Anonymous goes after Sony

[NightFantom]

no, a lot of people listen to radio less because they can pirate music they like instead of hoping a good song comes on

[Little Weapon]

no, a lot of people listen to radio less because they can pirate music they like instead of hoping a good song comes on

i'm not sure if this is an argument or irrelevant statement

[AHUGEMUSHROOM]

The trouble with anonymous is that:

"They are everyone, and they are no one"

So we don't know if it was them or not. Because we don't who "them" is/are.

I've heard that the PSN hack was done by professional hacking groups in Ukraine and/or Russia. But I do not know whether this is true/false.

Heres an article on the incident.

[Nightwolf]

Thats not a trouble or a problem. We know bs when we see it, they have the skill to stand up to the companies who buy lawmakers on their side to make bill and things.

[AHUGEMUSHROOM]

Thats not a trouble or a problem. We know bs when we see it, they have the skill to stand up to the companies who buy lawmakers on their side to make bill and things.

It came out wrong.

I wasn't saying that Anonymous are The problem (I really like anonymous) rather The problem is, when PSN went down if was first released that Anon. were responsible. A member of Anon. even did an interview about the incident. But then the following day Anon. then announced that they were not responsible. So in my OP I was pointing out that Anon. were not responsible for the attack on Sony as the Topic states.

[MasterWholigans]

Any rumors you hear of May 31st being the date PSN is going back up, seems that it's faulty, no news yet though on when it's going up again

http://twitter.com/#!/deantak/status/67638170849783808

[Nightwolf]

Ah my mistake then. ^__^

[Neelpos]

Why do we have two topics for the same subject in the same section?

[Nightwolf]

We have a backup, just in case if the first one fails.

[Sk1n]

Right. It's still not illegal to jailbreak your smart phone, so what changes about it being a console?

Because they are rated as different types of electronics and fall under different standards and regulations as well as different sets of copyright law. It's like asking why your refrigerator and toaster fall under different regulations.

Jailbreaking isn't an automatically bad or illegal thing. It just eliminates some restrictions and enhances your device's capabilities. We can think of it as a plug-in, like what we use to run our TF2, GMod and CSS servers. Are we committing a crime by using them? Are Valve's updates that break Sourcemod a hint at us (and the thousands of people that rely on Sourcemod because we don't like Valve's provided admin abilities) to stop using them? No. They aren't that stupid.

In your opinion it isn't an illegal thing. And technically just doing it yourself is not, but publishing the information obtained from reverse engineering the device did break rules and that's why legal action was taken. Again, you're comparing the altering of an operating system and the way hardware works to software by a gaming publisher. They are completely different things and are subject to different practices.

Sony is just stubbornly clinging to the failed "old business model." As people get more and more familiar with computers and new consoles with amazing computer-like capabilities, we are starting to use products not JUST for their intended use. Thanks to the internet, this information and any additional software is made easily available. This is the direction things are going, and to fight against it, is like fighting against a current. George Hotz is just 21 year old, and he managed to crack the iPhone and PS3. What could he have done if given full resources and a full time job at Apple or Sony? We will never know, because Sony insists on making enemies when it could be making great friends.

That's a cop out excuse by saying that Sony isn't keeping up with the times and therefor it's their fault this whole situation happened. They can run their company and develop their console any way they want and the legion of people who feel they have the right to do what they please and form attacks on a company because they don't agree with what Sony puts out there is nothing more than a whiney bunch of self indulgent shits. You're right. George Hotz could be doing amazing things except for the fact that he does nothing but piss companies off. If he wanted to change things he could, but he spends his time dismantling their hard work rather than applying for a job in R&D at these companies. Rather than sit there and bitch at Sony for not giving him a job, maybe he should be pushing himself to maybe make a real difference by maybe going to a technical college or taking an entry level position at a tech company, he basically tells these companies, "You know the millions of dollars you have spent on research and development? Well fuck you." You're right. It's Sony's fault this kid isn't doing great things.

Yea, I install custom ROMS on every phone I buy, I never really understood a company having a say in how I use a product once I purchase it. If you are attempting to gain access to OTHER people's hardware that's one thing, but the ability to modify something once you've paid for it seems pretty fucking obvious. I always wondered why companies don't pay more attention to the custom mod scene and try to implement the more popular ones, maybe grab the guys developing it and paying them, since you get a clearer idea of what people actually want by what they actually search for and use.

