Sony Threatens to Ban PS3 Hackers Forever

HyenaThePirate

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Jumplion said:
HyenaThePirate said:
This. Jump, you hit it right on the head.

Don't get me wrong people, I have no love for people who pirate games. I pay hard earned money for games and I want to KEEP playing those games. I want those developers to be profitable so they keep making games to entertain me. Piracy hurts the industry as a whole, and I agree that something to some extent must be done to combat the problem.

However, THESE types of actions don't help. Banning people who already decided they weren't going to pay if they could help it for games is a futile effort. I mean, how many pirates actually play online anyway? And worse, these measures only punish people who legitimately just wanted to customize their system out of preferences. Like I said, it really, REALLY would be nice to be able to change the dashboard's font color. Such a simple thing, but Sony denies it to me. Being able to organize my files in a more efficient manner? Why can't I do this? Why is it such a pain to deal with playlists for music?

But instead of recognizing these issues and trying to improve the experience, Sony faffs around on a pointless crusade to combat an enemy they will never be able to eradicate. Bigger and better companies have tried. And they have all failed. These cat and mouse games with hackers and modders accomplish nothing while robbing legitimate consumers of the attention they deserve.
I'm getting a distinct anti-Sony vibe here, but I wasn't trying to make Sony, or the hackers, look like the "good/bad guy" here. It doesn't matter who you support because, in the end, nobody, and I mean nobody, wins.

I see Sony's concern, you have no idea which hackers are the "legit" ones who just want to change the font color of the text and which ones are the pirate hackers who want to take the games. It's better to just to one fell swoop to anyone who hacks and leave no stone unturned. They're trying to protect their business and their security, and they're trying to keep their service protective to their legitimate users.

I see the hacker's (not pirates, there's a distinction) complaint as well, while I don't think the "Other OS" feature was "advertised" (seriously, nobody has yet to explain to me what constitutes as "advertising", I doubt mentioning it on an online manual counts. Were there any actual advertisements that said "Install other OSs!"?) or even that big of a deal, it was questionable as to why Sony removed it. Their reason for removing it is debatable, but that doesn't matter now as it's gone. To a certain extent, sure, people should be able to do what they want with their hardware/software (again, debatable as to what you're actually modifying and whether or not it's under a Terms of Service or whatever).

But it's not like either side is helping the other. Sony is still trying to be protective of it's service by spreading it's butter as far as they can, and some legitimate hackers are getting punished for it. Meanwhile, on the hackers side, it doesn't help that they released security information, and have the potential to cause extreme damage to Sony. That, and some of them are douches [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107733-Sued-PS3-Hacker-GeoHot-Responds-With-Rap] (though I have absolutely no taste in rap, so that could be hip-hop gold for all I know).

Nobody wins in the end. In fact, ironically enough, and sadly, I don't think Sony has really done anything to the pirates. They tried to attack the pirates, but ended up going through the hacker coastline while trying to get to the Pirate Bay. So they've made quite a hefty number of enemies, and in the end I don't think they've accomplished what they had hoped.

I support Sony's decisions regarding anti-piracy measures. I support the hacker's rights to their hardware/software (to an extent). I don't support how these three fronts, the Developer/Publisher, the Hacker, and the Pirate, have screwed it up for the Consumer.
Well said. And I agree. That was essentially my point, except that I'm perturbed that Sony would waste their time in the futile efforts of combating pirates instead of focusing on delivering A+++ content to their actual PAYING customers. I mean, who is more important, the people actually WILLING to give you money, or the people who weren't ever going to pay you no matter what you did?

Anyway, all I know is that it pisses me off when Sony focuses on this nonsense instead of other things. I mean the most decent games their system has is a handful of sequels to other games that were already part of decent properties. God Of War 3, Uncharted, Killzone...
Not much else I care about right now. Where the HELL is my Yakuza 4 (Yakuza 3 was good though) and where is my latest Dragon Quest title?

