Sony Threatens PS3 Hackers With Legal Action 104
Eurogamer reports that Sony is going after users sidestepping the PlayStation 3's protection software. Firmware 1.10 and 1.11 have both been cracked, and as a result illegal game copies can be booted from the console. "Booting games and playing them are two different things, however; so far, hackers have not been able to get any of the copied games to run, nor have they been able to run homebrew software. Every hardware launch brings with it a race for hackers to defeat the system's protections, whether for the technological challenge, to run copied software, or to allow for homebrew games. Despite Sony's attempts to prevent its emergence, the PSP has a strong homebrew community - and hackers are doubtless hoping to establish a similar base for PS3."
Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nintendo's better than that (Score:1, Offtopic)
Nintendo recently announced (citation missing) a homebrew contest on the Wii.
Makes me glad my roommate bought one, although my arm hurts today...
Re:Nintendo's better than that (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, it appears that you don't RTFA.
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yes, aside from the part where sony is threatening to sue and nintendo is not (yet, but i'll give them the benefit of the doubt).
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The Wii is a great console and all, but I don't know that I'd go quite that far to convince someone to let me use theirs. Have a little dignity.
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Wrong. Read again: http://wii-news.dcemu.co.uk/nintendo-wii-amp-gamec ube-coders-contest-2007-65730.html [dcemu.co.uk]
Another night of furious jerking of your "Wii" to images of Princess Toadstool? :)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
It's significantly different, from the average joe computer user point of view, than downloading mp3's or whatever. Once you have a cracked mp3, the file is easy to distribute and get at. Which is one of the reasons why music DRM is so dumb. The files are all pretty easily accessible online to anyone who wants to look at them. But with game consoles, downloading a game and putting it on a DVD generally isn't enough. You need to hack the console, sometimes through some software flaws, often through hardware modification. Even if the hardware mod is relatively easy, the need to crack the case is enough to keep most people out. If Napster required you to solder a chip onto your computer's motherboard in order to download music, it's doubtful anyone outside of tech nerds would've heard much about it.
And the oblig counter-point (Score:2)
_And_ please consider this: Sony likes to present circumventing region coding as some form of piracy. Heck, even without any copying or hacking the console or anything. Even just buying an original DVD from Japan to play on your imported PS2 counts as piracy for Sony, or at least they'll try to handwave it as such.
Now I'll admit I don't know whethe
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I just don't understand that. You're pissed off at how you're treated by a company, yet you continue to buy its products?
Sony has pissed me off to high heaven for numerous reasons. I will never buy ANY Sony product. EVER.
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I guess mostly because it took a really long time to get sufficiently pissed off about it. Generally I just cared about playing the games, and I didn't really care about Sony's bullshit games. Sure, it was an annoyance that Sony doesn't want to sell me those games, but, meh, I cared about the game, not about making a point.
Now you can say that that's just contributing to the problem... and you'd be right too.
Re:And the oblig counter-point (Score:5, Informative)
But you have to understand, the people who install modchips on their consoles are far far more likely doing it to play pirated games than to avoid the region codes. I understand why they do that. And if they would just get rid of the region crap, you wouldn't be frustrated at all. Really, I am sure you aren't the person Sony was trying to target...it is the people who want to do bad things.
But all this is moot to you if the PS3 doesn't have region encoding. And I am not sure if this is true now, but here is a past
Really, you have to be careful on slashdot or you turn in to the same type of sheeple. Everything Sony does isn't evil. Everything that Nintendo does isn't good. Everyone out there wants your money and some just pretend to be nicer than others.
Re:Region games (Score:2, Interesting)
I really don't see a legitimate reason for trying to hack the PS3. If you want home brew apps, install Linux on it. If you want that game from Japan that you can't get in your own country, buy it and place the disk in the drive. Apart from hacking it just for bragging rights, or to play pirated games, there real
RSX lockout, PS2 lockout, PS1 lockout (Score:2)
I really don't see a legitimate reason for trying to hack the PS3. If you want home brew apps, install Linux on it.
How do I access the extra 256 MiB of RAM in the RSX chip from Linux, even if only to use it as a RAM disk for a swap file? How do I access the RSX blitter, even if only to speed up 2D operations in X?
