Sony files for restraining order against Geohot+fail0verflow

[Candescence]

Pointless and impractical. After Joystiq and Kotaku linked it multiple of times, a countless number have people have no doubt downloaded it out of curiosity.

Sony = not the brightest bunch, evidently.

[eXtaticus]

In my opinion, Sony blaming GeoHot and Co for the impending threat of piracy is as wholly ridiculous as blaming the creators of Islam for terrorism and suicide bombings; sure, a brainwashed extremist would probably quite happily blow themselves to bits on a western tube train or airplane in the name of religion, but equally there are peaceful worshipers of that very same religion who are harmless in every aspect, but painted with a broad brush by those who see only the villains with which Islam is associated with.

Just like terrorists abusing religion for their own diabolical ends, people are bound to use GeoHot's PS3 manipulation techniques for piracy and other less-than-legal activities; you quite simply can't blame the producer for the customers' uses of the product. Hell, even Mr. Hotz himself has expressed his personal objections to software theft on his own website, even calling himself an "advocate against mass piracy".

Sony's motivation for seeing this case through is so that they can scare other homebrewers off with the saber-rattling haka of a display that they'll make of GeoHot if he falls. It's bloody-mided, vengeance-fueled, and - most prominently - pathetic.

[Patticus]

I suspect that this is pushed by publishers as much as Sony themselves. Sony needs to show publishers that it's attempting to do SOMETHING to combat piracy, and thus justify the licencing fee that they have to pay Sony. The last thing they need is the likes of Activision or EA getting litigious or dropping third party support for the machine.

And I imagine the Sony shareholders will want to know action is being taken, too.

[Scar]

In my opinion, Sony blaming GeoHot and Co for the impending threat of piracy is as wholly ridiculous as blaming the creators of Islam for terrorism and suicide bombings; sure, a brainwashed extremist would probably quite happily blow themselves to bits on a western tube train or airplane in the name of religion, but equally there are peaceful worshipers of that very same religion who are harmless in every aspect, but painted with a broad brush by those who see only the villains with which Islam is associated with.

Just like terrorists abusing religion for their own diabolical ends, people are bound to use GeoHot's PS3 manipulation techniques for piracy and other less-than-legal activities; you quite simply can't blame the producer for the customers' uses of the product. Hell, even Mr. Hotz himself has expressed his personal objections to software theft on his own website, even calling himself an "advocate against mass piracy".

Sony's motivation for seeing this case through is so that they can scare other homebrewers off with the saber-rattling haka of a display that they'll make of GeoHot if he falls. It's bloody-mided, vengeance-fueled, and - most prominently - pathetic.

It is quite pathetic, but they don't have anyone else to blame for this though. Sony make most of their money off of game sales, and if something is compromising those sales, they will be quite angry.

Frankly, all of this has been caused by the cheating bastards who love to hack online multiplayer games and pirate games. Those people are the ones who should be shut down, not Hotz. I'm sure that a compromise will be reached eventually with this, because it is as you said; you can't blame the creator of something, for its misuse, it would be like blaming Einstein for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[SuperStingray]

Frankly, I think Sony should be proud for making the console's architecture solid enough last as long as it did, the leap year bug being the only major consequence of it. (To my knowledge anyway.) But I feel both sides are at fault here. Geohot & friends pretty much shattered the Terms of Service. You play with their toy, you play by their rules; Capitalism's fragile enough without the ambiguity in ownership and morality that comes with virtual and intellectual properties and whatnot, so Sony's will is really all we have to go by to prevent total anarchistic use of their product. That said, Sony's retaliation just seems almost totalitarian, and to no attainable end at that. Once the floodgates are open, they're fucking open, they can't expect to feel up each PS3 user like airport security, take away their hacking ability and pretend the problem never existed.

[Candescence]

Frankly, I think Sony should be proud for making the console's architecture solid enough last as long as it did,

[Ferno]

*visibly strains trying not to scream "I TOLD YOU SONY ARE BASTARDS" all over the thread*

Edited March 8, 2011 by Inferno

[Tornado]

The only reason it lasted as long as it did is because hackers had no reason to hack it in the first place due to the OtherOS function. When Sony removed it, hackers actually had a reason to crack the PS3 open.

[Velotix von Skruviktorrius]

The getting-neg-repped-through-the-ground thing in that other Sony topic was weeks ago. Let it go already.

Someone really missed the point here.

