Sony CEO: "Free" PSN Wasn't a Likely Target

[Mark Davison]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

If all Geohot wanted to do was tamper with HIS console - he should have kept it to himself. For an example that people on here might care about, its the difference between learning to draw by copying a comic book artist (ie. drawing at home and tracing etc) and selling traces of their work as your own and making money off their talent and work (Rob Granito springs to mind).

 

[Jammy2003]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

On a little note, Ford is a terrible example as most of their keys will at least unlock most other cars... Just as an aside there .

But I would also argue that the comparison still isn't the same at all. Yes Geohot releasing the code, while others tampering with the fan is on a very different level, but the reason he did it was as Sony canceled a service that some people used. It's effectively false advertisement to say a key feature is no longer allowed after you have sold the product to someone.
Yes not many people used it, but some people will have bought it for that purpose solely, and at the end of it were left with a glorified doorstop. If people were willing to trade install another OS and not get PSN access, then that's their choice.
Admittedly I'm not completely well read on it so maybe there was some fact that actually compromised their security in allowing it, but to me, it just looks like Sony crapping on the consumer a bit...

 

[Captain_M]

Duh.

If people hacked into a system and extracted from it tons of personal information including, allegedly, credit card numbers, they most definately weren't trying to target the "free PSN." In fact, we all know that the whole of PSN went down simply because Sony was trying to protect the network as soon as the hacks were discovered.

Why would he write this statement? It only seems to add to the belief that the execs at Sony were foolish to assume they were protected by their consumer policy. What's the point?

 

[JDKJ]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

On a little note, Ford is a terrible example as most of their keys will at least unlock most other cars... Just as an aside there .

But I would also argue that the comparison still isn't the same at all. Yes Geohot releasing the code, while others tampering with the fan is on a very different level, but the reason he did it was as Sony canceled a service that some people used. It's effectively false advertisement to say a key feature is no longer allowed after you have sold the product to someone.
Yes not many people used it, but some people will have bought it for that purpose solely, and at the end of it were left with a glorified doorstop. If people were willing to trade install another OS and not get PSN access, then that's their choice.
Admittedly I'm not completely well read on it so maybe there was some fact that actually compromised their security in allowing it, but to me, it just looks like Sony crapping on the consumer a bit...

I don't get the impression that the reason EgoHot was cracking Sony's code is the same reason you think it was. I get the feeling that he's an attention whore and would crack a fart on a crowded subway platform if he though doing so would get him some attention.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Is it so hard to resist the urge to hack things? I mean, hell, the latest Pokemon game was supposed to be hack proof and someone put the ROM up within two hours or something.

See that? To me, that sounds like a challenge.

Like when my college told me that I couldn't get around their system to stop me from getting onto the escapist in my lunch break. Me and a friend had a look around, wrote a batch file that broke it and showed it to them.

People like a challenge.

...I don't get it. When people say 'You can't do this' or 'This is impossible', I don't get an uncontrollable urge to do it anyway/prove them wrong...

 

[Dogstile]

Is it so hard to resist the urge to hack things? I mean, hell, the latest Pokemon game was supposed to be hack proof and someone put the ROM up within two hours or something.

See that? To me, that sounds like a challenge.

Like when my college told me that I couldn't get around their system to stop me from getting onto the escapist in my lunch break. Me and a friend had a look around, wrote a batch file that broke it and showed it to them.

People like a challenge.

...I don't get it. When people say 'You can't do this' or 'This is impossible', I don't get an uncontrollable urge to do it anyway/prove them wrong...

Well damn, I'm glad you don't. I however, do. So do plenty of other hackers out there. The difference being is while I would only do it to help a system, their are plenty of people who don't hold my morals.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

Cause you know, even though your service was free we're totally going to ignore your oppression of the gaming market and to those who just want linux on their PS3.

Right Sony, you keep telling yourselves that. Maybe one day you'll get your heads out of your asses and become the once-awesome company who created the PS2, but until that happens I'm still boycotting you.

 

[raankh]

Free? Yeah right, like they didn't expect revenue from PSN? That's so lame ....

 

[Danceofmasks]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

If all Geohot wanted to do was tamper with HIS console - he should have kept it to himself. For an example that people on here might care about, its the difference between learning to draw by copying a comic book artist (ie. drawing at home and tracing etc) and selling traces of their work as your own and making money off their talent and work (Rob Granito springs to mind).

That's not what happened at all.
Hotts was restoring a feature. That was the purpose of the firmware he released.