It's not just a company having a say in it, it's the government. That's why a judge granted Sony access to the IPs and Paypal account of GeoHot's website. And the "I bought it I can do whatever I want" argument is moot. You can't do anything you want to your car if you own it outright. There are regulations and laws in place to prohibit you from making certain modifications to your car. You can't buy a house and do whatever modifications you want. You have to get building permits, have blueprints approved by local government, certain safety regulations met. And it wasn't jail breaking that was the violation. It was publishing the findings of reverse engineering the console that violated copyright law. Doesn't matter how altruistic the motives might have been, it was still breaking the law. And companies do pay attention to the custom mod scene. Blizzard is a big example how they have mirrored their UI after popular addons developed by third parties. The reason why these companies take so long to do it is because these third parties are kids sitting in their rooms at their computers with no overhead or operating costs doing it in their free time. These companies have programmers, testers, development people and whole departments of people they need to pay not to mention the cost of running a brick and mortar business. Then they also have to put the change in on their server side, test it out in multiple phases.

And if all these hackers hate Sony and all these other console's limitations so much so that the feel the need to hack the consoles and customize them as they see fit, then maybe they should build their own fucking consoles the way they think it should be made and then freely share those with everyone.

Ridiculous argument, people don't have the money and resources to do this from scratch. They can however, PAY SONY for the hardware then change/redesign/addon whatever they like. I mean, you wouldn't tell someone they couldn't modify their computers, would you? Overclock their CPU's and GPU's? I recall negative industry overreaction when people first started doing this, and nowadays the software to do so comes with a purchase.

No it isn't. With as cheap as hardware is these days it's not a far fetched idea. People build complete PCs for cheap as hell. GeoHot apparently has the knowledge and know how to develop rudimentary operating systems. Components aren't expensive. But no, people want to basically say to a console company, "You spent millions of dollars to develop this machine, thousands and thousands of man hours fine tuning it and essentially building an all in one entertainment hub, not to mention all it took to launch it with plenty of development houses making games for it so you could effectively compete. But I don't like it so fuck all that. I'm entitled to let everyone out there know how to undo a lot of that."

Bunch of self entitled little shits. So I say again if they don't like it, fuck them. let them develop their own shit that plays freeware games from indie game developers.

[stickbeast]

It's not illegal to jailbreak your iPhone no matter how much Apple wants it to be. How different is jailbreaking a phone than a PS3. Seems like they can do the same things nowadays (play games, watch movies, listen to music etc.) It's legal to reverse engineer my toaster and refrigerator and any other electrical piece of equipment. What's illegal is to sell that for profit.

It is legal to mess with the operating system on any software designed to play games. The trial had nothing to do with the law really, it was about sending a message against piracy. What Hotz actually did was being shaped by Sony to be some kind of gateway to piracy, which is illegal. What Hotz did was legal, what Sony suggests Hotz tried to do is kind of in the gray. They actually contacted Google and Youtube to buy personal information to identify everyone who was looking at the code to jailbreak their PS3's, which is super shady and possibly way more illegal than anything Hotz ever did.

Let me make an analogy. Say I'm in the axe manufacturing business. And I make axes, and have been doing so for many years, so much that I have a wide fan base of people who reliably buy my products and defend me no matter what I do. Now theres this kid out there, who has found a way to make my axes better, and shows people how to do it. Wouldn't it be the smart thing, to get him to work for me and make my axes better? Or should I try and throw money at a bullshit lawsuit in order to force him to stop?

It's completely Sony's fault for acting like children. They've pretty much declared war on everyone who is trying to use their product for more than it's intended use, and now everyone is suffering. Do you think Hotz went out of his way to piss companies off? Hell no, he was just enjoying himself, minding his own business. Found something cool, and told everyone. Instead of acting like a mature, contemporary business, they didn't try and collaborate. They pointlessly fought back. The law never decided Hotz's fate, it was settled out of court. If what he was doing was in fact illegal, the trial wouldn't have lasted so long.

Take a look at Valve. People have been modding their shit ever since Half-Life. Team Fortress was a modified version of Quake by a small team of nerdy programmers like Hotz. Instead of facing lawsuit from id, they let them do it. Eventually, they were hired by Valve to make a completely stand alone game, and then a sequel to the series. CSS started off as a mod of Half-Life, and again, Valve hired the people who designed the original mod, and they went on to develop a stand alone CS and then CSS. Needless to say, great things can be taken from the tech community of hackers and reverse engineers.

