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Sony Gets Temporary Injunction Vs. Aussie Mod Chip Seller
by Leigh Alexander [PC, Console/PC]
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August 27, 2010
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Not long after an Australian retailer unveiled what purported to be a fully-functional PlayStation 3 mod chip, Sony got a temporary injunction from the Australian federal court to block distributors from importing or selling the device in the region.
It's unclear who actually created the modchip; it's only known that it comes from China or Hong Kong. But retailer OzModChips.com sent video to consumer websites like Kotaku that appeared to show a PS3 running disc games from backup files -- minus the disc, seemingly demonstrating a fairly rare occurrence for the tough-to-crack PS3.
Sony has obtained permission to physically hold all retailers' mod chip stock until the injunction's deadline, August 31. Between now and then, Sony will make its case for the illegality of the devices. Should the company fail, it will return the mod chips to the retailers September 1 to be sold again. The retailer publicly maintains that it sells the devices only for use in creating legal backups.
Mod chips have largely enjoyed legality down under, but earlier this year, Nintendo successfully sued an Australian distributor for selling R4 cards used to hack its portable hardware. The company won $520,000 and the retailer was ordered to cease selling them, a development that could now come into play as Sony aims to stop devices that circumvent its own hardware.
To avoid security exploits, Sony recently implemented a firmware upgrade that disabled the PS3's "Other OS" feature, effectively prohibiting users from running non-native operating systems on the hardware. The decision was met with some contention from users.
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I hope the guys who made this piece of trash did rip off some piece of Sony tech so they get sued huge. Punks.
The homebrew games excuse is a joke. Even if these products do have legitimate uses, those are just serendipitous byproducts of what their intended use is—piracy.
I know it will screw consumers on the used games end, but it must be done to cover the ends of game devs and publishers. This piracy thing must end. Physical media is the entry point for piracy to start and digital distribution is the key to stopping it.
I have done a complete 180 on the subject.
Add onto that the fact that there has not been a game DRM that has not been bypassed, you have yourself the exact same situation as you are in now, minus some used sales.
So in affect, you have not hurt piracy one bit but have further disenfranchised your legitimate customers by taking away a stream of game purchasing revenue from them.
I also would like to point out that games from X-Box Live and the PSN do not get pirated as far as I have ever seen. Games from STEAM do not either. Lots of people buy games from all three places all the time. I do so as well. I have played Fat Princess more than any other game as of late. It is purely fun.
It is a really tough situation and I am sad that the games industry has to deal with it. I just think that any effort made to mitigate piracy needs to have the least amount of collateral damage as possible. Preferably no collateral damage.
I think the best way to fight piracy is to treat your customers with as much respect as possible. Make them the king of your world. Following the guidelines laid out in Stardock's PC Gamer's Bill of Rights would be a good start.
While you would leave yourself open to more easy pirating, at least then you would expose pirates for what they really are, thieves.
OMG - you're kidding right? Games from XBL and PSN don't because (speaking for PS3 at least - I don't know anything about XBL) the PS3 hasn't been hacked (apart from this mod chip). XBL games probably don't work without a valid/non-modded console and connection to XBL (for online play at least).
Games from STEAM are pirated the day they come out (if not the day before). TF2, MW2, CS:S etc. are all available as non-Steam versions.
The young, lower income people have always pirated, and always will. Every DRM gets broken eventually. The industry isn't losing $60 * 500 games from some college kid with free Internet. All those sort of figures are ridiculous. They need to focus on giving people a reason to buy their games, besides "Here's the same game last year, with 1 more polygon added! OMG!!"
I agree about you can't extrapolate pirated games to money lost, however what you can do is draw correlations between piracy hardware going on the market and the sales in that market. For instance, when the R4 started to become really popular the rate of sales for ds games dropped about 50%. It would be fair, using some statistical analysis to make predictions, to say that some amount of this was due to piracy and work out a rough idea of how much was lost.
Maybe I'm out of touch, but piracy is still not that simple. Sure, in my day all you had to do was download a bunch of parts from Usenet (going from 9600 baud to 14.4k was awesome!), uudecode it, unzip, redownload the bad parts, repeat, and eventually you got your game. Today it is a bit simpler, but similar still. Try explaining it to someone 45+. Just download this program, go to TPB, search, get this, click it, hope you have seeders, get it in a day or two, hope it was the right version and isn't all in Swedish, use this ISO mounting program, mount the image, install. They'll look at you like, "huh?"
So, in my experience, with friends, family, etc who have grown from poor 20yr olds pirating everything to 35-40 yr olds with a job, family, etc it's far easier to buy X game on sale on Steam than to go through that crap.
How is it in other parts of the world? Do people still pirate everything under the sun through their 40s, 50s? Is my experience that uncommon? I just think it's a losing battle, and devs should spend more time improving the gameplay than thinking up new DRM that is more punishing to legit owners than it is to the pirates.
Then, it will allow homebrew stuff.
Then, it also allow actual backups, and the law EXPLICITLY ALLOWS those, and a common reason for a PS (from any generation) is when their laser cannon start to have mechanical problems, specially PS2 onward, because the need to change the laser lens angles to change the layer that is being read, thus some games (ie, that need constant alternating between layers) may quickly damage the PS3 laser, giving lots of reason for those backups.
Finally, it allow you to put back features that Sony removed (like, Other OS, PS2 emulation... although that one will require someone to write the emulator)
Now mind you, I am not defending piracy, I am defending the right of the device to exist and be sold, I don't even own a PS3.
Yes, pendrives! I have lots of friends with pendrives full of pirated crap.
And I also have friends that own R4 to backup their extensive collection of games, where they store the original in shelves (they like boxes and that stuff), while they pirate digital-only games, because they don't see them as something they should pay.
As for the hacking in general, I don't think it will disappear any time soon.
I do agree in one VERY strong point, and that is... homebrew. I did a lot of PSP development in my day, and I enjoyed it (it even got me a job). I think it's great that my favorite portable gaming console was also my development console. I think it's really nice! There was once a time in PSP hacking/development where you couldn't run games; you could only use homebrew. People called it a limitation. I would call it the perfect balance. People can 'brew and people can purchase games. It's a win/win. Of course, it's sad that people don't see it that way.
I would say, if you want to use a legitimate excuse like homebrew, then either keep it with that "limitation" or support a product that's actually designed for it, like Pandora (http://www.openpandora.org/).