Sony done started something they can't possibly finish.

@MasterBalls

He's obviously laying the blame on the hackers. He's just saying Sony will put more effort in piracy prevention and less in actually improving its service, which ultimately hurts the honest consumer.

To be honest, I'm not too sure about this point of view. Aren't Sony supposed to be doing internal research on this kind of thing in the first place? If a hacker exposes a hole in the system which Sony can patch, isn't he just doing free work for Sony?

Sony was never really going to update the PS3 with anything big, anyway. So, this isn't punishing us too bad. An update is nothin'.

Now, the Ubisoft now-canceled DRM scheme...That was bad. That punished legitimate consumers.

@Patriot Snake: I agree that the consumer should have the right to use the products they purchase in any way that they wish, even if that use is not one originally intended by the manufacturer. They own the product, after all.

Sony owns the network that the product in question connects to. That means they are within the right to deny access to units which do not conform to a standard which Sony determines. That standard exists to protect Sony's interests in regards to not only piracy but ensuring that all users of the network have a homogeneous experience.

When you break it down, these sorts of firmware updates do not actually violate the freedoms of the consumer to use the product in whatever way they choose. But just as you would lose any claim to warrantied services by performing maintenance or upgrades on any product produced by any manufacturer anywhere, in refusing to conform to the standard that the network requires you lose any claim to make use of that network.

it would be hypocritical of me to criticise Pirates.
That said, this Firmware locks out the Piracy devices, nothing else.
I wouldn't consider people using them "honest" customers.

They're protecting their assets.
You lock your front door.
Are you screwing "Honest" burgulars. Extreme, and not fully applicable example. But I have no problem with them protecting their own assets.

The other OS thing was bullshit, Thanks Geohot.
This isn't removing previous functionality from your console, this is protecting themselves.

@Aurain: Let's continue with your burglar analogy for a moment. When your house gets robbed, it isn't just a matter of locking the front door next time. Hell, for as long as it took for this thing to be cracked, they might as well have been cutting through a steel door.

You call the police (paid by your tax dollars). You call your insurance agent (who then raises your rates). You call that phone sex operator because she's the only one who can soothe your sense of loss ($2.99 a minute buys a lot of healing).

The point being that there are all sorts of expenses that Sony would otherwise not incur were it not for the actions of these people. Maybe it's a few hours spent by a programmer. And then there's the time of the people who have to test the update to make sure that there's absolutely no unexpected impact on the rest of the network. And then there's John Koller, some of whose time is now spent informing users of the upgrade.

These expenses are passed down to the consumer in one way or another. All consumers, not just those who decided they didn't want to play by the same rules as everyone else.

Ah, joy. Yet again, the next time I go to play something, I'll see the update, set it to download, go off and do something else, and by the time I get back to it, I won't want to play anymore. Much love, modern times.

What I want to know is when are they going to release an update that allows you to sign in on multiple PSN accounts at a time on one console? It'd be nice if I could play Castle Crashers locally with my friends, and each of us could level up our own characters.

So the cost for the jailbreak is PSN? Fine by me.

@Patriot Snake: The same argument applies for me. People who jailbreak iPhones are in the right to do so. Apple would be in the right to deny them access to Apple services as it relates to the iPhone if they were to do so (AT&T as well, for that matter, though they probably wouldn't without strong-arming).

Now, I don't know all of the specifics and I'm not much of a user of Apple's products. Without having researched, I never received the impression that Apple was in a position to do a whole lot about jailbreaking, except to deny iOS updates and remove functionality for some apps, which seems counterintuitive for a device which users were just taking to other networks anyway. It appeared that their only recourse was to challenge consumer rights in a court of law, which ultimately hasn't worked out for them. None of which should make iPhone piracy acceptable, but there's relatively little Apple can actually do about it in the current situation.

But it will still cost consumers in spite of the fact that Apple doesn't have this recourse. While it's hard to imagine Apple products being reduced in price simply if jailbreaking never existed and therefore they never lost money on the deal (before counting lost revenue from pirated Apps, I bet the legal expenses alone would make us crap our pants), I bet we'd all have better iPhones for our money, even if in a marginal sense.

That's not the position that Sony is in, however, and they're exercising their right to prevent users from using PSN who violate the standard. They have to do so to protect their bottom line from multiple fronts.

@Conrad,

The only thing I think you haven't covered is the potential for LOST money if they DON'T try to fix the mod-chip issue.

If this thing truly is as easy to use as the R4, then I think it's impossible to deny that it could cause Sony (and other developers) SERIOUS money down the road if they leave it be.