Worry about THAT stuff, and get over the pirate wars.
 

blind_dead_mcjones

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HyenaThePirate said:
Well said. And I agree. That was essentially my point, except that I'm perturbed that Sony would waste their time in the futile efforts of combating pirates instead of focusing on delivering A+++ content to their actual PAYING customers. I mean, who is more important, the people actually WILLING to give you money, or the people who weren't ever going to pay you no matter what you did?
their reaction isn't really surprising, issues like piracy and hacking tend to make people very angry and/or upset, and people in that mindset are not known for thinking/behaving rationally

also at the end of the day, like most large buisnesses sony is answerable to its shareholders first and foremost, and if they feel that piracy/hacking threatens them they're going to make it known in which the company will do their damndest to appease said shareholders so they don't walk elsewhere, its the nature of the beast, course there is one way around this but that involves becomming a shareholder (as the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), then and only then would you have a say in how the company does things
 

Jumplion

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HyenaThePirate said:
Well said. And I agree. That was essentially my point, except that I'm perturbed that Sony would waste their time in the futile efforts of combating pirates instead of focusing on delivering A+++ content to their actual PAYING customers. I mean, who is more important, the people actually WILLING to give you money, or the people who weren't ever going to pay you no matter what you did?

Anyway, all I know is that it pisses me off when Sony focuses on this nonsense instead of other things. I mean the most decent games their system has is a handful of sequels to other games that were already part of decent properties. God Of War 3, Uncharted, Killzone...
Not much else I care about right now. Where the HELL is my Yakuza 4 (Yakuza 3 was good though) and where is my latest Dragon Quest title?

Worry about THAT stuff, and get over the pirate wars.
Isn't Yakuza 4 coming out soon? I could have sworn I saw a hands on video preview of it...

And nobody has answered my "What is considered 'advertising'" question yet! I don't think saying there's an "Install Other OS" feature in the manual really counts, does it? That'd be pretty stupid, I'd say.
 

blind_dead_mcjones

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Jumplion said:
And nobody has answered my "What is considered 'advertising'" question yet! I don't think saying there's an "Install Other OS" feature in the manual really counts, does it? That'd be pretty stupid, I'd say.
i thought it was a rhetorical question, cos it'd pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that it being written in a manual doesn't count, and if it does its rather redundant considering that to have the manual you'd have already bought the thing in the first place
 

W00ty32

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drummodino said:
HyenaThePirate said:
Well here's a suggestion.

How about, anyone who doesn't like being told what they are allowed to do with their $300 product they purchased in good faith with expectations of being able to do with it what they want simply not BUY your system Sony?

Seems to me Sony forgets how much money they were losing not TWO YEARS AGO when their platform was wallowing in last place and they were hemorraging cash.

I mean, for frak's sake, why can't I change the bloody color of the FONT yet on the dashboard? Is there a way to pirate games using that feature?! What about my ability to use any harddrive I want? What about my preference to use Linux? What about being able to better organize my music folders?

Instead of bitching about what people are trying to work around your draconian rules for a product they PURCHASED from you willingly, you concentrate on making the product more efficient and appealing? Like I don't know, making more GAMES? Because as an RPG player, I can literally count the decent RPG's on the PS3 on ONE hand, and all the rest of the RPG's with the other.

The way things stand right now, if my 60 gig PS3 ever gives up the ghost, I won't be buying a new one to replace it.
Iglock said:
This.

This is the reason I have CFW on my PSP- not because I pirate games and want to "steal" Sony's monies. Simply because without it, the PSP sucks. CFW allows me to totally customise my PSP, play ripped copies of my legally bought and owned ps1 games and use loads of other awesome software (pdf readers etc etc).

If Sony (although it's not just Sony, other companies too) actually spent their time making their official software better than it's custom counterpart instead of hunting down and punishing those who use custom software etc- maybe more people would feel inclined to actually use the official software and services...

Just a thought.
How about you stop bitching about the ps3 and look at it from sony's point of view. Sure you may prefer the other options and not play hacked games, but how are they to know that? Piracy is gonna be costing them thousands if not millions of dollars and they are taking measures to minimise those losses. If your so pissed about the ps3 features and/or games get a PC or 360.
Game Pirated=/= lost sale.
 

Giantpanda602

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TK421 said:
Giantpanda602 said:
MercurySteam said:
And while Sony threatens pirates, Microsoft has already banned a million [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96037-Microsoft-Bans-up-to-One-Million-Xbox-Live-Accounts] in one go.

Pick up the pace Sony, PSN needs cleaning.
The only reason Microsoft has already had to ban a million people is because a million people have hacked there crap system.
Don't you mean "their crap system?" And the reason Sony is doing this is because they obviously have a problem with hacking too.
It's called literacy and common sense. You should invest in some.
Whoa, why the hostility? I'm not even a fanboy (sorta). I really wanted an Xbox until I heard that they dropped the price of the PS3 and I got that instead.
 