It was a sales pitch for the PS3, saying "you can install Linux and use these as computers!"

A whole bunch of people bought PS3s and never played a single game on them.
For 4 years, nobody even ATTEMPTED to hack the PS3.
Every other console, ever, in history, was hacked within a year.

Suddenly, Sony said, "OH HEY, you can no longer use those computers you bought from us."

 

[Triaed]

Maybe is the wording, maybe I am looking at it wrong, but it kinda sounds like Sony is shocked that "we" (the collective gaming community which can include hackers) allowed something like this to happen... sorta like neglecting to form a neighbourhood watch patrol.
I fear these type of comments by Sony will become the foundation of a pay service.

-Hey we scratch your back you scratch ours
-Dude, you stabbed me in the back while you were supposed to be scratching that corner I can't reach
-Look what you made me do, now I have to start wearing chainmail
-You know, that new shiny chainmail don't come cheap. Time to let me take a dive in your wallet

 

[JDKJ]

They weren't trying to bring down the network, they were trying to access personal information. Sony shut down the PSN all by itself!

Which is a lot like saying they weren't trying to close the nightclub, they were just trying to take a big shit in the middle of the dance floor. Management shut down the club all by itself!

 

[Bullzeye421]

Cause you know, even though your service was free we're totally going to ignore your oppression of the gaming market and to those who just want linux on their PS3.

Right Sony, you keep telling yourselves that. Maybe one day you'll get your heads out of your asses and become the once-awesome company who created the PS2, but until that happens I'm still boycotting you.

Has anyone ever stopped and asked why Sony felt it necessary to remove the OtherOS feature? Perhaps it's code was interferring with something? Perhaps developers were having problems with some aspect of it? Perhaps Sony feared that hackers were using PS3 banks as super computers to try and take over the world?

I admit to being extremely disapointed in Sony about this whole ordeal but I wouldn't trade my backwards compatible 80gig PS3 for some piece of shit Xbox that would most likely implode in six months. And a Wii would be like trying to ride a 6 yr old girl's My Little Pony tricycle to me.

And so fucking what the PSN was down for 3 weeks. All the best games in my opinion are not online compatible. Fallout, Elderscrolls, Demon Souls & Red Dead Redemption (although there is online features to both the storyline is much better for RDR and Demon Souls is harder when you can't spam for items/souls).

Finally, if you were stupid enough to enter your personal information into the PSN then you deserved to have it stolen. I don't enter any personal info into any kind of online storage. That goes for passwords, email accounts, bank acount and credit card numbers, my browsers are cleaned every 2 hrs. Hell I don't even sign my credit cards so the woman at the supermarket has to ask me for I.D.

 

[lordmardok]

I mean, hell, the latest Pokemon game was supposed to be hack proof and someone put the ROM up within two hours or something.

Lol. I beat the newest pokemon game 6 months before it came out, there was a partial translate out waaaaaaaay before game even hit the states.

 

[Gaiseric]

I...kind of agree. If my company offered a service for free that other companies make you pay out the ass for, I would expect anyone wanting to harm the company to look elsewhere.

Is it so hard to resist the urge to hack things? I mean, hell, the latest Pokemon game was supposed to be hack proof and someone put the ROM up within two hours or something.

I agree with you.

I just wish they'd stop hacking things. Gone past my nerves. Now ever time a see a story involving something being hacked I get angry immediately. At this point I'd be hard-pressed to ever sympathize with a hacker.

edit: sorry seems like you're getting a tonne of quotes filling up your inbox.

 

[Gaiseric]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

If all Geohot wanted to do was tamper with HIS console - he should have kept it to himself. For an example that people on here might care about, its the difference between learning to draw by copying a comic book artist (ie. drawing at home and tracing etc) and selling traces of their work as your own and making money off their talent and work (Rob Granito springs to mind).

That's not what happened at all.
Hotts was restoring a feature. That was the purpose of the firmware he released.

It was a sales pitch for the PS3, saying "you can install Linux and use these as computers!"

A whole bunch of people bought PS3s and never played a single game on them.
For 4 years, nobody even ATTEMPTED to hack the PS3.
Every other console, ever, in history, was hacked within a year.

Suddenly, Sony said, "OH HEY, you can no longer use those computers you bought from us."

Didn't they remove Linux because people were using it to pirate games? And wasn't it Geohot that hacked the PS3 in the first place to restore Linux? And then didn't he go farther after that a crack the source code while Linux was already restored?