@Patriot Snake: And that's why it's such a bad thing for the standard consumer. Hackers will continue to work around what are essentially band-aids. And then Sony will go through the process again. The cycle perpetuates itself. But every time it does, it costs Sony a little bit more money and a little bit more time.

All of which ultimately adds up to hurting consumers who paid for the same product as a troublesome minority who have decided that they're better than other people because they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Make no mistake. If everyone who jailbreaks their PS3 elects not to receive this update and not to circumvent it to use a service for which they have effectively given up any privilege to -- if there's a magnanimous outpouring of personal responsibility and accountability and both parties can agree now to go their separate ways without further intrusion -- we don't really have a problem. But we both know better, don't we?

I'm glad that Sony has fixed this move by irresponsible pirate hackers. And i'm happy to see a lot of fellow gamers standing by Sony's side to stop this hack tool from taking root on the console. This hack will undoubtedly encourage piracy and deprive the hard work of Sony and developersllow hackers to destroy gaming in the guise of homebrew and jailbreaking.

The Playstation 3 is a value added hig tech console that has a robust free online system and doesn't need to be jailbreaked.

I'm pretty sure you don't legally own the console upon purchase, you buy a lease to use it. Sony has the right to change or remove any functionality as and when it sees fit.

Check sonys website and you will see this is true.

Hell, if Sony wanted to they could brick your console for breaking the terms and conditions of usage.

@epic-koryuken
u mad?

@Romo Metaxxas
are you working for sony or something? you are taking this way too personally

Meanwhile, I hope to see sony pinch that stick out their asses and push a FW update that lets me install Linux on a slim. If I can take a PS3 and a Monitor somewhere to do some network testing and the like, I'd be a happy boy.

Doing the above, would also spare sony from having pissed off people with legit reasons to circumvent their hardware. Once they removed the Nix support on the phat PS3's, they begged for the PS3 to be blasted wide open.

@romo

Are you still here? You're overtly brainwashed view of Sony is sickening.
Just because patriot disagreed with you, he isn't entitled to a video games console? Thats just dumb dude.

I like my piracy the legal way. Yay for sharing PSN purchases. :/

@patriot snake

I Fucking knew it. Everything that dude writes is like being indoctrinated. He makes sexual chocolate look like a 360 fanboy.

Where's the ban hammer?

Ah, all the moaning about long firmware updates.

Mine nev3er take that long, 5 mins here, maybe 7/8 mins there. No biggie.

It's especially not a biggie when my PSN+ subscription automatically downloaded this in the middle of the night, i got home for my lunch break, set it installing (PSN+ usually installs stuff for me, but it seems, not FW updates) which took all of 5 minutes and bam, updated PS3, back to mah gaming.

Gamers are such a whiney bunch.

I'm conflicted on Piracy in general.

I used to pirate hard on the PS2, which meant I BOUGHT very few games, if any at all (all downloaded and burned to the HDD, or rented and copied) sure Sony lost out on any game purchase i WOULD have made for the PS2.

But on the other hand, now I have a PS3 I have a habit of wanting every fucking game that comes out! now my only way to get them is to BUY them.

So it kind of worked as marketing, there are a number of games i wouldn't normally consider buying but after downloading the originals on PS2 I'm buying up the sequels on PS3, not to mention the habit of needing so many games that it created in me.

Ever since the PS2, every console I've had, well, consoles, phones, everything has been 100% legit. I even have a hombrew friendly PSP1000 which has up-to-date firmware and is fully legit.

I'm a bit of a hypocrite though, because I'm fully against game piracy, it's bad, it's wrong, it hurts the industry and the gamers and is generally douch-tastic.

However, I haven't paid for music since the 90's.

Game piracy - BAD, evil and cuntish
Music piracy - Perfectly fine

@epic-koryuken: How about we just pretend I said the next one is lengthy? Or the one before this. Hardly matters. Every PSN update takes longer than it should. Five minutes is still way too long when the competition can do it in literally tens of seconds.

You're a bit wrong, Conrad. It's Sony who will lose, the Internet that'll win, and the honest consumer is nothing but collateral damage.

I'm going to side with the Internet on this one. I hate being a statistic.

everyone has the right to do what they want and all of the d-toid staff needs to get better internet connections i've never had a psn update that lasted longer than 7 minutes or so.

if people were pirating they didn't care at all about playing online anyway, so blah blah blah to most of the comments.
everyone just play games instead of complaining about what others are doing with theres/how much the game you love but won't play is selling. Trust me its WAY more fun.

@Scuffles:

It's not that I feel the software updates are a crime. It's just that I'm a software analyst and particularly sensitive to sloppy software architecture. Sony's updater falls into that category.