Jumplion

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blind_dead_mcjones said:
Jumplion said:
And nobody has answered my "What is considered 'advertising'" question yet! I don't think saying there's an "Install Other OS" feature in the manual really counts, does it? That'd be pretty stupid, I'd say.
i thought it was a rhetorical question, cos it'd pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that it being written in a manual doesn't count, and if it does its rather redundant considering that to have the manual you'd have already bought the thing in the first place
So, yeah, what the hell does counts as advertising? I honestly want to know, but nobody has answered me yet. Everyone going around, saying "This is false advertising, Sony advertised this feature, therefore they removed an advertised feature that they advertised about!" and I'm thinking, "What, there was a TV commercial that said 'Install Other OS!'?"

Seriously, can someone answer me here?
 

blind_dead_mcjones

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Jumplion said:
So, yeah, what the hell does counts as advertising? I honestly want to know, but nobody has answered me yet. Everyone going around, saying "This is false advertising, Sony advertised this feature, therefore they removed an advertised feature that they advertised about!" and I'm thinking, "What, there was a TV commercial that said 'Install Other OS!'?"

Seriously, can someone answer me here?
to put it bluntly, almost anything can count as advertising, it is a massive grey area, but strictly speaking its generally to be in form of ads, so unless someone can provde an ad from a newspaper, tv and the like from Sony stating that the PS3 has the otherOs feaure, then most likely it wasn't advertised

however, even if the otherOS feature was advertised, what almost everyone (particulary the ones crying that sony can't remove features) has overlooked is that companies like sony always have clauses attached to the product, stating that they reserve the right to alter and/or remove any features of their product as they see fit (especially if it could result in their product being used for industrial espionage) in short legally speaking they can remove whatever they damn well please from their prodcts whenever they want.
 

Drummodino

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Jan 2, 2011
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W00ty32 said:
drummodino said:
HyenaThePirate said:
Well here's a suggestion.

How about, anyone who doesn't like being told what they are allowed to do with their $300 product they purchased in good faith with expectations of being able to do with it what they want simply not BUY your system Sony?

Seems to me Sony forgets how much money they were losing not TWO YEARS AGO when their platform was wallowing in last place and they were hemorraging cash.

I mean, for frak's sake, why can't I change the bloody color of the FONT yet on the dashboard? Is there a way to pirate games using that feature?! What about my ability to use any harddrive I want? What about my preference to use Linux? What about being able to better organize my music folders?

Instead of bitching about what people are trying to work around your draconian rules for a product they PURCHASED from you willingly, you concentrate on making the product more efficient and appealing? Like I don't know, making more GAMES? Because as an RPG player, I can literally count the decent RPG's on the PS3 on ONE hand, and all the rest of the RPG's with the other.

The way things stand right now, if my 60 gig PS3 ever gives up the ghost, I won't be buying a new one to replace it.
Iglock said:
This.

This is the reason I have CFW on my PSP- not because I pirate games and want to "steal" Sony's monies. Simply because without it, the PSP sucks. CFW allows me to totally customise my PSP, play ripped copies of my legally bought and owned ps1 games and use loads of other awesome software (pdf readers etc etc).

If Sony (although it's not just Sony, other companies too) actually spent their time making their official software better than it's custom counterpart instead of hunting down and punishing those who use custom software etc- maybe more people would feel inclined to actually use the official software and services...

Just a thought.
How about you stop bitching about the ps3 and look at it from sony's point of view. Sure you may prefer the other options and not play hacked games, but how are they to know that? Piracy is gonna be costing them thousands if not millions of dollars and they are taking measures to minimise those losses. If your so pissed about the ps3 features and/or games get a PC or 360.
Game Pirated=/= lost sale.
Maybe not always, but every gamer is going to buy some games. If they pirate every game which some will, then the games they would have bought they now didn't. That sounds like a lost sale to me.
 

TK421

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Giantpanda602 said:
Whoa, why the hostility? I'm not even a fanboy (sorta). I really wanted an Xbox until I heard that they dropped the price of the PS3 and I got that instead.
My bad man. Was really tired and took long math test earlier.
 

Radelaide

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Microsoft did it first. It's a decent idea. I mean, obviously if you hack your console, you really don't care if you get to play online or not because OMIGOSH, LOTS OF GAMES!

I can't wait till everyone goes, "It's my console! I can do what I want" and we have to call the waaaaaaah-mbulance.

Oh wait...

HyenaThePirate said:
Well here's a suggestion.

