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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."
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Sony Threatens PS3 Hackers With Legal Action

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  • Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheJerg ( 1052952 ) <jr_g_2006@yahoo.com> on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @04:29PM (#19483143)
    You can't stop them anyway. So why bother trying. Etc, etc.
    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why can't they be like Nintendo on this. There have been several updates to the DS (especially the lite) and as far as I know they haven't tried to limit the homebrew community.
      • Nintendo recently announced (citation missing) a homebrew contest on the Wii.

        Makes me glad my roommate bought one, although my arm hurts today...

        • by brkello ( 642429 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @05:52PM (#19484073)
          Your citation is missing because you are wrong. Nintendo did not announce nor are they sponsoring a homebrew contest on the Wii. Other people are sponsoring this which is no different than if it happened on the PS3 or PSP. So no, Nintendo is not better than that.

          Ironically, it appears that you don't RTFA.
          • So no, Nintendo is not better than that.

            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).
        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Makes me glad my roommate bought one, although my arm hurts today.

          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.

          • 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.
            It took me a second, but I picked up on it after some thought. Very nicely executed.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by OmegaBlac ( 752432 )

          Nintendo recently announced (citation missing) a homebrew contest on the Wii.

          Wrong. Read again: http://wii-news.dcemu.co.uk/nintendo-wii-amp-gamec ube-coders-contest-2007-65730.html [dcemu.co.uk]

          Makes me glad my roommate bought one, although my arm hurts today...

          Another night of furious jerking of your "Wii" to images of Princess Toadstool? :)

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @04:42PM (#19483333) Journal
      While I'm not the hugest fan of these sorts of "protections", I think game consoles are one of the areas where the manufacturer can make a decent argument for why they bother. While they're never going to completely shut out the dedicated and skilled people trying to find their way in, they can keep a pretty good lid on casual piracy, because console cracks are usually just to much work, even if someone else has already figure it out.

      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.
      • Sure, if it helped _piracy_, I'd even understand that. But here's what irks me: region codes. And that's one thing that's circumvented by those modchips and such.

        _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
        • Okay, maybe I'm naive here... but why did you go out of your way to support a company that is bent on vilifying you?

          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.

          • Good question and good point indeed, I'll concede that.

            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.
        • by brkello ( 642429 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @06:04PM (#19484185)
          Yes, region codes don't make sense to me either. I am trying to think of some reason they might do it...but I can't come up with any thing that makes it logical.

          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 /. article: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/23/ 0021243&from=rss [slashdot.org]. So it looks like you wouldn't have a problem with the PS3 if that is still true!

          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)

            Yes, it is still true that PS3 games have no region encoding. The PS3 will honor the region encoding of DVDs, PS2 and PS1 games, and Blu-Ray movies. But no, there is no region encoding for PS3 games.

            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
            • 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?

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                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

            • "I really don't see a legitimate reason for trying to hack the PS3."
              Because you bought it and you have a right to? That's not good enough? If I were to ever buy a Sony product again (unlikely), it is my right to do whatever I want with it once I get it home. That's a legitimate reason whether you like it or not.
        • by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angelaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @06:53PM (#19484583) Journal
          Region codes on games serve _no_ legitimate purpose.

          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.
          • Japanese DDR games are a prime example - they're region coded because they've licensed the content for Japan only.
            Then why was Dance Dance Revolution Konamix region-coded? It contains only those songs written and recorded by employees of Konami. And why are GameCube and Wii games published by Nintendo region-coded if they contain only works of Nintendo and its subsidiaries?
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            This should affect retailers, not consumers. The liscencing is an issue, and as such it should be illegal for a retailer to either sell the game from an outlet outside the one it's region coded for, or to ship it from a location in the region to a consumer outside. What it shouldn't affect is a consumer physically travelling to the region in which the product is legal for sale, purchasing it, and bringing it back home with them. That's just ridiculous.
            • by Saige ( 53303 )
              It affects consumers because the technology is there to make it harder to import games from another region and play them, so surely the license holders expect the technology to be used. And I wouldn't be surprised if not using region coding, when it's possible, could be grounds for a legal action.

              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.
        • by amuro98 ( 461673 )
          While I agree with your point that region lockouts are a stupid, pointless technology, the reason they exist is to protect local distributors.

