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?"
This is Sony (Score:5, Informative)
For those not familiar with this company, who may ask "But won't they lose money if they take down the games?", let me give you some background. This is a company that would rather pull EVERY game on PSN than to lose even the slightest bit of control over their locked-down system. This is a company that will infect their CD's with viruses [wikipedia.org] to prevent copying, a company that repeatedly kills its own platforms with its insistence on proprietary [wikipedia.org] formats [wikipedia.org], a company that doesn't care [anandtech.com] if your old blu-ray player plays the latest blu-rays or not--a company that will remove any feature [wikipedia.org], cripple any platform [1up.com], pull any game, destroy any product line--all to maintain control. If Sony were faced tomorrow morning with the choice between risking people copying even one of their movies and bulldozing the entire PSP line into a landfill, they would have that landfill full before the sun went down.
This is what happens when you allow a media producer to mix in the same company with the producer of the hardware that plays said media.
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny - I have a Sony clock radio and when I put my iPod in there, it plays music. It also wakes me up in the morning at the time I set on the alarm. I also own a Sony eReader, and when I tap on one of my books, the words come up on the screen and, when I swipe my finger across the page, it advances forward or backward accordingly.
No masochism involved.
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Funny - I have a Sony clock radio and when I put my iPod in there, it plays music. It also wakes me up in the morning at the time I set on the alarm. I also own a Sony eReader, and when I tap on one of my books, the words come up on the screen and, when I swipe my finger across the page, it advances forward or backward accordingly.
No masochism involved.
I have a Sony blu-ray player that in order to use any feature above just playing disks I had to create an account on Sony's web site and give them a bunch of personal information. I think this is necessary to update the device as well.
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Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I would not trust Sony with anything that has a processor and might need a firmware update at some point.
They have, however, made some pretty decent analog equipment in the past. I still have an old set of walkman headphones that works fine and sounds good after 20 years. The only thing I had to replace at some point were the ear pads.
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.
How is Apple a bigger offender than Nintendo? (Score:3)
Re:How is Apple a bigger offender than Nintendo? (Score:5, Interesting)
To explore this a little bit, consider that Nintendo is a gaming company. Everything they do is centered around producing video game consoles and games to play on them. As long as the devices they sell can do that, I imagine most people don't care that they are locked down. Plus, it's not like you can do homebrew/hacking any more easily on the Sony or Microsoft systems.
Apple, on the other hand, sells more general "lifestyle" devices. The iPhone isn't just a phone--it's a media device, it's a portable game console, it's a web client, etc. etc. And given that it is advertised to have those capabilities, I think it's fair for some to cry foul at the fact that even though the device can do a lot of things (and is advertised thusly by Apple), it can only do them Apple's way, for no good reason except that Apple wants to maintain strict control over the platform.
Granted, most people don't care how hackable and open a particular device is, and I just avoid this whole issue by not purchasing Apple products. But I don't think the comparison to Nintendo is valid, because Nintendo sells devices for very specific purposes, and Apple's control of the iPhone is criticized because it is a more general-purpose device, intentionally crippled to serve Apple's interests.
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I'm all for free and open. I like having that option. However I also like not having to worry all that much that some random app on my phone is going to possibly interfere with me making a call when I really need to or that it's not crashing my device over and over again because it wasn't carefully tested before showing up in the store.
I recently bought a MacBook Pro. Why? Because at 33 years old and 15+ years of Linux experience and 30+ years of other computing experience I am tired of the bullshit. I want
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I would agree with you, except that Apple could accomplish this easily enough by only allowing vetted apps in their online store while not forbidding installation of apps from outside the store. I think that's the part people tend to take issue with. If Apple says it's okay, and you want that "seal of approval," then great! But Apple goes a step further and also says, "you cannot install applications from outside our store." And some regard that as a bridge too far.
That's not to say Google's strategy is per
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They don't forbid you to jailbreak your device (the reasons for this are obviously outside of their control) so you definitely have an option to run apps which are not vetted on your device.