If you want that game from Japan that you can't get in your own country, buy it and place the disk in the drive.
Then how do I convince the publisher of the PS1 or PS2 game to port it to the PS3 so that it won't have a region lockout on it?
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How do I access the extra 256 MiB of RAM in the RSX chip from Linux, even if only to use it as a RAM disk for a swap file? How do I access the RSX blitter, even if only to speed up 2D operations in X?
Even though your question is a moot point in this case, I will address it. In short, you cannot access the RSX directly. But here is why your question in this case is moot: The hack doesn't affect hyper visor functionality under Linux. It bypasses the copy-protection on the PS3. That is all it does and was designed to do.
To answer your second question, you can convince any publisher as long as you show them enough money.
In all seriousness, why don't you ask Sony on their new blog to allow region free
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Re:And the oblig counter-point (Score:4, Informative)
I have to disagree with you here.
Region codes on games have purposes. Games sometimes have licensed content - and the costs of licensing that content can very depending on where the game will be distributed. It may be cheaper to license that music track for US audiences only, or the company they licensed the content from may themselves have the rights to the content for only certain countries. Japanese DDR games are a prime example - they're region coded because they've licensed the content for Japan only.
There are probably games that region code when they don't serve a purpose, but I'd like to believe that this is minimal because doing so can only hurt profits. I suspect that most game region coding is there for a reason.
Konamix? (Score:2)
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I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea or that I like it. I'm just saying that I see reasons why it's done.
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When a game is localized for another country, it's often done through a different company - for instance Atlus does a lot of English translations of smaller Japanese titles for the US market.
If you imported a copy of one of the games they did, then you aren't paying the local distributor (Atlus) for your copy.
Granted - this is a VERY tennuous argument here. Usually, t
French, Spanish, German, and Italian (Score:2)
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If they're already localizing into 1 language (English into Japanese or Japanese into English) why not do the other languages at the same time? It's not rocket science, just smart project management.
It can't cost more than a few hundred grand per language and when we're talking millions for just the initial game development, that's a small price to pay to gain access to millions of additional customers.
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If they're already localizing into 1 language (English into Japanese or Japanese into English) why not do the other languages at the same time?
Because the number of customers per language in mainland Europe is smaller than the number of customers per language in Anglophone North America.
It can't cost more than a few hundred grand per language
How much do the developer and publisher sell to each language's speakers, especially if it's a game that needs a lot of voice acting, a lot of signs to be redrawn in another language, and a lot of puns to be rethought?
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Again, that $100k per language I stated includes translating the manual, re-performing the spoken dialog (if necessary - sometimes just subtitles are acceptable), and even rewriting the jokes/puns or making other content changes. The majority of the difficulty and cost for handling different languages is built into the primary development of the product. Really, adding an additional languge just isn't that expensive.
Even
17 USC 602 (Score:3, Interesting)
Even just buying an original DVD from Japan to play on your imported PS2 counts as piracy for Sony, or at least they'll try to handwave it as such.
See Title 17, United States Code, section 602 [bitlaw.com], which bans importing more than one copy of a game. This means that imported handheld games and those imported console games that lack split-screen mode have no multiplayer.
The excuse on movie DVDs was that it eats into theatre ticket sales: someone who bought the US DVD early has often seen the movie that way before it even gets into the theatres.
And because some movies are based on underlying works, and copyrights on these underlying works expire at different times in different countries. For instance, Peter and Wendy and other pre-1923 works in the Peter Pan universe are public domain in the United States, but they are copyrighted
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That limit is most likely not nationwide so if you need multiple copies to play MP it's sufficient if everyone buys his own copy, just as it's intended with locally released games (they don't expect a single user to, say, amass 16 copies of Faceball 2000 just to set up a multiplayer game). Of
Parents with more than one child (Score:2)
That limit is most likely not nationwide so if you need multiple copies to play MP it's sufficient if everyone buys his own copy
Not if you have more than one child and they all have Nintendo DS systems. Then the parent has to buy more than one copy.
they don't expect a single user to, say, amass 16 copies of Faceball 2000 just to set up a multiplayer game
Not sixteen, but even two or three for the two or three children in the household is still a copyright violation.