          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
          • A lot of games that make it to the US, never make it to Europe which just seems downright stupid to me.
            A game for the United States and Anglophone Canada needs to be translated from Japanese to English. A game for the British Isles and Mainland Europe needs to be translated from Japanese into French, Spanish, German, and Italian in addition to English.
            • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
              Not necessarily. Some games are released without any translation (often with a hastily thrown together manual but sometimes not even that) so it's quite possible to just skip that, especially for games that don't involve much text.
            • by amuro98 ( 461673 )
              What, so people who speak French, Spanish, German and Italian don't play video games?

              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.
              • by tepples ( 727027 )

                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?

                • by amuro98 ( 461673 )
                  I've been working on internationalization and localization projects for over a decade.

                  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)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          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

          • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
            See Title 17, United States Code, section 602, 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.

            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
            • 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 think game consoles are one of the areas where the manufacturer can make a decent argument for why they bother."

        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.
        • by amuro98 ( 461673 )
          The hackers already found a workaround for Microsoft's workaround to detect the hacker's first modchips. And so the cycle continues...

          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.
        • I certainly don't agree with a company threatening or suing their customers for modifying their machines. I don't even care for region encoding or any of that. But in general, I find the built-in anti-copying features in game consoles to be of absolutely no concern to me. Unlike, for example, Apple's music store, where I have to register my various computers to listen to my music on all of them.
  • As Cereal Killer would say, 'Hack the Planet'.
  • They also want to prevent you from running Linux with full access to the hardware, because they won't get licensing fees if people play games that don't require that someone pay one. Preventing piracy [as much as possible] is of course a real goal, and important to protection of revenues. But this is just as significant, in the same ways.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Face it, you can do basically everything you'd like to do on the PS3 either out of the box or after a simple Linux installation (which they FULLY SUPPORT!). The only thing that's restricted is access to the graphics accelerator, and really, who buys a PS3 to play Tux Racer?

        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

        • this isn't even about necessarily playing "protected" media, but playing your software on their "protected" hardware. OF course once you open the system up to ANY software, it's trivial to run the software designed for it, but piracy is sideways in the case of something like XBMC where the purpose is to use different "IP" not associated with the Manufacture in any way. Just to find a new purpose for what the hardware can do outside its bounds. At a basic level it's a property rights thing... the physical
      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It's pretty obvious that hacking the console at this point is mostly about piracy. Face it, you can do basically everything you'd like to do on the PS3 either out of the box or after a simple Linux installation (which they FULLY SUPPORT!). The only thing that's restricted is access to the graphics accelerator, and really, who buys a PS3 to play Tux Racer?

        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

        • by donaldm ( 919619 )
          I run Linux on my laptop (Fedora 7) with Xen for virtualization and since I have 2GB of memory this works well but to run Linux on your PS3 to play a DVD via Xine is a rather pointless exercise unless you want bragging rights which is fine by me. The best way to play a DVD is put the DVD in the PS3 running in native mode and if you have a HDTV and v1.8 of the firmware the DVD will be upscaled via HDMI. As for WiFi and Bluetooth on PS3 Linux I can't really comment but that would be useful although it works w
      • by Ant P. ( 974313 )

        The only thing that's restricted is access to the graphics accelerator, and really, who buys a PS3 to play Tux Racer?

        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.
        • It can't be that bad....can it? I've got a PS2 Linux kit and it can even play youtube video with ffplay (after I grab the flv with youtube-dl.py.

          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.

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            It can't be that bad....can it? I've got a PS2 Linux kit and it can even play youtube video with ffplay (after I grab the flv with youtube-dl.py.

            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

            • Yes, one can code to the GS on the PS2 under Linux VU assembler and whatnot. (Though I'm not a coder, I bought the kit to "use" it and learn more about Linux), though X is not 3D accelerated and Mesa only has "limited hardware acceleration".
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        Face it, you can do basically everything you'd like to do on the PS3 either out of the box or after a simple Linux installation (which they FULLY SUPPORT!). The only thing that's restricted is access to the graphics accelerator, and really, who buys a PS3 to play Tux Racer?
        The problems are that 1. even 2D acceleration is shut off, making window repainting slow, and 2. the RSX chip has 256 MB of RAM that could be used to delay the onset of swapping but is sitting unused.
        • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          Reading graphics memory content to the main RAM happens at 16MB/sec (or possibly Mb), not sure you want that.
          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            Reading graphics memory content to the main RAM happens at 16MB/sec (or possibly Mb), not sure you want that.
            You're talking about the slow channel that this article [slashdot.org] mentions. But it happens only if the copy is initiated from the Cell. A block copy initiated from the RSX runs much faster; the RSX can write to main memory at 10.6 GB/s.
    • Well, to be fair, the people you should be complaining to about RSX access are Nvidia, not Sony.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Sony reserves the sole right to hack your system. Please use one of their root-kits for your hacking needs. All others will be sued!!