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Ah, but you just illustrated the point perfectly. The only reason they "allow" jailbreaking is because a court said they couldn't forbid it.
Given the choice, they absolutely do opt for maximum control over the device you paid for.
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I am aware of that. However, using MS' tools also means you don't have access to certain capabilities of the system, doesn't it? Which is the same as what Sony and Nintendo do, as far as that goes. Microsoft is just a bit more open, but that doesn't mean they give you a truly open system where you can do anything you want. It is still within manufacturer-approved limits.
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You're right ... I think I've pretty much written off Nintendo as a major player in any market, which may be short-sighted. The problem is that I know too many people who bought a Wii and it collected dust. I was thinking that people won't make the same mistake with their next platform, but I may be giving people way too much credit.
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It takes one screw on the Nintendo DS to take the battery out and change it.
So in other words, it is your opinion that Apple's policy against replacement of the rechargeable battery by the end user outweighs Nintendo's policy against software development by a home-based business. Do I understand you correctly?
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Their eInk readers are actually surprisingly good and not locked down... it's like they outsourced it or something.
Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Funny)
Funny - I have a Sony clock radio and when I put my iPod in there, it plays music. It also wakes me up in the morning at the time I set on the alarm.
It secretly hates you. It's just biding it's time. It's probably playing subliminal messages to you while you sleep, to hypnotize you into buying a new one in 5 or 6 years because the old one seemed to work correctly for that entire time. It's unbelievably insidious.
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Because they sell the items normal persons think they want (PS3, PSP, Vaio). The thing is that once the consumer has gotten involved and invested in your product you can fsck with him as much as you like since they will still try to cling on to the idea they've been sold.
It common knowledge in corpoland... I know, I know, these are sad times to live in.
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.
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Actually I'm pretty sure the loudest cry was from various people who had lost access to OtherOS and wanted it back. The difference is, they were cries of laughter.
Every now and then, Sony completely and utterly fucks up in some catastrophic way. Each time it happens, they piss off a whole bunch of people in the process. Like many here, I'm shocked that people even bother with them but they do happen to make somewhat compelling products.
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Informative)
The OtherOS is actually a perfect example.
In this community we heard about it non-stop for what feels like years. Outside this community, no one really cared. Yes Sony lost some business, but even if everyone who could explain in a sentence what the OtherOS thing was about stopped buying Sony, it would probably be a tiny blip on the profit statement.
Same with the geohotz thing. Huge deal to us, non-issue for most. The rootkit thing is the closest Sony ever came to doing something that actually pissed of a large chunk of their users with an issue (outside the PSN thing, but again, people were upset for the wrong reason).. and even that most people wern't mad enough to swear of Sony products forever.. it was more of an amused "well that was naughty of them" response from the vast majority of people.
Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Interesting)
OtherOS was perfect. Microsoft learned with their Xbox what happens when hackers and pirates share a common goal - one inevitably helps the other. In that case, the Xbox-Linux folks found vulnerabilities that they told Microsoft about, in exchange for a legit way of running Linux. Microsoft rebuffed them, and Xbox Linux released their installation tools. The pirates siezed upon that and Xbox piracy was born.
OtherOS was the same - those who wanted homebrew had a perfect outlet for it, and busy playing there meant the pirates really didn't have much they could do since homebrew in OtherOS was restricted.
But remove OtherOS and all of a sudden those hackers had to break into GameOS to run Linux... and now that GameOS was broken, pirates could come in with ISO loaders. And then researchers came in and studied the hacks and realized what else they could do until ti cascaded to the point where the keys were discovered.
The Xbox360 has suffered piracy attacks, but also has a homebrew avenue (XNA studio). The interesting thing is while there's piracy on the Xbox, the integrity of the system hasn't been compromised - you cannot plug a modded Xbox into Xbox Live because the dashboard is signed and reports back to Microsoft, and unsigned dashboards don't really run.
PSN though is another story - with the master keys available, the whole "trust the client" part of PSN doesn't exist anymore, and you can get CFW's for PS3 that let you play ISOs AND get on PSN.