[Detective Shadzter]

Anonymous has joined in now. Yesterday they put a threat out against Sony and then took their websites and the browser based PS Store down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcSCUU4Fg9k&feature=player_embedded

http://www.gamedynamo.com/article/showarticle/1082/en/Anonymous_Targets_Sony_Vows_to_Discipline_Company_with_Hacking

Today they're threatening to attack Sony's staff by robbing personal data.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-05-anonymous-attack-on-sony-gets-personal

This is just getting ridiculous now.

[Carbo]

It's been pretty ridiculous for a very long time.

At this point I'm convinced that nothing good will come out of this so I'm just going to sit here at the sidelines and laugh at how much both parties manage jumping sharks, and part of me hopes that Hotz's lawyers manage to dismiss the possibility of the case being in Cali. It'd probably mean the end to a good deal of influence the lawsuit would hold, and it'd be clean-shut for most of the part.

[Patticus]

The war on Sony by 'hacktivist' collective Anonymous has turned personal.

For off-shoot group SonyRecon, successful DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks on the PlayStation website and PlayStation Store were not enough, reports PlayStationLifestyle.

SonyRecon plans to take matters a step further and carry out 'Dox' attacks on Sony employees. Dox refers to stealing a person's identity - their name, telephone number, pictures, home address, email, IP, family details and so on - and maliciously using that information against them

SonyRecon provided examples of how the stolen information could be used. One example was sending STD postcards - e-postcards - to the target to tell them that one of their previous partners had a sexually transmitted disease.

SonyRecon is still a fledgling operation, but already claims to have brought down Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton's website - the legal firm handling the George "Geohot" Hotz case.

Yesterday, Anonymous declared war on Sony for its "wholly unforgivable" legal pursuit of George "Geohot" Hotz - aka the man credited with jailbreaking PS3.

"Now you will experience the wrath of Anonymous. You saw a hornets nest, and stuck your penises in it. You must face the consequences of your actions, Anonymous style," a threat read.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-05-anonymous-attack-on-sony-gets-personal

Jim sterling, Destructoid:

Earlier today, we brought word that Anonymous was declaring war on Sony in retaliation for its ongoing "PS3 hacker" suits against George "Geohot" Hotz and Graf_Chokolo. The opening shots have allegedly been fired, it would seem, as the PlayStation Network suffers connection issues and Sony sites die across the 'net.

Sony has acknowledged the PSN outages, blaming them on "sporadic maintenance," but it is yet to address the issue of PlayStation.com and other Sony-related sites being down for the majority of the day.

Anonymous has been given speculative credit for the downtime, which seems likely given that this fits their modus operandi and all the sites went down at once. At least one Youtube user claiming to represent the group has named Anonymous as the cause.

This is all really interesting stuff, but if Anonymous can schedule its PSN attacks around my reviewing of SOCOM 4, that'd be fantastic, since I really need to get that done. Thanks, guys!

http://www.destructoid.com/

How exactly does attacking individual Sony employees benefit them? Unless they're targeting specific key figures in the company with the authority to call off the lawsuit, this is going to get them nowhere at best. If their intent is to scare these people away from the company or something to that effect, that's terrorism.

[Chris]

How exactly does attacking individual Sony employees benefit them? Unless they're targeting specific key figures in the company with the authority to call off the lawsuit, this is going to get them nowhere at best. If their intent is to scare these people away from the company or something to that effect, that's terrorism.

They're trying to get a point across to the company as a whole, and believe that attacking the employees uninvolved with such decisions is a good place to start I guess. It's an interesting situation.. but from the perspective of a boss or someone else in charge at Sony, you wouldn't want to have that happen to your employees so it'd get noticed fairly quickly.

[Dobkeratops]

Not surprising to see that any inconveniences and harm from this to regular users and workers aren't exactly coming from Sony.

Remind me what is this good fight they're fighting for again? Some basement-dweller dickwad that desperately needs a swift cut to his ego? Boy, this is totally worth violating the privacy of several families and surely will accomplish a lot.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Dobkeratops

[Velotix von Skruviktorrius]

WHY WON'T THIS TOPIC DIE

I mean.

Well. Frankly, I don't approve of Anon getting involved. Makes sense but I don't approve.

[Badnik Mechanic]

When this started to go down last night, I wondered how many people would be in favour of it, so I took a trip to some of the pro hacking sites, I was quite suprised by what I found.

The hard liners, and the die hards were more or less "burn sony burn!" and "Go anon!" however... the vast majority were against it. It was quite suprising but most of their reasons were the same. Ranging from "How does this help us get across what we're doing?" to "So they're going to help Sony's customers by preventing them from using the PSN service?"