But no, people want to basically say to a console company, "You spent millions of dollars to develop this machine, thousands and thousands of man hours fine tuning it and essentially building an all in one entertainment hub, not to mention all it took to launch it with plenty of development houses making games for it so you could effectively compete. But I don't like it so fuck all that. I'm entitled to let everyone out there know how to undo a lot of that."

Bunch of self entitled little shits. So I say again if they don't like it, fuck them. let them develop their own shit that plays freeware games from indie game developers.

That's not what they are saying. At. All. When they see something like the PS3 or iPhone, they see possibility and challenge. How can I make this better? How do I get a device that is designed to do everything...do more. And then they do! They explore these possibilities, Without the millions of dollars and thousands of man hours! This is nothing short of amazing. I saw a video of a guy who hacked his wiimote to do amazing things.





Are you saying these guys are self-entitled shits for daring to use their products to do different things?



There is a legitimate concern for game developers, musicians, film makers burried beneath all the bullshit.

"How do I make money when my work can be available for free."

So far, they've tried fighting piracy head-on. We can all see where that is going, completely futile. No matter how many Pirate Bays and Napsters you shut down, a thousand more will rise in their place. Its been what, over ten years of trying to fight piracy this way, and not once has it ever worked. There will always be bootleggers, and the continued crusade against them is only turning their own paying consumers against them.

Then you have a group of people who are working with their consumers and in some cases support user generated content, be it through mods of games/software or encouraging remixes of music and etc. This is the direction things need to be going in.

[Sk1n]

It's not illegal to jailbreak your iPhone no matter how much Apple wants it to be. How different is jailbreaking a phone than a PS3. Seems like they can do the same things nowadays (play games, watch movies, listen to music etc.) It's legal to reverse engineer my toaster and refrigerator and any other electrical piece of equipment. What's illegal is to sell that for profit.

Did you read anything I said? I said time and time again it wasn't the jail breaking that was illegal, it was publishing the information of reverse engineering that was illegal. Also it doesn't matter if they do similar things. That doesn't make them similar when it comes to the FCC, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and tons of other regulations on electronics. Yes you can reverse engineer your toaster or refrigerator, but it's what you do with the information that determines the legality.

It is legal to mess with the operating system on any software designed to play games. The trial had nothing to do with the law really, it was about sending a message against piracy. What Hotz actually did was being shaped by Sony to be some kind of gateway to piracy, which is illegal. What Hotz did was legal, what Sony suggests Hotz tried to do is kind of in the gray. They actually contacted Google and Youtube to buy personal information to identify everyone who was looking at the code to jailbreak their PS3's, which is super shady and possibly way more illegal than anything Hotz ever did.

It wasn't a message against piracy. It was violations of multiple existing laws like Digital Millenium Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. § 1201, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 18 U.S.C. § 1030, Contributory copyright infringement, California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act § 502, Breach of Contract and other claims. What Hotz did was not in the gray. if you were to read those statutes, you would see it was just gray area and there are actual violations. Show me where Sony tried to buy personal information. The only personal information Sony received was granted a temporary restraining order, by a U.S. District Court in Northern California, which forbade him from distributing the jailbreak, helping or encouraging others to jailbreak, and distributing information they've learned during the creation of the jailbreak. It also ordered him to turn over computers and storage media used in the creation of the jailbreak to Sony's lawyers.

The court also issued an approval that Sony's lawyers were allowed access to all the IP addresses of all the people who visited Geohot's blog for the purposes of establishing jurisdiction. Sony said the server logs would demonstrate that many of those who downloaded Hotz’s hack reside in Northern California — thus making San Francisco a proper venue for the case.

So no, Sony didn't pull anything more shady or illegal. They went through the proper legal avenues.

Let me make an analogy. Say I'm in the axe manufacturing business. And I make axes, and have been doing so for many years, so much that I have a wide fan base of people who reliably buy my products and defend me no matter what I do. Now theres this kid out there, who has found a way to make my axes better, and shows people how to do it. Wouldn't it be the smart thing, to get him to work for me and make my axes better? Or should I try and throw money at a bullshit lawsuit in order to force him to stop?