And all of it happened within a year of Sony removing OtherOS. Hell, the PSN hack was just over a year later (April 1, 2010 - OtherOS was removed. Aprile 2011 - PSN hacked).
You know, if Sony continually does this, one could make the Vita's PSN ability worthless if games keep getting removed.
I understand Sony's reluctance about piracy, given it helped speed the demise of the PSP, but perhaps if Sony wasn't so greedy on the PSP on the first place. Like how UMD videos could get full 60fps video decode, while memory stick videos could only do 30fps (later fixed). Or how an "install to memory stick" feature wasn't implemented to allow loading UMD games off faster memory stick. (Sony could use MagicGate to lock the UMD image to one PSP and require the UMD to be present to play the game, negating piracy fears a la the Xbox 360). But they didn't, and CFW made the whole PSP experience far better - the benefits of loading games from memory stick meant less loading screens to wait through, full res full framerate videos, etc.
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A couple of years ago, I sat next to someone on a plane who sold broadcast studio equipment for Sony. When I mentioned the rootkit fiasco, he had no idea what I was talking about.
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The ironic thing is that Sony makes very good products. Even back in the late '90s, their "MP3" [1] players were well made.
Sony could have had the whole MP3 player market just like they did with the portable cassette players, where the generic term became "Walkman". However, the extreme DRM on OpenMG, then Sonic stage caused people to look elsewhere... and even though Apple's offerings were lackluster, people could copy music to it, and with a little sleight of hand, copy their music from the device.
I wis
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Because I don't generally take to boycotts or activism against corporations. When I buy something I ask myself two questions.
1. Do I think the value of this object is greater than the money I'm paying for it.
2. Is there a more cost efficient way to get the same value.
My Sony purchases over my life have been limited to a PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP (and of course related software.) At least for those four items, I don't regret my purchases in the least. I definitely got my money's worth. To be honest, it's pure
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Because, to most people, buying an item from someone isn't like getting married to them. It's a game, not a relationship. It's a set of headphones, not a religion.
I've never understood why people like you anthropomorphize a company of hundreds of thousands of people as if they were one person -- and not even a real person, but some style of outlandish cartoon villain. I suspect it's because believing fantasy stories is somehow more real or seems more personally fulfilling than anything the real world has
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.
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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:I won't touch their hardware, either (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still using a Sony amp from the 80s. Goes to show you what a decade or two of corporate greed can do.
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Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Funny)
You're the guy at the office who goes apeshit whenever someone plays Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" aren't you?
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You're the guy at the office who goes apeshit whenever someone refers to 2000 as the start of the century/millennium, aren't you?
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Fuck me, I'd love to see your reaction if he'd called is a "Virii".
Re:This is Sony (Score:4, Informative)
For the record, it was a rootkit, not a virus. The terms are already muddy as all getout, but there IS a difference.
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that I am defending their actions, but I do wonder if there is something cultural going on. Is there something in particular about Japanese culture that encourages that degree of control (or perhaps "order")?
The extents to which they are willing to go seem extreme, even compared to other companies who are charter members aboard the DRM bandwagon. Is there something more to it than just "Sony = teh sux?"
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, once you realize that the motivations are not corporate profit but instead individual advancement and status, such behavior seems a lot less insane. This is also the core of the MPAA/RIAA's behavior, both are industries where careers are made or broken by reputation, so control/power are more important to the individual then group profit.
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Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Note, however, that Nintendo is from a different region of Japan (Kyoto), with a significantly different culture.
Think of the difference between a New York City company, and a Boston company, or perhaps a New Orleans company. It's... something like that.
From what I can tell, Kyoto is much more conservative and traditional, but also more rural and more... relaxed, I suppose. They have a different accent (kansai-ben), which loosely corresponds to either a southern accent, or a boston accent, at least culturally.
There's also the fact that Nintendo is now effectively run by the game developers - Miyamoto is still a Senior Managing Director, and Iwata (the President) worked on Earthbound and Kirby as a programmer. Sony, meanwhile, is run by businessmen, for business.
