roads (their online gaming experience) clear of tanks (modded boxes) to protect the general public (dumb gamers like me who don't mod boxes).

Good of you to bring up a car comparison, because I was just about to do the same: Sony's attitude towards modding is eerily similar to a company like Ford selling you a car with the promise that you may do whatever you wish to its engine/tires/whatever, but later has a huge recall. At this point you are informed that your sweet 500hp engine doesn't really belong in a Ford...what do they make again? Focus? Anyway, they take out your sweet 500hb engine and put the old one back in. But somebody doesn't like that, and scraps the piece o' shite engine that Ford makes, whereupon he gets sued. Granted, his suited up car could be used to illicit activities such as street racing or drug running, but the burden of proof is on Ford to show that their actions of at best questionable legality are valid, and that all "modders" are only doing so to partake in illegal activities. Before I end up confusing anybody but myself, replace every instance of "Ford" with "Sony," and "engine" with "OS."
I'm for Anon on this one. I kinda hope they stick to humiliating Sony, and not punishing their customer base, cuz I wouldn't want my information leaked all over ze net...

Where that analogy fails is that there is nothing in the Ford that is copyrighted or licensed to you for use with the understanding that you can't modify it. The Ford is yours free and clear (assuming you have title to it). Do with it whatever you want assuming that you're not somehow running afoul of some law somewhere (like removing the headlights and driving it in the middle of the night). The software in the PS3, unlike your Ford analogy, is copyrighted and merely licensed to you for use with the understanding that you can't modify it. You're comparing an apple to an orange.

But if Ford decided to license the car like that, it still wouldn't hold up; this court case is a chance to get a court of law to say "you know, these EULA things are unconscionable contracts, and are clearly invalid. Stop trying to enforce them." It's not as far fetched as it sounds, either; EULAs almost never hold up when they reach a court of law, they just don't make it that far very often because of how much money the software publishers have to throw at lawyers, who then tie up the proceedings long enough to keep their BS from getting called. What we have here is an opportunity to give some rights back to consumers. How can you possibly be against that?

Unfortunately, EULAs aren't as unconscionable or invalid as you claim and there are a number of court decisions upholding their validity and enforceability. They may not be "fair" and may be horribly one-sided but that alone doesn't make them unenforceable as a matter of law. That just makes them a shitty deal for the consumer. But just because a deal is a shitty one doesn't make it an unenforceable one.

It's highly dependent on the EULA in question; for every case where one gets upheld, there's another case where it gets thrown out. The type of EULA involved in boxed game purchases is absolutely an unconscionable form of a contract of adhesion, as is what Sony is trying to get Geohot under, assuming he's telling the truth about not having signed up for a PSN account. Even if he did, it's still not a definite win for Sony.

That's not true. You can look up any EULA online now. Hell, I can probably walk into a video game store and request to look at a copy of the EULA before purchasing anything. The EULA is not the shrink wrap contract it used to be. You can find a way to read it without spending a penny on anything. Geohotz can say he didn't sign up for the PSN and didn't agree to the EULA, but Sony could easily state that they have it up for free on their website to read at anytime. It's also in the box before you turn the damn thing on so there's no excuse for Hotz here.

I'm not sure if even that holds up; sure, you can find the contract if you seek it out, but it's so far separated from the actual purchase that it's still a shrinkwrap contract. To put it this way, if the local GM dealership sold you a car which you paid for in full with cash, without making you sign anything but the registration, you drove the car off the lot, and then once you tried to start it up again to leave your house, it refused to start unless you agreed to an entirely different contract, would the fact that the contract was available on a website that the dealership neglected to tell you existed make it any less of a shrinkwrap contract?

I really think the car analogies need to stop as they really don`t work here. Listen when you drive a car off the lot, you`ve used the car. That`s why cars lose 15% in their value as soon as their off the lot. The difference is that when you buy a PS3 you don`t have to agree to anything until you turn on the console and try to use online. You could buy a PS3, look at the EULA online before opening the box and return the PS3 if you don`t like the EULA. We live in a world where you can find ALL EULAs online. Its called clicking on the support page of any website linked to an electronic product that has online capabilities. You can`t exactly say the same thing about cars which is why these analogies need to stop.

The only material difference between car sales and videogame sales is the price difference. To counter your point about cars losing %15 of their value as soon as you drive them off the lot: Videogames do too. They're impossible to return for a full refund after they've been opened -- which you have to do to see the EULA, because let's face it, the online version may as well be on the moon for all the good it does at the actual time of purchase -- and if you try to trade it in as used, I can guarantee that you will lose a whole lot more than %15 of your money. If I listened to every person who said that comparing videogames to other products was comparing apples to oranges, I wouldn't have a single product left to compare them to, because apparently they are completely unique in both the legal and the material world. Of course, if this were the case, none of the laws we're arguing here would apply, because nothing applicable would have been written yet. This clearly isn't the case, so to the gaming community as a whole, please stop acting like videogames are incomparable to any other product on the face of the planet.

