Sony Taking Down PSP Titles In Response To Vita Hackers 293
Carlos Rodriguez writes "The hacker community has found a way to make the Vita run unsigned code by exploiting weaknesses in PSP games available for download in the PSN store. In response, Sony has made the affected games unavailable for download for all platforms — PSP and Vita both — even if you had already paid for it and hadn't had the chance to download it yet. In the case of 'Everybody's Tennis', the game was removed from the PSN worldwide after the modder community bragged about the game being exploitable but before any exploit was released for it. Is Sony being too overzealous in its fight against piracy?"
Too overzealous? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean overzealous? Or Too zealous?
Are they going to repost after fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If so.....then they did the right thing and I don't see the problem here.
If, on the other hand, they just never put them back up and don't refund the people who purchased these games.....then there's a problem.
Oh boy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Guys, they're a company out to make profit, and they're going to put the game back up in time.
ANY company would do the same thing if suddenly they're product they were expecting revenue from was suddenly able to be accessed for free.
I'm not discounting that Sony does a lot of scummy stuff, but is not one of them in my eyes.
I'm going to take such a huge karma hit for this comment, how dare I go against the flow.
Thanks for educating people Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony is educating millions on the power of Digital Rights Management (DRM). The more educated, informed and angry people we have the better.
I am sure Sony's licensing agreement says "Sony does not have to provide anything for your money". I would love to see the lawsuits flame up over this. Of course the agreement will also say "contests to the agreement must happen in East Texas(or whichever jurisdiction is most favorable to Sony)" and that that the customer waives the right to class actions lawsuits.
If you are being shafted by Sony on this sorry, see if you can get a class action lawsuit going and buts that "customer (dis)agreement. If you are not being shafted by Sony, lets thank Sony for the education on DRM it is providing to a wide range of the public.
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony used to be a respected company (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! Back in the day (70s-80s) Sony made some cool stuff - I'm talking about Trinitron tvs, open-reel tape machines and awesome stereos. The quality was amazing. A popular "rule-of-thumb" was you can gauge the quality of a CRT-based telly was how heavy it was - Sony was always heaviest!!!! Until some competitors were caught adding lead(?) weights into the tv box!!
Sony is a sad shadow of it's former self.
Well done Sony you are on the road to utter irrelevance.
Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
really? i find their TV's to be over priced for what is delivered. The quality is good, but samsung makes comprable displays for 60-70% the cost.
I won't touch their hardware, either (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of their hardware, either. In 2000, I bought a Sony home theater system, thinking I was getting good quality with the "good" brand. Within a few months, the DVD changer got jammed and I couldn't watch any DVDs on it. It was under warranty so I sent it in to be repaired. They kept it for almost two months. I was absolutely livid. When they finally sent it back, it had a nasty scratch down the left side, and the icing on the cake was that it STILL didn't work! So I unplugged the thing, stuck it right back in the box that I had just gotten it out of, and sent it back. I waited a few more weeks, finally got it back, and this time it worked, though I was still pissed off at the scratch.
Within a month after the anniversary date of my purchase, all of a sudden, the center channel speaker started making this hideous noise. It wasn't the speaker, it was the port on the system the speaker was plugged into. If I swapped it out with a different speaker, the different speaker made the noise. I couldn't hear crap, so I called them back up. They said they'd be happy to repair it--for a few hundred bucks. I explained that although more than a calendar year had passed since I bought the thing, it had been in their repair facilities for over two of those twelve months, and I felt that they should give me credit for that time and repair the thing for free. They refused to budge.
So I unplugged the damn thing, hauled it to an electronics recycling center, and swore never to knowingly buy another piece of Sony hardware again. I had such a bitter taste in my mouth from the experience that I didn't even buy a replacement component; to this day, I just use the speakers on my television. Wow, things sure have changed since the days I wrote a script to hit Amazon's site and page me when a PS2 was available so that I could get one on launch day. After all of the other crap that's gone down, the root kit, the other OS option, the PSN hackage, the filesharing lawsuits, stories like this hitting WAY too often... I used to be a Sony fan, but for ten years now, and for the foreseeable future, I wouldn't use their stuff even if someone gave it to me for free. Which is a shame for Sony, since in the past ten years I've finally gotten enough disposable income to afford fancy electronics. And as the techno-geek in my family and circle of friends, I've also advised many consumers with money in hand to avoid their stuff.
Re:It hurts (Score:4, Insightful)
People said the same thing about MS and Apple, the problem is that most consumers have a nasty case of beaten wife syndrome.
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
The group of people who understand the nature of Sony, the relevance of this kind of behavior, or care at all is relatively small.
Lest we forget, after the PSN hack and all that personal info got stolen, the absolute loudest cry was from gamers who wanted the PSN back up ASAP. The people who understood the nature of Sony's fuckup and that a huge chunk of their personal info just got stolen make up a very tiny portion of Sony's customer base.
In addition to that, people are just plain used to companies being evil. It just happens that Sony is evil in a way that is particularily relevant to us. It's important to remind ourselves that the rest of the world really doesn't care about this stuff.
Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
You buy from Sony *and* Apple and say you're not a masochist? They're the two biggest offenders when it comes to control of content, proprietary formats and connectors and abuse of customers. You may be in denial.