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Yeah, Nintendo doesn't jerk their customers around quite like SONY, but they're not perfect either. The problem with Nintendo is that they're instead obsessed with controlling their image.
Friend Codes, poor network support, rejected games for the download stores -- Nintendo would rather pull out system functionality than allow someone to possibly be offended by the actions of another person and somehow associate that offense with the hardware rather than the user.
Nintendo not yet to Apple (Score:2)
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nope, there have been articles written about the company and how the media guys are always crippling cool hardware that sony tries to make. they run to the board and scream piracy and sony ends up releasing crappy hardware.
back in the 1980's when they had too much money it seemed like a good idea to control the content as well, but in the age of apple you release good hardware or die off
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Sony Corporation's CEO is American until next week.
He's being stripped of his citizenship in 7 days?
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I wrote this several years ago when the PS3 was on the verge of being released. They're a company that you just can't trust to do the sane thing let alone the right thing. I bet most of you forget that the original PS3 controller was fifteen-feet wide and curved like a boomerang.
http://thepcspy.com/read/how_sony_screwed_up/ [thepcspy.com]
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So, people are complaining because Sony is refusing to let them buy something on line? Or are the people complaining just complaining because they hate Sony, and they're really not interested in the content Sony is refusing to sell?
It sounds like the latter case, because I don't see people saying "I really wanted that game! Why can't I buy it now?" Instead, I see posts whining about how Sony is evil, they'd never buy from Sony, and trying to tie their gripes to this incident.
If you really hate Sony, the don
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I think it's more to do with Sony's draconian policies. If certain known hacker types mention a game, Sony immediately pulls it from the PSN. The thing is, even if the game was "hacked", it doesn't actually allow piracy, it just allows some simple homebrew. The floodgates to piracy, perhaps, but any vaguely intelligent company would see it as an opportunity and give people more access to the hardware, allowing them to legitimately run homebrew.
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The only significant bit they are reporting is that Sony hasn't refunded the affected purchases YET. The article presumes that Sony will never refund them, which is extremely unlikely.
As far as people not having $$ to take them to court (if Sony ends up NOT refunding the purchases), that's BS in the US. Anyone can take them to small claims court, no lawyer needed, and very likely to get a judgement to refund, since Sony is unlikely to send someone to court to defend for not paying a refund owed.
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First, a refund isn't adequate.
Here comes the oblibatory car analogy: I buy a car from you. A week later, you decide you didn't want to sell it, so you come over to my house, hotwire it, and stick the money back through my mail slot. Sorry, not going to fly, especially not if, say, I miss work the next day and lose my job because of your actions. It's not your choice any more, and you are civilly and criminally liable for what you did, refund or no refund.
Sony's legal situation isn't that clear cut for seve
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Dear Sony,
What the fuck, dude?
Sincerely,
Long-time (and increasingly becoming former) customer
Re:This is Sony (Score:5, Funny)
At least we no longer have to face the disturbing prospect of Steve Jobs taking over as Sony CEO. Surely that would have produced a future that would make Mad Max seem charming by comparison.
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Nintendo deals with rampant piracy somehow without trashing downloads of games. The R4 was (possibly still is) easy to find and cheap as hell yet the DS and 3DS are doing fine. Yet somehow, the people I know that own a PSP are the same people that owned a Saturn.
(Note: I am not defending the way Nintendo locks out homebrew on the Wii, just comparing the handheld divisions.)
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Too overzealous? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean overzealous? Or Too zealous?
Re:Too overzealous? (Score:5, Funny)
Sony goes so far as to require *two* modifiers saying "they're going too far". Just "overzealous" doesn't cut it - they're too overzealous.
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So if they're too overzealous, does that imply that there's an appropriate level of overzealousness?
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I once heard someone describe another person as "Overly stabby".
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It hurts (Score:2)
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.
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I missed how this incident hurts consumers. In this case, they're not modifying your existing system, taking away something you already had, stealing (or exposing) your personal information, or anything else that people normally get upset about.
