EFF Calls Sony's Lawsuit Against PS3 Hackers "Dangerous"

[roseen]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is worried by the lawsuit Sony recently filed against hackers of the PlayStation 3.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending digital civil liberties, has gotten behind the PlayStation 3 hackers Sony sued for cracking the console's security measures. The EFF's official stance on the suit is that it's downright "frightening."

The reasons behind this stance are twofold. For one, the EFF says that a Sony win would be a huge detriment to security research, because "legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure." Researchers could find themselves accused of a crime just for furthering their work on hardware made by a particular manufacturer.

Even worse, the EFF believes a ruling for Sony threatens any tinkerer that decides to pop the case of his/her electronic devices. Sony argues that the hackers violated the agreement of the PlayStation Network, though the hackers claim they never signed up. In the EFF's view, this is Sony saying it's illegal and a crime "for users to access their own computer in a way that Sony doesn't like." It says a "terms of use" agreement shouldn't give Sony total control over the devices people buy with threat of criminal punishment.

It's hard to disagree with the EFF's view that once you purchase a computer, you should be able to do what you want with it. If this is true, shouldn't you also be able to publish the results of those actions online, even if they're related to the dissolution of a piece of hardware's security measures? The U.S. government appears to think so, so I'm not sure that Sony intends its lawsuit to be anything but a scare tactic. If Sony loses, it'll probably only end up shooting itself in the foot, as hardware hackers will then go about their business with the law on their side.

Source: EFF, via GameSpot


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[Fiendly]

Why wouldn't they just hire them, help them improve their security.. Provide flaws for their competitors.
No point suing if they pretty much provided evidence of their bad security.. WHY NOT IMPLEMENT ON IT SONY!?

[Oleh]

Well microsoft has taken geohot onboard and gave him a windows phone. Seems microsoft are welcoming him

[matt$]

Well if certain people can get past your security, dont piss them off cause they'll just make it worse be nice to them and it wont cause as much of a problem then it would if you annoyed them.

[samsaBEAR]

I think it's stupid, like the article said, if you buy a computer, you're allowed to tinker around with it, it's just the same for consoles/phones/whatever. When you buy something, it becomes your warranty, you should be entitled to tinker around with it as much as you desire without fear of persecution.
I realise something like hacking the PS3 opens the door for pirated games and the such, but there are so many more homebrew/open software that people would like to play. It should be perfectly legal, but just let the manufacturer be like 'do what you want, but it'll void your warranty' and the such

[Oleh]

In geohot's defense he didn't enable peek and poke in his firmware which is what allows pirated games to be played (backup loaders) so that gets him off on piracy but Sony seem to be angry and may turn into Nintendo and bring update after update out with just security fixes (like the last few have been any good anyway lol)