Would make for an awesome story ;-)

He’s messing with his own hardware, which is his right. And if he wants to talk about it, that’s his right as well. That’s it, and there’s nothing else to it.

On repercussions, whether he knew or not doesn’t matter, there shouldn’t be any.

Money to the players? Definitely not. Don’t whine so much, report whoever cheats for cheating, and get back to playing. Anybody in the same position as he is? I’m very willing to donate, just give me a link.

Well, I figure I made my position clear enough, and arguing more would result in going in circles, so I’m off to do some coding of my own.

If he committed a crime that he wouldn’t have done without your assistance, then yes, I’m pretty sure that would make you an accessory.

Imagine you’re building a new house and it’s time to buy a toilet. Company X will sell you a top of the line bowl for significantly cheaper than anyone else, but there’s a catch. The toilet is computerized, and they are very strict about what kind of toilet paper you use. The business model of Company X is to lose money on the physical hardware they are selling, but to recoup those losses by overcharging for toilet paper. Company X brand TP is very expensive. Various sensors exist to ensure that only company X approved TP is put into the bowl. Toilet owners found to be using non-approved TP will have their toilet funtions permanently deactivated via Company X’s robust security measures. Many people buy Company X’s subsidized toilets, while also incrementally purchasing Company X’s inflated TP.

Along comes ToiletHacker. This person figures out how to circumvent the security measures designed to keep the bowl from functioning properly if you do something Company X didn’t intend for you to do with your toilet. ToiletHacker claims that you should be able to use any kind of TP you want, even gross TP you made yourself. Company X claims that circumventing their toilet security measures will lead to massive losses of income for them, not to mention the illegality of such actions due to the DMCA. At this point it’s worth noting that a manufacturer of non-computerized toilets could never sell you one with the understanding that you only purchase TP from suppliers of their choice. Strict consumer protection laws exist to ensure that such dirty deals are illegal to enforce. Defenders of ToiletHacker claim that a computerized toilet shouldn’t be fundamentally treated any differently than an ordinary toilet, and you should be able to do whatever you want with a physical object once you purchase it, including having your own choice of toilet paper. They also add that Company X should not have relied on a business model founded upon the fundamentally evil premise of people not being able to chose their own toilet paper. You seem to making an argument against this.

Basically, I believe you don’t think I have the right to hack my toilet.

If I point out to people that my neighbor never locks his door, does that make me an accessory if someone robs his house?

Actually, yes. Yes it does.

“A person charged with aiding and abetting or accessory is usually not present when the crime itself is committed, but he or she has knowledge of the crime before or after the fact, and may assist in its commission through advice, actions, or financial support.”

http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/aiding_abetting_accessory.html

What if you bought your iPhone so that you could listen to music but Apple decided that they don’t want people using that feature anymore?

Sony has been removing features from the console since the beginning. The console was originally able to play playstation 2 games and you could install a second OS. Sony removed these popular features and people want them back, is that a surprise?

Whatever Geohot does with his console is his business. He isn’t being sued for cheating or piracy, he is being sued because Sony is a big cartel and wants to silence his efforts even if they are legal.

I support his cause even if he has subpar rap skills.

Even if he’s the biggest asshole in the world doesn’t matter one bit to me. I still support his cause.

If he only picked the lock on his PS3, that re-instated the single feature he wanted (Other OS), and then distributed that key that only unlocked feature (a lot of people would’ve found that very helpful), this would be much less of an issue. Instead, he (in partnership with the crack team whose name fails me) essentially released a keyring with keys for every lock.

George Hotz’s attempt at highroading this situation is incredibly frustrating to users that experienced massive issues as a result of this leak.

It amounts to taking a criminal into a bank vault to open his safety deposit box and giving him the keyring for all the boxes. What do you think he’s going to do? Hotz puts this information out there with full knowledge of what the effects would be and who could use it. Saying that you didn’t ‘intend’ for people to take advantage of this is just pleading ignorance and passing the buck.

