Geohot: guilty or not guilty?

[enderfall]

Geohot made it possible for people to load their own programs on the ps3, his exploit explicitly did not make it possible to play downloaded games, just to sign and run code. Other people made games to run on it.

Lol, so to borrow the robbery analogy used earlier, it's OK that geohot was the guy that announced that there was a house prime for theft (or knocked down the door, depending on your view point) but didn't actually take anything? Only those that took things should be penalized?

Anyway this is a complete waste of time and money for Sony... There's really nothing for them to gain from this and it's only going to damage their reputation and encourage more people to hack the PS3.

Actually, there is quite a bit to gain for Sony. They have a team of lawyers employed full time so they aren't wasting any money or time there. I mean, why have them if something like this comes along and you do nothing about it?

I also doubt that this will encourage more people to hack the PS3. I think that bridge has already been crossed, and I have my doubts that Sony did anything to bring this on themselves. They have a right to try and protect their business; hackers do not have a right to anything.

[flamepanther]

Jailbreaking cell phones has been explicitly granted an exemption to the DMCA by the Librarian of Congress. There is no exemption for video games. Also, there is no exemption in the DMCA for non-infringing uses.

There is an exemption for enabling interoperability however, which was the justification for jailbreaking phones.

Endrfall, that's a ridiculous analogy. A piece of hardware in my living room is not someone else's house. It is a piece of hardware in my living room. Nobody ever locked me out of my VCR, even though I could choose to use it for piracy.

[Xonticus]

Lol, so to borrow the robbery analogy used earlier, it's OK that geohot was the guy that announced that there was a house prime for theft (or knocked down the door, depending on your view point) but didn't actually take anything? Only those that took things should be penalized?

Actually, it would be more like how to improve your home so you can do your own repairs and modify it the way you want it to be. Your robbery analogy is false in that you are talking about stealing from other people's property, when the ps3 that you would hack would actually be yours.

Yes, this means I am implying that the PS3 is your property when you buy it, and not "leased license" from sony, which concludes that this ps3 "jailbreak" issue should mean that the DMCA needs to be revised severely, because it violates consumer rights. This is my belief, and I am sticking by it.

[t0yrobo]

Geohot made it possible for people to load their own programs on the ps3, his exploit explicitly did not make it possible to play downloaded games, just to sign and run code. Other people made games to run on it.

Lol, so to borrow the robbery analogy used earlier, it's OK that geohot was the guy that announced that there was a house prime for theft (or knocked down the door, depending on your view point) but didn't actually take anything? Only those that took things should be penalized?

I really don't understand this attitude that I've been seeing lately on a lot of sites where people assume that there's nothing possibly good that can come out of being able to run your own code on a console/phone/whatever. Everyone always jumps right to bashing on pirates and claiming that hackers do nothing but aid them.
By that logic, isn't Microsoft abetting piracy by letting people do what they want with Windows? They make it possible for people to install their own software on their system, so how's that different?
For example, lots of people use daemon tools to run disc images that they downloaded illegally, lots of people use it with legally owned software so that they don't have to deal with cds and get better performance. You can do the same thing with console exploits.

Anyway this is a complete waste of time and money for Sony... There's really nothing for them to gain from this and it's only going to damage their reputation and encourage more people to hack the PS3.

Actually, there is quite a bit to gain for Sony. They have a team of lawyers employed full time so they aren't wasting any money or time there. I mean, why have them if something like this comes along and you do nothing about it?

I also doubt that this will encourage more people to hack the PS3. I think that bridge has already been crossed, and I have my doubts that Sony did anything to bring this on themselves. They have a right to try and protect their business; hackers do not have a right to anything.

Well lets assume that there's no extra cost to Sony for this. At best they could get a legal precedence for future cases, and even that would be under a lot of scrutiny so it's value would be questionable. They can make life tough for geohot, failoverflow, etc. but that won't stop the ps3 from being blown wide open. What they are doing is giving the exploit and it's creators a lot of free publicity and making it widely known that as of now it's possible to run whatever you want on a PS3 and they can't do jack about it.

[ZeroAX]

Plus the more coverage this gets in the news, the more casual PS3 owners will learn just how easy it is to play pirated games on their PS3, which will make things even worse for Sony. Just let the thing die Sony, you can't do a thing about it now. Just make sure the PSP2 has better protection.

[Bradtemple87]

My opinion is that he is in the wrong once he distributes it, but personal use should be totally allowed. You choose to void your own warranty by opening or tampering with hardware. This is why they put the sticker on there to warn us

[flamepanther]

My opinion is that he is in the wrong once he distributes it, but personal use should be totally allowed. You choose to void your own warranty by opening or tampering with hardware. This is why they put the sticker on there to warn us

If it's OK to do it, why isn't it OK to tell others how to do it?

[Bradtemple87]

Information isn't distribution.

I meant if he sold his service. A blog or website is ok in my eyes.

[flamepanther]

Information isn't distribution.

I meant if he sold his service. A blog or website is ok in my eyes.

If it's anything like soft-modding a Wii though, just jailbreaking the system to run arbitrary code isn't enough to run pirated games, even though that's the first step. That activity probably requires additional steps, which Geohot doesn't seem interested in sharing. Also, a blog or a website is exactly what Sony is suing over.

My guess is that Sony knows they don't have a case. They're hoping to litigate the site out of existence with legal costs rather than actually win the lawsuit. Don't think for a second they wouldn't try that, because it's exactly what Sony did to Bleem! and it worked.

[EvilRyu2099]

I really don't understand this attitude that I've been seeing lately on a lot of sites where people assume that there's nothing possibly good that can come out of being able to run your own code on a console/phone/whatever. Everyone always jumps right to bashing on pirates and claiming that hackers do nothing but aid them.
By that logic, isn't Microsoft abetting piracy by letting people do what they want with Windows? They make it possible for people to install their own software on their system, so how's that different?
For example, lots of people use daemon tools to run disc images that they downloaded illegally, lots of people use it with legally owned software so that they don't have to deal with cds and get better performance. You can do the same thing with console exploits.

It's not the same thing.. This is the equivalent of running an actual cracked Windows OS system, if you use the PS3 to the extent of pirating games... Try running your own cracked Windows 7 and watch them lock you out of updates.. It's the same thing here..

Well lets assume that there's no extra cost to Sony for this. At best they could get a legal precedence for future cases, and even that would be under a lot of scrutiny so it's value would be questionable. They can make life tough for geohot, failoverflow, etc. but that won't stop the ps3 from being blown wide open. What they are doing is giving the exploit and it's creators a lot of free publicity and making it widely known that as of now it's possible to run whatever you want on a PS3 and they can't do jack about it.

It all depends on who gets the keys and homebrew.. Atm pirating Isos aren't an easy process although there has been a game fully pirated in Castlevania LOS so far, but not anyone can do it either.. This isn't the Xbox or Dreamcast where all you need to do is burn Isos or have a HDD..