How about, anyone who doesn't like being told what they are allowed to do with their $300 product they purchased in good faith with expectations of being able to do with it what they want simply not BUY your system Sony?

Seems to me Sony forgets how much money they were losing not TWO YEARS AGO when their platform was wallowing in last place and they were hemorraging cash.

I mean, for frak's sake, why can't I change the bloody color of the FONT yet on the dashboard? Is there a way to pirate games using that feature?! What about my ability to use any harddrive I want? What about my preference to use Linux? What about being able to better organize my music folders?

Instead of bitching about what people are trying to work around your draconian rules for a product they PURCHASED from you willingly, you concentrate on making the product more efficient and appealing? Like I don't know, making more GAMES? Because as an RPG player, I can literally count the decent RPG's on the PS3 on ONE hand, and all the rest of the RPG's with the other.

The way things stand right now, if my 60 gig PS3 ever gives up the ghost, I won't be buying a new one to replace it.

/unintentional flame bait.
 

Ca3zar416

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Stop pulling away features that were promised to us and that we expected to have when we bought your produce and then we can talk. I agree people who use hacks to cheat should be punished. But, restoring the ability to install linux which was promised? That is a function that I 100% believe everyone has the right to restore.
 

VGC USpartan VS

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The guys at Sony said a long time ago that the PS3 was gonna be open for Linux and stuff like that... I'd hate to continue the console wars but... plus 1 for Microsaoft.
 

linkvegeta

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You know I think that it should not be this big of a deal, if the hacker are hacking to steal or pirate stuff I can understand the ban, but if they are hacking to customize or whatever the ps3 then i say all the power to them. And for the people hacking to customize their ps3 to make it better just do with the old warranty is void because it has been tampered with.
 

blind_dead_mcjones

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Ca3zar416 said:
Stop pulling away features that were promised to us and that we expected to have when we bought your produce and then we can talk. I agree people who use hacks to cheat should be punished. But, restoring the ability to install linux which was promised? That is a function that I 100% believe everyone has the right to restore.
VGC USpartan VS said:
The guys at Sony said a long time ago that the PS3 was gonna be open for Linux and stuff like that... I'd hate to continue the console wars but... plus 1 for Microsaoft.
citation needed, also, like i netioned earlier, you will probably find a clause stating that sony reserves the right to add, alter, modify and/or remove any features from their products as they see fit, every company has clauses like that attached to their products and services

linkvegeta said:
You know I think that it should not be this big of a deal, if the hacker are hacking to steal or pirate stuff I can understand the ban, but if they are hacking to customize or whatever the ps3 then i say all the power to them. And for the people hacking to customize their ps3 to make it better just do with the old warranty is void because it has been tampered with.
but how do you tell the difference between the two on sony's end? you can't exactly send out a survey as half of everyone will just lie about they use if for, plus what if one of their PS3's is used to conduct industrial espionage? sony would then be in a huge world of shit if that occured
 

Zarthek

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In my opinion it would be pretty awesome if they didn't give any warning, just wait another month and do a Blizzard scale mass ban of all hackers, those things are awesome.
 

Ca3zar416

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blind_dead_mcjones said:
Ca3zar416 said:
Stop pulling away features that were promised to us and that we expected to have when we bought your produce and then we can talk. I agree people who use hacks to cheat should be punished. But, restoring the ability to install linux which was promised? That is a function that I 100% believe everyone has the right to restore.
VGC USpartan VS said:
The guys at Sony said a long time ago that the PS3 was gonna be open for Linux and stuff like that... I'd hate to continue the console wars but... plus 1 for Microsaoft.
citation needed, also, like i netioned earlier, you will probably find a clause stating that sony reserves the right to add, alter, modify and/or remove any features from their products as they see fit, every company has clauses like that attached to their products and services

linkvegeta said:
You know I think that it should not be this big of a deal, if the hacker are hacking to steal or pirate stuff I can understand the ban, but if they are hacking to customize or whatever the ps3 then i say all the power to them. And for the people hacking to customize their ps3 to make it better just do with the old warranty is void because it has been tampered with.
but how do you tell the difference between the two on sony's end? you can't exactly send out a survey as half of everyone will just lie about they use if for, plus what if one of their PS3's is used to conduct industrial espionage? sony would then be in a huge world of shit if that occured
Backwards engineering like that is 100% legal. The same question came up when the same kid hacked the iphone years ago. It's all legal.