Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates

Sam writes "A former Ubisoft exec believes that Sony will not be able to combat piracy on the PlayStation 3, which was recently hacked. Martin Walfisz, former CEO of Ubisoft subsidiary Ubisoft Massive, was a key player in developing Ubisoft's new DRM technologies. Since playing pirated games doesn't require a modchip, his argument is that Sony won't be able to easily detect hacked consoles. Sony's only possible solution is to revise the PS3 hardware itself, which would be a very costly process. Changing the hardware could possibly work for new console sales, though there would be the problem of backwards compatibility with the already-released games. Furthermore, current users would still be able to run pirated copies on current hardware." An anonymous reader adds commentary from PS3 hacker Mathieu Hervais about Sony's legal posturing.

Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[Viol8]

Real evil is children being massacred in tribal wars, real evil is people being tortured in prison cells. Real evil is NOT a company trying to protect its profits no matter how much you dislike it.

A PS3 is hardly a critical item to 21st century life. If you didn't like the way SOny played ball you shouldn't have bought one - vote with your wallet. I get tired of kids whining about how unfair it is that they can't do [some hacker thing] with [insert name of expensive consumer kit here]. Life is unfair - deal. That doesn't make it evil.

Piracy..?

[bhunachchicken]

What's all this talk about piracy? As far as I understood it, people were cracking the PS3 so that they could install Linux and run homebrew...

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[pspahn]

I don't think it's really ethical to force a firmware update on someone without giving them the chance to accept it or not. For whatever reasons there are, you should always allow the user to avoid a potential brick by letting them choose when to update.

Re:Enough with the "Evil" hyperbole

[KiloByte]

This is a very insignificant battle in the war against culture.

But that war is more important IMO than a war against mere lives. Having peace won't get you free dissemination of ideas, free dissemination of ideas is a doom to oppressive rulers.

Enough with one dimensional views of Evil

[manekineko2]

Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, BP, and many others thank you for your strict limitation on what "real" evil is.

After all, they're just companies trying to protect their profits.

Re:Enabling online cheating on PSN

[Pentium100]

You don't understand it, do you? If pirated MP3 were not available, iTunes would have sold it's 500 TRILLIONTH song last year. Not only that, but various other MP3 stores would sell a lot of music too. People would have bought every single track they (now) have downloaded for free, everyone would pay thousands of dollars each month for music (doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).

Same with games, if pirated copies were not available, then Sony would not need to shut down its CD factory, it would need to open a new one.

Also, now that it is possible to pirate PS3 games, nobody will be buying them, anybody actually buying a PS3 game is an illusion and does not really exist. After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.

Re:Evil commenting on evil

[hjf]

The noble response here would be to take your business elsewhere.

Yeah? Where? All console makers charge the same price. I should just NOT play games? Should I resort to a Balero (Cup-and-ball) only because that's the "noble" thing to do?

Perhaps that's considered too passive or cowardly where you are from. Maybe your culture expects a more active response.

You, as an american, don't have the moral authority to say that. America is all about suing your way through life. You don't like something? Sue away!