Sony continues to massively overreact to the news that a hacker figured out how to "jailbreak" the PS3 in order to re-enable the functionality that Sony had deleted from PS3s. Beyond getting a far overreaching gag order on George Hotz, who figured out the jailbreak, and playing Whac-a-Mole to try to take down the code anywhere it appears, the company has now asked a judge to order Google to provide the IP addresses and other identifying info of anyone who viewed or commented on the video about the jailbreak that was hosted on a private YouTube page. The company is also promising to sue anyone who posts or distributes the code any further. Did Sony learn nothing from the AACS debacle? How long until we start seeing t-shirts, tattoos and URLs with the code? How long until it starts appearing in songs as well?

Every move that Sony makes to try to hide this code only further promotes that it's out there. And all of this accomplishes what, exactly? Why is Sony so hell bent on punishing everyone for daring to restore functionality that they thought had been included in a box they had bought? And why does Sony (who really should know better) think that this strategy will be effective this time, when every single time a company has reacted this way it has backfired in a big, bad way? It's as if the lawyers at Sony haven't noticed how the internet works.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201102 ... tube.shtml

'Yeah, failboat called, it says it's sick of being abused like this...'

Is that the funny hex codes I've seen being re-Tweeted on Twitter today?

Fake Sony PS3 VP Tricked Into Tweeting PS3 Security Key

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201102 ... -key.shtml

LMFAO

Now will you turn yourself in to Sony, or will Bobbdobbs have to do it?

This happened before with the DECSS key or something similar? It just went everywhere - not by Twitter, but it popped up on websites, forums and emails. The information is out there now.

Sony denied Google, PayPal subpoenas in PS3 hack case

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/28 ... hack-case/

I often wonder if the legal teams for large companies are just given free reign...

Obviously Sony are getting very aggressive now over what was originally an openish system. They sold hundreds so that they could be networked into a single computer. It seems odd that they are now getting touchy about such hacks.

Err.. note the important word 'sold' in your sentence.

Jon

Were they given away? I just remember so many were sent to some university that it caused a supply problem in the US.

No, they were bought. It used to be quite common for Universities to buy small, cheap computers in bulk when they had stuff to do that's suited better to lots of light CPU's running in parallel rather than traditional server farms. There's at least one Uni that has a cluster of a big load of mac minis too. Although it's less common these days what with blade servers..

What I was trying to point out though was that Sony made money off that (and even if they hadn't sold them the units the publicity was worth something), whereas they're almost certainly going to lose money off the activities of geohot and his contempories. That's why they're happy to support the former and sue the latter.

Norway seems to be taking a different approach

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/02/08/s ... ntrol_act/

Yes but I think that the only real distinction is that the university will not be playing games on them. Whereas the jailbroken ones will be. Neither will bring them much in the way of additional money.

That's getting sigged tomorrow.

Why wait till tomorrow?

Because it's a pain to do on a phone touch screen.