Plus that video makes him look like an ass. I’m all for the re-instating of some features and making the system more open. But you have to accept responsibility for releasing this kind of information to the general public. Not everything is going to have good intentions there Georgey boy.

Yet Sony still willfully mass distributed rootkits on their CDs and DVDs that allowed both spying on people and remote execution of code. Of course, none of their people went to jail, they just made a class action settlement that almost nobody knew about besides the lawyers.

Should he be allowed to drive his modified car on public roads?

YES, however there are RULES and regulations that need to be adhered to. These rules are there to stop some idiot in his rocket propelled mini van from hitting mach 3 on the highway, and impacting with other LAW ABIDING people.

While a hacked PS3 is unlikely to mash anyone to a pulp on the highway, it still stands to reason that it WILL have a negative effect on others in the community if used inapropriately. (cheating, piracy, fraud, theft, etc)

My point is, do what you want with your PS3.
But if your hacker crap has an impact on some Average Joe, just remember that he will be following your own twisted logic when his rocket car impacts with your face!

You think that if he was “nice about it” and didn’t release the info Sony would give a fig and fix the situation?

No. They will just bury it, sue him regardless and hide it in PR speak.

You force the situation if you want to get heard by a multi-national. That’s what a white-hat hacker is.

Now that he’s broken it open, what are people going to do with a hacked console?
a) pirate games
b) cheat/hack online games
c) maybe add functionality like .mkv support but probably not because they’ll be too busy doing a & b.

Now, a) is between them and the publisher. b) fscks over every other gamer using the PSN. GeoHot is getting the love from sites like /. and BB, but if you go to the gaming sites & blogs, the view of him is more 80%/20% that he’s a douchebag who is the reason we can’t have nice things.

Sony’s in my opinion in their rights of banning modded consoles, but suing people for doing stuff to their property is absolutely inexcusable and must be shut down, hard.

He got $50 from me just for that reason, and I don’t own any Sony products.

His campaign is a lie and he deserves no support.

Or not…

This is what you get when Corporations have full political speech rights.

You glorious bastard.

If for no other reason at all, you’re my hero.

Of course it doesn’t and my neighbor should lock his door. This is no different for Sony. They know they have flaws and instead of fixing them, they try to sue the story away. Good luck with that, security by obscurity never works.

Also, console cheats of all types have been going on for years. Try searching the Internet and you’ll find a good number of stories discussing that very issue and how Sony and Microsoft need to take anti-cheating measures like PC gaming folks have.

IMNSHO, the right to do whatever one wants with the stuff they bought is more important. The repercussions of companies being able to dictate what one can do with one’s stuff to me are far worse than having to report somebody for cheating once in a while.

And like I said, report and ban the cheaters. I have no problem with that and never said people should just ignore it.

In fact, I hope that those get reduced to the bare minimum – by legislation, if need be.

My legal education consists of following the SCO Group saga closely. It’s been going on for *eight years*, and the only constant is the lawyers’ billable hours.

-Modifying a piece of hardware you own should be your right.
Do you work on your own car? (Or at least could you if you
wanted to?) Same difference in most respects.

-Cheating only really affects people in multiplayer…right?
Who cares if I cheat while playing a single player game other than me? So why not deal with it either in the game or on the network.
(And actually Sony did/is doing this by banning hacked PS3′s on the PS network…but that’s kind of taking it a couple steps to far.)

-Having to have a network connect to play a single player game.
This circles around to what I said about “all the other issues”. When did it become OKAY for developers to send out games that were broken or need a patch/update to even play from the get go? Sure I’ve been playing PC games for 20 years, but even back in the dial up days most patches for games resolved VERY specific issues only a tiny percentage of players might encounter. Now it’s standard issue to have to update a game, on a console, to even play it….

So, no I hope he wins against Sony. People should have the right to modify their hardware any way they want. Sony doesn’t have to let you play on their network if they choose that, but they own their network so that is their call.