*Note - Serious questions, I've read all those things. Just checking*

Also how many people really bought a PS3 with the only intention of using it as a computer? I haven't meet any and that's the first I've heard of it.

 

[Random Argument Man]

It sounds more like "Why us? Why not the others?" statement...


Sony should've shut up. The hole is kinda deep enough. Don't need need to dig more....Oh well... Don't need be worst...

Note* I've have a feeling someone can say "It's funny. but yes..."

 

[MorphingDragon]

Cause you know, even though your service was free we're totally going to ignore your oppression of the gaming market and to those who just want linux on their PS3.

Right Sony, you keep telling yourselves that. Maybe one day you'll get your heads out of your asses and become the once-awesome company who created the PS2, but until that happens I'm still boycotting you.

Has anyone ever stopped and asked why Sony felt it necessary to remove the OtherOS feature? Perhaps it's code was interferring with something? Perhaps developers were having problems with some aspect of it? Perhaps Sony feared that hackers were using PS3 banks as super computers to try and take over the world?

That's not how OtherOS works. OtherOS exposes the Bootloader of the PS3 so an OS other than GameOS is loaded. GameOS and its functions are untouched.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Can people please stop repeating this stupid urban myth? "suing a person for tampering with an item they own is kind of fucked up"
They didn't Sue him for that did they? hundreds of people have swapped fans, exchanged heat sinks etc etc, and they couldnt give it more than a passing care.
the point is that geohot tampered with his console - and then released the code.
For a comparison - If you owned a ford car - and someone suddenly showed the world how to make a skeleton key for free. Sure their reasoning is "now no one has to pay extortionate ford prices to get their master keys cut". And thats true. On the down side - now anyone can steal your car.

If all Geohot wanted to do was tamper with HIS console - he should have kept it to himself. For an example that people on here might care about, its the difference between learning to draw by copying a comic book artist (ie. drawing at home and tracing etc) and selling traces of their work as your own and making money off their talent and work (Rob Granito springs to mind).

That's not what happened at all.
Hotts was restoring a feature. That was the purpose of the firmware he released.

It was a sales pitch for the PS3, saying "you can install Linux and use these as computers!"

A whole bunch of people bought PS3s and never played a single game on them.
For 4 years, nobody even ATTEMPTED to hack the PS3.
Every other console, ever, in history, was hacked within a year.

Suddenly, Sony said, "OH HEY, you can no longer use those computers you bought from us."

Didn't they remove Linux because people were using it to pirate games? And wasn't it Geohot that hacked the PS3 in the first place to restore Linux? And then didn't he go farther after that a crack the source code while Linux was already restored?

*Note - Serious questions, I've read all those things. Just checking*

Also how many people really bought a PS3 with the only intention of using it as a computer? I haven't meet any and that's the first I've heard of it.

Linux is linux.
It runs some games, not PS3 games but Linux games, and a legit install of Linux didn't have full access to the graphics hardware.

A lot of people got PS3s just to run Linux.
Because, if all you want is a standalone firewall, or web server, or some such, PS3s actually had the best price to performance ratio (y'know, being sold at a loss and all that).

Now, Linuxheads, as they are called, are the people who are heavily into computers but don't play a lot of games.
If they are gamers, they would use windows.
I.e. the kind of people who potentially have dangerously high levels of hacking skills.

The way it went down was, months after OtherOS was patched out, there was this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6CA4fqAdsc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

 

[Gaiseric]

Didn't they remove Linux because people were using it to pirate games? And wasn't it Geohot that hacked the PS3 in the first place to restore Linux? And then didn't he go farther after that a crack the source code while Linux was already restored?

*Note - Serious questions, I've read all those things. Just checking*

Also how many people really bought a PS3 with the only intention of using it as a computer? I haven't meet any and that's the first I've heard of it.

Linux is linux.
It runs some games, not PS3 games but Linux games, and a legit install of Linux didn't have full access to the graphics hardware.

A lot of people got PS3s just to run Linux.
Because, if all you want is a standalone firewall, or web server, or some such, PS3s actually had the best price to performance ratio (y'know, being sold at a loss and all that).

Now, Linuxheads, as they are called, are the people who are heavily into computers but don't play a lot of games.
If they are gamers, they would use windows.
I.e. the kind of people who potentially have dangerously high levels of hacking skills.

The way it went down was, months after OtherOS was patched out, there was this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6CA4fqAdsc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Thanks for clearing that up.

Now I'm curious though how many Linuxheads had a legit install.