Completely irrelevant argument. If someone develops a better axe, than it's on you to create something better or go out of business. What you fail to plug into the analogy is this kid would have to steal your government patented design on the axe, slightly change the handle and sell it to make it similar to the Sony situation (and yes I know Geohot didn't sell anything. But it doesn't change the fact that it's a horrible analogy because you're comparing a rudimentary tool to a advanced electronic device that contains thousands of parts). Copyright/Patent infringement is still infringement which doesn't constitute a "bullshit lawsuit"

It's completely Sony's fault for acting like children. They've pretty much declared war on everyone who is trying to use their product for more than it's intended use, and now everyone is suffering. Do you think Hotz went out of his way to piss companies off? Hell no, he was just enjoying himself, minding his own business. Found something cool, and told everyone. Instead of acting like a mature, contemporary business, they didn't try and collaborate. They pointlessly fought back. The law never decided Hotz's fate, it was settled out of court. If what he was doing was in fact illegal, the trial wouldn't have lasted so long.

Sony is at fault? They're acting like children? Don't fucking buy their product then This isn't a market where you can go, "Hey company. I don't like your product so I am going to break the law because you're not doing your job of putting out a product that I deem to be worthy of my money." More than it's intended use? It's there product that they spent money on creating and they don't have to allow anything they don't want. Shut up with this "everyone is suffering" bullshit. The only people complaining about this shit is a tiny corner of the PS3 community. Everyone else seems completely content and happy with the way their consoles work. Hotz has made it a point to alter the products of various companies in a way that he wanted. That's not considered minding his own business. The law did decide his fate because their decisions on his restraining order and seizure of his computers as well as the information of his website put him in the position he is right now. If he wasn't facing legal consequences, then he also wouldn't not have settled out of court on Sony's terms of never jail breaking any Sony product ever again.

It doesn't matter how any other companies have treated modders or people hacking their products. It doesn't matter how idealistic you want to be about how these companies should hire the supposed visionaries. We're talking about what happened with the PS3 jailbreak. It was illegal and wrong and whether you agree with it or not the court got involved on the side of Sony and Hotz had to give up because he was in the wrong and according to the laws it was illegal.

[CaptainTripps]

Actually Skin, considering how the Ios cases turned out (where the legality of jailbreaking was upheld) - this is EXACTLY the market where you go ""Hey company. I don't like your product so I am going to break the law because you're not doing your job of putting out a product that I deem to be worthy of my money." - or TEST the law, instead of breaking it. Kind of the way it works in America, innit it? Since when do we follow a law just because it exists - it has to exist for a good reason, or we test it, and occasionally get it removed (or clarified). Courts could have just as easily ruled that jailbreaking the PS3 broke no laws, which I kind of thing they would have - he may have gotten in trouble for posting the source codes tho, or anything else proprietary, but as far as I know modding hardware above and beyond is perfectly legal in just about every scenario, hell some people do it for a living.

You compared it to cars, and while there are limits and certain standards that have to be met, you can pretty much do what you want with one you own. That's a safety issue anyway, as are the laws regarding modifications to one's house - apples and oranges to a discussion regarding computer hardware and software.

[Sk1n]

Courts could have just as easily ruled that jailbreaking the PS3 broke no laws, which I kind of thing they would have - he may have gotten in trouble for posting the source codes tho, or anything else proprietary, but as far as I know modding hardware above and beyond is perfectly legal in just about every scenario, hell some people do it for a living.

Again, it wasn't the jail breaking that broke the law. It was the publishing the information of how to bypass Sony's firmware security that broke Computer Fraud Acts and the DMCA. That's what the courts ruled in, not the act of jail breaking itself.

I realize the cars and home thing was a different comparison to the PS3 jail breaking, but comparing the iOS jail break to the PS3 jail break are also different and separate incidents too. Even though they both have to do with hacking operating software, the difference of the devices and the manner in which they were hacked make them fall under different statues of copyright law and that's why Apple's lawsuits were struck down whereas Sony's were given the go ahead.

And while I don't see anything wrong with testing the law to see what is allowed to stand and what is prohibited, when someone is found to be in violation, such as in this case, there really isn't any excuse when one gets in trouble. Pleading ignorance, or trying to justify it doesn't change anything a ruling was made and the law was broken so Hotz was in the wrong.

[CaptainTripps]

That's kind of what I said - posting the osource code was probably illegal, but you guys seem to be arguing about modding stuff, which is perfectly legal. I don't have to develop some piece of hardware the equal of the PS3, I can just buy a PS3 and use it however I want. Which was my basic contention.

And he hasn't been found in violation of anything, merely accused. The issue hasn't been adjudicated at all.