But surely you aren't taking the position that shrink-wrapped EULAs are wholly and universally unenforceable. They certainly enjoy some amount of enforceability in New York. See Brower v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 676 N.Y.S.2d 569 (New York Supreme Ct. App. Div. [Aug.] 1998) (holding that a shrink-wrapped EULA resulted in a binding contract being formed when the purchaser retained the software for longer than the 30 day "approve or return" period).

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

this is where it gets really interesting now that anonymous entered the ring :O!

No it wont, it'll just be a shit fight where they both try to slander one another, it's not like Sony or Anonymous are good groups.

I can understand Sony suing people for piracy, but not really for people just tinkering with their machines. I have heard the excuse 'people bought it, they should be able to do whatever they want with it.' Well I have to disagree, just because you by something doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it without legal concerns. If I bought a gun I can't just go down the street and shoot everyone I see.

But then...This Anonymous stuff is getting out of hand, its like a large gathering of hackers and trolls just dicking around at things they don't like. I have read the posts about them, some of the things they do and say are utterly asinine.

In conclusion anonymous is going to hack Sony's websites as a message for Sony to stop hacking, while Sony makes frivolous lawsuits.

 

[Emergent]

If this shit stands, then, at the worst extent, anyone anywhere can do anything they want with the hardware and software, and due to that, added with the piracy, companies aren't going to release anything, games or hardware, no one will get paid, jobs are going to dissipate, companies are going to be closed down, and we're going to get a nice big bowl of fuck all.

It would be fairly easy to commit the same fallacious debate tactic, slippery slope, on the other side of the debate. It has been done already in this thread, of course.

 

[iNsAnEHAV0C]

I'm running out of popcorn and soda because of these attacks! gah.

 

[Brutal Peanut]

You know what I think about this?!

I'm hungry!

 

[JDKJ]

If you think that in-the-box EULAs are not enforceable, you should read the case of Brower v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 676 N.Y.S.2d 569 (New York Supreme Ct. App. Div. [Aug.] 1998). If you're too busy to do so, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version: the court found that a shrink-wrapped EULA resulted in a binding contract being formed when the purchaser retained the software for longer than the 30 day "approve or return" period.

you cant return your PS3 buddy.

My name ain't Buddy and I ain't your buddy. And you can get stuck with a PS3 that you don't want because you're not inclined to agree with Sony's EULA terms, if you want. That's you. But it ain't me. I'm taking that PS3 back to where I bought it and you can bet, sure as God made lil' green apples, that I ain't getting stuck with it. I do the sticking. Never the other way around.

 

[jakefongloo]

I love it how Hackers appear to think that hacking and causing damage to other people's property will somehow win over the public.

This is fucking stupid, regardless of which side you are on.

/thread
this buisness needs to stop i don't even care who wins anymore. Thank GOD I picked a 360 because if I had to deal with this shit or will have to deal with this shit I'd just drop my PS off at an orphanage or something.
Sony or the hackers need to suck it up or fuck it up, someone needs to stop being such a crybaby over this.

However this would make a decent moral choice question.

 

[Tdc2182]

Yet they ignore Activision...

 

[DudeistBelieve]

How very stale, Anon, very stale. *rolls eyes* did you give up on your war with the Phelps family you Hap Hazard Ballsack TeaBaggin' Internet Batman?

NANANANANANA BATSACK ATTACK!

If you think that in-the-box EULAs are not enforceable, you should read the case of Brower v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 676 N.Y.S.2d 569 (New York Supreme Ct. App. Div. [Aug.] 1998). If you're too busy to do so, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version: the court found that a shrink-wrapped EULA resulted in a binding contract being formed when the purchaser retained the software for longer than the 30 day "approve or return" period.

you cant return your PS3 buddy.

My name ain't Buddy and I ain't your buddy. And you can get stuck with a PS3 that you don't want because you're not inclined to agree with Sony's EULA terms, if you want. That's you. But it ain't me. I'm taking that PS3 back to where I bought it and you can bet, sure as God made lil' green apples, that I ain't getting stuck with it. I do the sticking. Never the other way around.

30 Days isn't long enough to decide whether you agree with the EULA?

 

[jakefongloo]

[rant]

Why does everyone think that sony is in the wrong? They had their product exposed, their company embarrassed, and their sales likely damaged by the hack. People argue that Hotz (This guy makes me ashamed to live in New Jersey) had a right to hack it, and that Sony didn't have any right to complain, but WHEN YOU HIT THE ACCEPT BUTTON ON THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU SIGN AWAY YOUR RIGHTS. Fair, and simple. He had zero legal right to do what he did.

Also worth noting, Hotz is up-to-the-brim full of himself. He's an asshole, just watch his rap.



Another argument that people make is "Oh, what about homebrew? That's a GOOD thing!"

