Anonymous goes after Sony

[Nightwolf]

Saturday the Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous launched a cyber attack on media giant Sony. According to a press release issued in the name of Anonymous the attack is part of Operation PayBack.

Those responsible for the attack list legal actions taken by Sony against George ‘Geohot’ Hotz as being the particular reason motivating the present assault. Hotz is responsible for engineering the successful jailbreak of Sony's PlayStation3.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/anonymous-in-na ... -continues

Sharing is caring, which is, what they say.

[Rat-morningstar]

*readies the LOIC*

[Cc_Hairy]

Hackers Hate Sony for Geohot Goof, While Sony Is On a Hiring Spree
http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/sony-g ... ckers.html

Koush Dutta is a familiar name when it comes to Android. He has done extensive work, hacking the Android platform inside out and has flagship products like ROM Manager and Clockworkmod Recovery under his belt. This has made him a top favorite at many Android forums. However, the entire matter of Sony going ahead and asking him to join their company, and his resigning has made him a legend.

The incident took place a few days ago and has left enough time to fill up our mind-spaces with all sorts of speculations. Some are wondering if he would have made an addition to the anti-piracy army Sony is building (supposedly) while others are speculating that he would have been a valuable asset as a PS3 hacker.

However, we cannot overlook the fact that Koush is actually a mobile platform expert with development experience on Android, Windows Mobile and .NET. He has little interest in PS3, or so it seems from his profile information. Another PS3 hacker (on Reddit) claims to have been contact the same way. Seemingly, Sony is trying to get back some hacker-love by opening its doors to them. But, the damage has already been done irreversibly and

[Pentagram.J2]

fuck Geohot, hope he loses that case. Just hacking the PS3 would have been fine... if it didn't open teh floodgates for piracy. He was irresponsible in distributing that code and anyone who used it for piracy is just a thieving coward. Not only that, but then he insults people's intelligence stating that he never intended it to be used for piracy. Fuckin audacity of some of these people.

[A Ninja]

Anonymous is just a joke now.

[Grndslmhttr3]

He capitalized forgive but not forget, WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THAT?

[Django]

Anonymous was always a joke

[stickbeast]

Can't really sympathize with Sony. Anyone who fights pirates like that are just stupid. It's always going to happen, especially with carbon copy sequels, on-disc DLC shenanigans and crazy DRM bullshit. The video game industry is looking more and more like the film/music industry everyday...and that's not a good thing.

[incandescent]

Can't really sympathize with Sony. Anyone who fights pirates like that are just stupid. It's always going to happen, especially with carbon copy sequels, on-disc DLC shenanigans and crazy DRM bullshit. The video game industry is looking more and more like the film/music industry everyday...and that's not a good thing.

so they should just let pirates take what they want?

[stickbeast]

The industry doesn't realize that an illegal download is NOT a sale lost. People don't hack or illegally download things to make money. They do it because they love watching movies, love listening to music, and love playing games. If they were to devise a system accounting for the new age of media, where anything is released is available for free, maybe they could come up with something that actually makes the consumer to gladly pay for a product.

Starting this witch hunt for people who have hacked is just dumb, making people put in serial codes for a game is dumb, and not letting your game run without consistent connection to the official game servers is dumb. It puts the regular consumer through a lot more, for what is going to be hacked and available for free anyway.

[jermm]

fuck Geohot, hope he loses that case. Just hacking the PS3 would have been fine... if it didn't open teh floodgates for piracy. He was irresponsible in distributing that code and anyone who used it for piracy is just a thieving coward. Not only that, but then he insults people's intelligence stating that he never intended it to be used for piracy. Fuckin audacity of some of these people.

The PS3 was sold as a system which could boot non-Sony OSs. When Sony took away that ability, did they not think people would like to continue to do that? Sony was very smart in making the PS3 a pseudo-open platform, it allowed the people who would want to do homebrew a way to do so, without jeopardizing their closed Sony OS.

I know you might be mad that you're going to need to online activate PS3 games soon, that games are going to come with keys (though that's happening already, from when Gears of War 2 had a code in the box for a map pack), but you can't blame a dude for playing with his computer.

[Pentagram.J2]

i understand the OS removal pissed off a lot of people, but I don't believe for a second that the dude did it without intending for the system to be pillaged. I could care less about online activation, but the fact is, the EULA clearly states that what Hotz is doing is illegal, and the fact that he's trying to play all innocent in this is just bullshit.

[Mad_Dugan]

The industry doesn't realize that an illegal download is NOT a sale lost.

I think they do know that it isn't, they just want to pretend that it is because that is the only way they can get compensation. (If they ever admit that they know it isn't, they can no longer get the huge rewards that they get)

[Pentagram.J2]

um...how is it not a sale lost?

if the person cares enough to pirate, they were likely to buy it or at least rent it.

[stickbeast]

I've pirated content I've later purchased. If I hadn't pirated at all, I would have never even heard of some of the music I like now, or even seen some of the movies I have seen. If my friend had never shared MGMT's Oracular Spectacular with me, I wouldn't have pre-ordered their second album. If I had never downloaded Eraserhead or Tale of Two Sisters, I probably would have never seen these movies, as my local blockbuster didn't have them in stock.

There's no way to rent a PC game, and not all of them have demos. Pirating is one way you'd know if it's your kind of game (or if it even runs on your computer.)

Also this:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/02/notch ... e-illegal/

He went on to criticise the idea of a lost sale, and explained his view on how game developers should consider a deeper relationship with their consumers. “If a lost sale is so bad, should bad reviews be illegal? What about missed release dates?” He also believes that pirates can be converted to customers, if developers are smart. “If you just make your and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week.”