Even in the youtube video someone posted on behalf of them last night, check out the ratings for it, it's almost 50/50 (yet the majority are against it) that doesn't usually happen on stuff like this, normally if people really are behind them, and we've seen it before with scientology, wesboro, and to a lesser extent wiki leaks, then it's right up there with a clear majority, this time though it's a very different reaction.

part of me hopes that Hotz's lawyers manage to dismiss the possibility of the case being in Cali. It'd probably mean the end to a good deal of influence the lawsuit would hold, and it'd be clean-shut for most of the part.

Actually... at this point it needs to be heard in court. Reason being is that once the judgement is made, regardless as to what the outcome is, it sets a line in the sand. If the trial collapses or isn't heard, then stuff like this is just going to continue and it's going to get a lot worse.

[Blue Wisp]

I seriously have a bad feeling about this .-.

See, why Sony sued Geohot? The other company don't sue every hacker of their consoles ._.

[Carbo]

See, why Sony sued Geohot? The other company don't sue every hacker of their consoles ._.

Distributing the console keys for the PS3 which as a result paved way for hackers and homebrewers to create things, as well as destroy. This wouldn't have been much of a problem if say, it didn't harm PSN, which is why most casual people are giving a shit about this for once, but moreover it's the fact that he distributed material which isn't meant to be shared.

[LunarEdge]

This Anonymous guy is taking this TOO far if you ask me. Even with the removal of the "Install other OS" the Ps3 is still a fully function-able video game console, which in the end, is all that should really matter. I mean, I guess it sucks for the two people who actually used the Other OS option and they are missing out on a little perk here and there, but get over it. I see nothing but butt-hurt coming from people like Anonymous for no reason. I feel sorry for the Geo guy but what are you or anyone else gonna do? Hopefully things turn in his favor or won't affect his life as bad.

[Tornado]

Even with the removal of the "Install other OS" the Ps3 is still a fully function-able video game console, which in the end, is all that should really matter.

I don't see how it is your (or anyone's) place to make that determination. Not that Linux is particularly related to this situation in the first place.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Tornado

[LunarEdge]

I don't see how it is your (or anyone's) place to make that determination. Not that Linux is particularly related to this situation in the first place.

Ps3 still functions as a video game console (with a few perks/add-ons such as music player, blu-ray player etc. etc.) I think it's fair that I CAN make that determination. It does what it's suppose to do, no need to hack it.

[Tornado]

It does what it's suppose to do, no need to hack it.

Except it doesn't, because your definition of "what its supposed to do" does not apply to everyone. Some people think that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do whether they did those things or not.

Ps3 still functions as a video game console (with a few perks/add-ons such as music player, blu-ray player etc. etc.) I think it's fair that I CAN make that determination.

You also didn't pay for my PS3, so you really don't have any say in what I do with it regardless of the Other OS issue.

Though, again, Linux is only a tertiary issue to this case. Though there have been valiant attempts to reintroduce Other OS to the system, they haven't been made by GeoHot and Sony isn't (strictly speaking) suing the people responsible for those attempts.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Tornado

[LunarEdge]

it does everything it was advertised to do besides the Other OS, which isn't advertised anymore anyway. (since it was patched out) you got what you paid for. Yea I didn't pay for your current console but it does everything Sony intended it to do and what they expected you to do with it. If you want to hack, I could care less, but people act like since the removal of the Other OS and Sony's harder enforcement on their hard/software that the system isn't usable or something.

Edited April 5, 2011 by LunarEdge

[eXtaticus]

I personally believe that it would be more beneficial to GeoHot's cause if there were hacking groups creating more cracks for the PS3 rather than hacking Sony themselves; if enough jailbreaks for the console exist, then Sony will be forced into a state whereby they will become unable to remain focused squarely on GeoHot due to the sheer number of other hackers and groups who have broken into their console - more targets make for harder work for Sony, who will most likely drop their lawsuits against Mr Hotz as a result of not having been able to make an example of him. And this objective - need I remind everyone - is the real reason that the company has taken this entire case to such ridiculously overblown levels at all.

It's not about money, it's about control; if Sony lose control in ways that don't involve GeoHot's code, then they will most likely let him slip.

[Scar]

Except it doesn't, because your definition of "what its supposed to do" does not apply to everyone. Some people think that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do whether they did those things or not.

What is it that people think it doesn't do that its supposed to do?

As far as I'm aware, the PS3 does its Home entertainment job quite well. Not unless other OS and homebrew is considered an intergral part of home entertainment.

I mean they didn't even advertise Other OS as far as I'm aware.