People who wanted to hack/homebrew their stuff have known for a long time that Sony isn't friendly to that, so they buy from others.
DoS idea (Score:2)
Just overload them with blog posts of people bragging about being exploitable.
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D'oh. Used square braces..
Bragging about (game) being exploitable.
Re:DoS idea - "latest blockbuster" is expolitable (Score:2)
Just start a low level discussion about how there is a backdoor in Skyrim that lets you root the PS3.
Re:DoS idea (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant plan.
*ahem* Personally, I've found exploits in the following games:
Army Corps of Hell
Asphalt Injection
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend
Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention
Dream Club Zero Portable
Dungeon Hunter: Alliance
Everybody's Golf 6
F1 2011
Little Deviants
Lord of Apocalypse
Michael Jackson: The Experience
Ridge Racer
Shinobido 2: Tales of the Ninja
Touch My Katamari
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Uncharted: Golden Abyss
Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition
Wipeout 2048
Tales of Innocence R
A-men
Ragnarok Odyssey
Gravity Rush
Sumioni: Demon Arts
FIFA Football
Rayman Origins
ModNation Racers: Road Trip
Lumines Electronic Symphony
Hustle Kings
Escape Plan
Dynasty Warriors Next
Super Stardust Delta
Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
Ben 10: Galactic Racing
Reality Fighters
Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus
MotorStorm: RC
Plants vs. Zombie
Top Darts
MLB 12: The Show
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5–7
Unit 13
Little Busters! Converted Edition
Your move, Sony
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The interesting thing is that this does actually give certain known PSP/PS3 hackers the power to remove ANY game from the PSN. All they have to do is say "New exploit found in x" and poof, it's gone. Sony isn't removing these games when the exploit is released, they're removing them as soon as it's mentioned what game it is.
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.
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I agree.
But Sony's an information black-hole, and they never tell you anything before it's finished.
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They don't inform their costumers, that's a problem (although not a major one).
Also, they didn't have to take down the game. Just stop selling it and patch the download whenever they please.
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they did the right thing
How many times do we have to have locked down platforms that you do not really "own" (in the sense of being able to use your computer without first getting the permission of whoever built it) before we finally realize that the wrong thing was creating another such platform in the first place? Why do we need Sony's permission to play a game on a computer that Sony sold us?
The right thing would have been selling a system that does not need to be attacked just to use without Sony's permission.
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The right thing would have been selling a system that does not need to be attacked just to use without Sony's permission.
Such systems exist, with names like GP32, GP2X, GP2X Wiz, Dingoo, Caanoo, etc. But apart from Android smartphones, which have two critical disadvantages that I've mentioned several times before, these systems never appear to reach retailers' shelves in the United States, nor do they appear to get any support from mainstream video game publishers.
Is Sony being too overzealous? (Score:2)
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.
Oh, well in that case, every game I don't like is exploitable. Your move Sony.
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.
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Guys, they're a company out to make profit, and they're going to put the game back up in time.
In your dreams. The only thing they will do is, after some ten games or so, they'll stop pulling games just because some modder bragged about them "being exploitable". Maybe earlyer if bloggers overdo it, and brag about too many games at once. Maybe later if the bloggers are smart and wait a couple of weeks between each different game...
Re:Oh boy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Guys, they're a company out to make profit, and they're going to put the game back up in time.
Kind of like how Apple still has all those pornography apps in its app store? Sometimes companies think that can realize greater profits by basically screwing their customers, and there is every reason to think that Sony is such a company.
I'm not discounting that Sony does a lot of scummy stuff, but is not one of them in my eyes.
So just hearing a rumor that a particular game might have a bug that could be exploited is now enough to pull the game? Interesting definition of "not scummy..."
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So just hearing a rumor that a particular game might have a bug that could be exploited is now enough to pull the game? Interesting definition of "not scummy..."
FTFA:
On March 1, the hackers at Wololo.net first publicly announced that their homebrew Vita Half Byte Loader (VHBL) worked by exploiting a vulnerability in a downloadable copy of the PSP title Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, releasing a video of Doom being loaded onto the system by way of proof
I'd say it's called a fact if they provided proof. Sony probably tested it themselves before taking the games down.
