8th February 2011, 4:12 PM
This recent hack really has them scrambling. I understand their concern over piracy. It's legitimate, though perhaps overblown. However their recent spat of lawsuits over this have no real basis. Some of the people they're hunting down don't even live in the US, for example. The fact is, there's perfectly legitimate reasons to hack the thing, mostly having to do with the fact that, as they originally actually advertised it, the PS3 is a pretty danged powerful computer in it's own right, and plenty of people would love the opportunity to actually fully utilize the hardware they bought in whatever way they please.
Note some caveats here. While I do think hacking the system is perfectly legitimate, I don't think piracy is. At best, "backups" on it are purely for the sake of speeding up load times, and a few extra steps could be taken on the part of whoever's writing it to, say, sign self-made backups so they can only be played on that specific console. It'd be a "we're meeting you half way Sony" gesture of good will. Further, while I don't think Sony is at all in their rights to remove features from a system they sold to you, or to remotely "disable" a console as they have recently hinted at being able to do, they ARE fully in their rights to ban systems from their online network. In that case, the network is NOT something someone owns, it's entirely Sony's own servers, and the threat of cheating in online games is sufficient reason to ban hacked systems. I would suggest, to the hackers, to simply set up two modes. One mode is the "hacked" do whatever you want mode, but with access to Sony's network disabled, and the other would be "unhacked" normal mode with full online access. Again, it's another "meet them half way" gesture to do something like that. Anyone who takes either of these gestures and attempts to work around them would certainly have very suspect motivations, and both sides can go after such "black hats" as they emerge.
Really, that second gesture I mentioned? That's basically what Linux mode is set up to be. No one was really bothering with PS3 hacking until Sony just up and took it out. Now it's returning but with complete system access (such as full GPU support which Sony's Linux mode lacked). This is the sort of thing Sony really aught to just put back in, an act of meeting people half-way of their own.
Note some caveats here. While I do think hacking the system is perfectly legitimate, I don't think piracy is. At best, "backups" on it are purely for the sake of speeding up load times, and a few extra steps could be taken on the part of whoever's writing it to, say, sign self-made backups so they can only be played on that specific console. It'd be a "we're meeting you half way Sony" gesture of good will. Further, while I don't think Sony is at all in their rights to remove features from a system they sold to you, or to remotely "disable" a console as they have recently hinted at being able to do, they ARE fully in their rights to ban systems from their online network. In that case, the network is NOT something someone owns, it's entirely Sony's own servers, and the threat of cheating in online games is sufficient reason to ban hacked systems. I would suggest, to the hackers, to simply set up two modes. One mode is the "hacked" do whatever you want mode, but with access to Sony's network disabled, and the other would be "unhacked" normal mode with full online access. Again, it's another "meet them half way" gesture to do something like that. Anyone who takes either of these gestures and attempts to work around them would certainly have very suspect motivations, and both sides can go after such "black hats" as they emerge.
Really, that second gesture I mentioned? That's basically what Linux mode is set up to be. No one was really bothering with PS3 hacking until Sony just up and took it out. Now it's returning but with complete system access (such as full GPU support which Sony's Linux mode lacked). This is the sort of thing Sony really aught to just put back in, an act of meeting people half-way of their own.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)