Wake the fuck up. Do you really think that's what people are gonna use it for? They're going to hack games till the tree has fallen. It happened. CoD was ruined until Sony fixed it.

And the ps3 doesn't need homebrew anyways.

I am sad to see anonymous making such a stupid and ignorant choice.

[/rant]

Reading your entire rant which is indeed well informed and well thought out, the only thing I can focus on is that part in the middle with the shame and the New Jersey....."The Situation" wasn't enough?
I agree with your post whole heartedly, but that part made me lolz.

This is what irritates me about anon, for all their good press and righteous vengeance on the man, what have they achieved? Ever? Put out a public claim of disliking something, maybe launch a few Denial of Service attacks, move on to the next target and repeat the process. So far, all they've done is given internet people something to be smug about.

As for GeoHotz, screw him. He publicly makes a show of defying his licensing agreement and then acts victimized when Sony does exactly what that licensing agreement says that they'd do.

Gamers need to get over this idea that they have some inviolable right to tinker with software or hardware because they bought it. They didn't. They may have bought a console but they don't own the specs or the source code or the software, they just licensed it. Now there are definitely problems with that and I'm not entirely convinced software companies aren't getting the long end of the stick, but if you don't like it your option is to NOT BUY A PS3. You can live without one. This isn't health care or affordable housing, this is a luxury gaming system.

And as much as its easy to point at Sony as Goliath and the little hacker as David, frankly this has nothing to do with size. Remember the Humble Indie Bundle? Five games for a penny with no DRM? How 25% of the copies were still pirated? PIRATES ARE NOT HEROES! They're little selfish materialists who work completely for themselves.

Rock on man I tried to say what you're saying but I kinda failed at it.

 

[similar.squirrel]

I am genuinely surprised that it has taken this long.

 

[qeinar]

I hope that one of them screws up and gets caught, and in turn, rats out more of them.

When you mess with the PS3s software, you're not "tinkering with something you own", you're tinkering with something you're leasing. Huge difference.

thing is "ratting out" someone you only know the e-name someone uses is kinda hard, especially since if your a member of anon you wouldn't use the same name anywhere else.. (unless your a retard) so they can't really track you or blame you for anything if some dude they caught for hacking is saying *random e name* also has done some hacking.

 

[qeinar]

Anonymous has no official position on ps3.
ANONYMOUS HAS A VERY FUCKING OFFICIAL POSITION ON LULZ.

As a member of anonymous I declare you incorrect.

Now what're you gonna do about it?

That was a joke based off a quote from something Anonymous said a while back in a press release guide for journalists -_-;

Anonymous has no official position on abortion
Anonymous has no official position on tax policy
Anonymous has no official position on health care
Anonymous has no official position on collective bargaining agreements
Anonymous has no official position on campaign finance reform
Anonymous has no official position on the Tea Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Democratic Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Republican Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Green Party
Anonymous has no official position on global warming
Anonymous has no official position on off-shore drilling
Anonymous has no official position on budget deficits
Anonymous has no official position on George Soros
Anonymous has no official position on the Koch brothers
Anonymous has no official position on Fox News
Anonymous has no official position on MSNBC
Anonymous has no official position on CNN
Anonymous has no official position on NAFTA
Anonymous has no official position on the IMF or World Bank
Anonymous has no official position on Wall Street
Anonymous has no official position on entitlement programs
Anonymous has no official position on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Anonymous has a very fucking official position on LULZ

Also, not meaning to sound like an ass, but you sound like a newfag. Going LOLZ I ARE ANON makes you look like a bit of a tool.

your not really anonymous if your saying you are. : p

 

[Ashenrook]

While I have been a silent supporter of Anon when they mobilized against the Church of Scientology and the Westboro Baptist Church, I will say that this attack against Sony is sort of... silly.

To parrot what others have said, DoSing a company website in protest of persecution of a hacker...? Seems kind of nonconducive to me, but? Anonymous is Anonymous. They do as they please.

 

[JDKJ]

How very stale, Anon, very stale. *rolls eyes* did you give up on your war with the Phelps family you Hap Hazard Ballsack TeaBaggin' Internet Batman?

NANANANANANA BATSACK ATTACK!

If you think that in-the-box EULAs are not enforceable, you should read the case of Brower v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 676 N.Y.S.2d 569 (New York Supreme Ct. App. Div. [Aug.] 1998). If you're too busy to do so, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version: the court found that a shrink-wrapped EULA resulted in a binding contract being formed when the purchaser retained the software for longer than the 30 day "approve or return" period.

you cant return your PS3 buddy.

My name ain't Buddy and I ain't your buddy. And you can get stuck with a PS3 that you don't want because you're not inclined to agree with Sony's EULA terms, if you want. That's you. But it ain't me. I'm taking that PS3 back to where I bought it and you can bet, sure as God made lil' green apples, that I ain't getting stuck with it. I do the sticking. Never the other way around.

30 Days isn't long enough to decide whether you agree with the EULA?

It's about 29 days too long.