I disagree (Score:2)
I disagree. Microsoft has shown a better way to control this: when you detect it, just don't let them hook up to the online service. Threatening people to stop them from *modifying their own equipment* is just crazy and isn't backed up by any sort of common sense.
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As for modifying equipment, unfortunately that's actually illegal thanks to the idiotic congress that passed the DMCA some years ago. Before that, modchips weren't illegal at all.
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Hack the Planet! (Score:2, Funny)
Not just about preventing piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
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Do you really think that Tux Racer is the only use for accelerated video?
For example, as XBMC is ported to Linux, it will have to be substantially altered to run on either the Xbox (original) or the PS3. This is because it already uses
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Except said Linux distribution isn't running on bare-metal hardware, but instead inside a nice VM. Thus, the graphics accellerator isn't accessible at all
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I'm not quite sure what Sony expects people to do with Linux on a multimedia system capable of 1920x1080 which struggles to play youtube videos, or to redraw windows as they're dragged. I've seen Pentium non-MMX PCs perform better than that.
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It doesn't have too much trouble moving opaque windows under fluxbox, though it's a touch jerky. (I do normally have opaque window moving off.)
The PS3 has much more RAM and a processor 10X faster. It ought to be able to brute force most stuff even without hardware acceleration.
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Well, it depends how many times you upscale it. I'm sure if you play it at 320x240 it'll work just fine. Upscaling it to 1080p... the PS3 can't redraw the screen fast enough.
It's apparently not just the framebuffer, but accessing the framebuffer's that slow. One of the tasks consuming the most time is the one handling the framebuffer (ps3fb). I wouldn't be surprise
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Hackers beware!! (Score:2, Funny)
Get real Sony!!
Here's an idea Sony (Score:2, Insightful)
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The simple fact is, there aren't many good games yet for the PS3 and they really need to work up their library.
The Wii isn't much better off...there aren't a lot of great titles yet and they keep on worrying about hardware revisions to prevent piracy. The 360 has more t
You know. (Score:3, Insightful)
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One free/very cheap for homebrew, restrictions being you either can't sell the resulting applications at all, or are restricted to making, say, under $100,000 a year.
The other licence would be what they have now, more expensive for creating retail games.
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I actually think Sony knows this, but the fact is that if people are just gonna buy the PS3 to use it for Free software, they will lose alot of money... The restrictions might start to fall one by one as soon as they start making money on the hardware...
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Hackers will ALWAYS find a way. Pirates will ALWAYS find a way. Make your system completely open, let them in, and use the extra money to make the system BETTER, thus potentially increasing sales. Don't forget, contrary to what many people believe,
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Wiimote for PC (Score:1)
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That, and many many other things like it, began popping up within weeks of the WII launch.
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Of course MS just bans your console from live (for now), and they go after modders...
Nintendo goes after everyone... with a big stick, just like Sony.
Imagine that.... acting EXACTLY the same. This doesn't alienate me from their playbase, because I'm not too cheap to buy games...
Homebrew my ass.
Sony's Linux strategy (Score:1)
Re:Sony's Linux strategy (Score:5, Informative)
Trying to do stuff outside of that, they don't like. That's the sort of thing that enables the running of "backups".
Running Nethack under Linux: OK
Running Nethack via a hack/exploit that also lets one run ISO/backups etc. Not OK.
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Sony doesn't care what you do on your PS2/PS3 as long as you do it under Linux (and under the restrictions Linux on the PS2/PS3 has). That's the sandbox you get to play in.
That doesn't explain the major restrictions of Linux on the PS3, for example the lack of graphics acceleration. Or does it?
I don't think these scenarios have much of an effect, since even if they happen, they require the installation of Linux which already weeds out many users.
Bah,,ga...eh.....umm...yeah (Score:1)
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Seriously, how is a hard drive accessible to damage? Do you regularly flip the power switch on your computer back and forth during a lightning storm after rubbing your boots across your rug?
Has Sony lost their minds??? (Score:3, Funny)
Games cannot be played. (Score:1)