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well, this is slashdot so i guess it's gotta be car analogy time...
you bought a brand new Chevrolet off the lot; sales guy says "just make your way out the lot and talk to Dave, he'll have your new car waiting for you". you go out to the lot to find Dave standing there without your new car. he says "oooh, sorry, there was just a recall on that model. we'll get it to you just as soon as we've fixed the problem". so you start asking things like "when will that be?", "can i just get another car instead?" and "
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.
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DRM is an important topic to rally against, removing items from a store for not good reasons is something we should rally against. We should not c
I can't imagine... (Score:4, Funny)
I can't imagine why Sony would possibly have a corporate culture of paranoia regarding security issues.
And yet again (Score:3, Interesting)
Way to go Sony, that ought to teach those pesky customers of yours!
Actually, I think Stallman should thank Sony for reenacting every scary story he is telling when explaining horrors of verdor lock-ins and proprietary format traps. This ought to stick it to those, who kept saying that no company would be suicidal enough to treat their customers this way.
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.
Of course they're not being overzealous (Score:2)
Piracy destroyed the PSP (Score:2)
Piracy destroyed the PSP software market. Sony should do everything possible to avoid that with the Vita and every other Sony platform.
It's not like Sony haters on Slashdot or any other pro-piracy site would ever say anything good about Sony. There's no sense in trying to appeal to people who actively seek to harm you. Hostile enemies should be treated like hostile enemies.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Crap hardware, the usual Sony bullshit with weird Sony proprietary formats (UMDs? Really?) and lack of decent software killed the PSP. It wasn't very good. People were not interested. They did not buy a PSP. QED.
Re: (Score:3)
Or in Sony's case....
Paying Customers should be treated like hostile enemies.
Re: (Score:2)
Pirates are not customers
Let it go already! (Score:3)
Expensive mobile device and overzealous company policy..oh proprietary format too.
The device flopped over Christmas here in the UK & retailers were desperately promoting special offers and discounts as soon as it was released.
Sony & Nintendo have to learn the mobile gaming sector has got a lot more competitive and in most cases competitor's games are cheaper too.
I'm afraid this business model is done.
I thought "Honeybadger" was stoopid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Sony & Nintendo have to learn the mobile gaming sector has got a lot more competitive
What's the competing product that works well with video games in genres where a gamepad works much better than a flat touch screen? Or when will developers become able to expect their customers to have bought a $62 Bluetooth gamepad?
I avoide Sony.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Legally, if those obligations are listed in the contract that nobody reads then they have no such obligations.
You haven't you seen South Park's Centipad episode?
Re: (Score:2)
After all, one of the reasons people choose a walled-garden community is for safety at the expense of freedom.
Except that a walled garden is not necessary, and one does not need to sacrifice freedom; the repository system used by numerous free/libre OSes is equally effective and does nothing to prevent people from using their computers in the way they see fit. The difference is the goal; companies that run walled gardens are not doing so to benefit users, they are doing so to benefit their investors, whereas repositories are run to make it easier to install software and to keep that software up-to-date.
It has an obligation to offer access OR just compensation to anyone who has already paid for the title. If the person never downloaded the title, "just compensation" is a full refund.
Except
Re: (Score:2)
One such place is in a corporate environment using corporation-owned equipment, where the corporation appoints the gardener (i.e. IT staff) and the gardener is accountable to the garden owner (i.e. the corporation).
Which is a completely different situation, since the people using the computers in a corporation as part of their authorized work duties are not the owners of those computers. When you buy certain computers from Sony, Apple, or Amazon, you are stuck with rules dictated by an organization that does not have any ownership of that computer; this is the common understanding of a "walled garden" in the context of this discussion.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us buy game consoles just to play games. If we want a computer, we'll go use one.
So what do I buy if I want one device that can act as both a handheld computer and a handheld game console?
Global warming (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)