    Get real Sony!!
  • by Kamokazi ( 1080091 )
    Maybe you should try spending the cash you are using on piracy prevention to develop...*gasp*...games worth buying?
  • You know. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @06:09PM (#19484235) Homepage
    This is where things get fucking stupid. Why homebrew applications are not ENCOURAGED is beyond me. Granted, it's not a massive number, but I would be willing to bet my car that if the big three made their consoles open to homebrew developers without any kind of sidestepping, hacking, or putzing around required, they would find the sales of their gaming consoles go up. Yes, there will be people that pirate games, but you know what? The people that want to pirate games WILL find a way. I am quite confident that people wouldn't say "What? Homebrew apps are ENCOURAGED? Well fuck that, I'm not buying that open system!" ::sigh::
    • What's the difference between a homebrew game and a major-label game that just doesn't pay any royalties to Sony? If you want to play, you gotta pay.
      • by Pojut ( 1027544 )
        ....you do realize "homebrew" does not necessarily mean games, don't you?
      • Simple. Dual-licenced APIs.

        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.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Sparr0 ( 451780 )
        Or they could just sell their console for a profit, so they don't have to rely on licensing.
    • If you can do things on a console that don't require you to give them money, they lost money. Since they're taking such a painful hit on the hardware costs, they want you to buy games to recoup that. Any way that you can use your console without spending money is another minute you didn't spend on a game that's subsidising their loss.
    • by IrquiM ( 471313 )
      What car do you have?

      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...
      • by Pojut ( 1027544 )
        My point was if sony (and the others) took all the money they invest in trying (which is the operative word here) to prevent hackers and homebrew folks, they could instead inject that money back into the development of a console and thus make a BETTER console.

        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,
    • Well MS did this with the 360 and XNA Game Studio Express. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/aa937794. aspx [microsoft.com]
    • the pressure from shareholders makes this very difficult. Corporations have to guarantee shareholders return on investment. A "large" shareholder might say something like "well this homebrew thing is nice, i don't understand how it helps us make money though. in fact, piracy goes up and we lose money? right? ok, i vote we don't do it, and if you do, i'm pulling my money out of this company." When the shareholder's reach 51% agreement,.. quite a bit of pressure can be placed on the e-board regardless of wh
  • If Sony's trying so hard to keep third-party hacks from working on their boxes, why the hell did they make such a big deal about the ability to put Linux on them?
    • by CronoCloud ( 590650 ) <[cronocloudauron] [at] [gmail.com]> on Tuesday June 12, 2007 @10:26PM (#19486287)
      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.

      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.

      • 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?

        • Could some homebrew Linux game take a noticeable share of PS3 game sales?
        • Could the pirates copy and run PS3 games under PS3/Linux somehow? (perhaps using the curses library of black perl?-)

        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.

  • Thats what I think when I think of this. I understand they want to protect their revenues, and I for one don't understand pirating games as writeable media, to me, is more assessable to damage and really, how long do you want that junk on your pc's hd. But I do get fustrated that home brew can't "bloom" the way I think it should on these consoles. I think homebrew is a viable way to get people interested in a console and I really hope at some time in the future they can provide a means for Homebrew while ke
    • by Aazn ( 1093437 )
      <quote>I for one don't understand pirating games as writeable media, to me, is more assessable to damage</quote>
      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?
  • by sunsfan1991 ( 1114991 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @10:33AM (#19491925)
    So nobody is buying you $600 console what do you do? 1) Lower your price 2) Make games people want to pay that much to play 3) Sue the few people who bought your overpriced console
  • Its in the article, but perhaps it should be (re)noted that games are not actually playable. The article is light on details, but the hack originates from the debug firmware included with the dev-kits. Sony is well within their rights to pursue the leak of that firmware, as the developers signed NDA's with Sony.

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