I heard about this today from a guy working at a used games shop. What do you make of it?

PlayStation websites, PSN suffer outage: Anonymous claims responsibility, Sony claims 'sporadic maintenance'

Meh, it's a good enough target for anon to vent their hate on.

Sony's being rediculgressive over the publication of a number that lets people make use of a computer they bought.
You've gotta expect some nerd-hate in return for that.

Sony's being rediculgressive over the publication of a number that lets people make use of a computer they bought.
You've gotta expect some nerd-hate in return for that.

I've bought the house, the electric meter, the mains fuse and the encasing it's housed in.

I'm not allowed to tamper with it. it's not locked, there's just a seal. If I break it, I can be fined. I'm not even allowed to change the mains fuse, even though it's just bigger version of regular one and is merely screwed in.

Yet electricians are not burning down the electric company's headquarters.


Tech industry is maturing. Not advocating this type of behavior, but going to the beach, standing firm and saying "You shall not pass" to incoming tsunami is somewhat futile. Why didn't anyone react when MS banned some 600,000 modded XBoxes?

The whole legal hassle here is a bit over the top, but the motives are far from new and action not unexpected. Blizzard won several similar lawsuits years ago, including claiming copyright on contents of memory used by application.

[quote name='Hodgman' timestamp='1302063711' post='4794899']
Sony's being rediculgressive over the publication of a number that lets people make use of a computer they bought.
You've gotta expect some nerd-hate in return for that.

I've bought the house, the electric meter, the mains fuse and the encasing it's housed in.

I'm not allowed to tamper with it. it's not locked, there's just a seal. If I break it, I can be fined. I'm not even allowed to change the mains fuse, even though it's just bigger version of regular one and is merely screwed in.
[/quote]
One is a service, one is a good. There is an enormous difference between the legality of the two. If you ask your electric company to take you off the grid you can do whatever you want to your house.

This is more similar to Sony coming up with countermeasures for disallowing people tampering with stuff and using PSN, which is exactly what XBL does and is totally within sony's realm of prosecution.

[quote name='Antheus' timestamp='1302097623' post='4795035']
[quote name='Hodgman' timestamp='1302063711' post='4794899']
Sony's being rediculgressive over the publication of a number that lets people make use of a computer they bought.
You've gotta expect some nerd-hate in return for that.

I've bought the house, the electric meter, the mains fuse and the encasing it's housed in.

I'm not allowed to tamper with it. it's not locked, there's just a seal. If I break it, I can be fined. I'm not even allowed to change the mains fuse, even though it's just bigger version of regular one and is merely screwed in.
[/quote]
One is a service, one is a good. There is an enormous difference between the legality of the two.[/quote]There is yet another difference. You are allowed to tamper with anything in your house. Apart from things that directly or indirectly harm others (though in some places you're even allowed to shoot children trespassing your front garden if you say you were afraid of them...) you are allowed to do pretty much everything that is remotely reasonable.

It's just that if you do your own electric wiring and you're not an electric engineer, your fire assurance will refuse to pay in case your house burns down (if they find out). And of course, if you break the seal on the electricity meter or the water meter (which you do not own, by the way), the commune or the electricity supplier will allege (and somewhat justifiable) that you tried to cheat on your bill, and they will insist that you pay an esitmated bill either equal to your last bill or equal to "little above the average of everyone in the neighbourhood", whichever is higher. That's only fair, though.

There's a big difference between doing whatever it may be on a toy computer that you own because you bought it in a shop for some very real money on one side, and tampering on a game network where it affects millions of others on the other side (and which you are merely allowed to use, you don't own it).
I can see why the owner of said network would have a legitimate claim on the latter, but the former is just ridiculous. It just ain't anyone's business what you do with the things you bought legitimately in your own four walls.

It's just that if you do your own electric wiring and you're not an electric engineer, your fire assurance will refuse to pay in case your house burns down (if they find out). And of course, if you break the seal on the electricity meter or the water meter (which you do not own, by the way), the commune or the electricity supplier will allege (and somewhat justifiable) that you tried to cheat on your bill, and they will insist that you pay an esitmated bill either equal to your last bill or equal to "little above the average of everyone in the neighbourhood", whichever is higher. That's only fair, though.

Most electric servicers own the meters and loan them to you as part of their provided service. I think in the US from my quick googling if you tamper with the meter, they are allowed to charge you the full amount of possible electricity you could have received through the meter, which is thousands of dollars per month.

Most electric servicers own the meters and loan them to you as part of their provided service. I think in the US from my quick googling if you tamper with the meter, they are allowed to charge you the full amount of possible electricity you could have received through the meter, which is thousands of dollars per month.

Well, you don't own PS3 either. Sony lets you use it.

Same thing. You didn't buy it, you paid for the privilege of the service. Well, perhaps things weren't worded exactly like it, but they will be on next version or next update.

Expect more of this as companies entrench themselves in a saturated market. See Android going closed source. As said, in computing the 70s era of "whatever, dude" is over and hippies are retired. Now it's the 80s where Wall Street rules the world.

Well, you don't own PS3 either. Sony lets you use it.

Same thing. You didn't buy it, you paid for the privilege of the service. Well, perhaps things weren't worded exactly like it, but they will be on next version or next update.

WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1302103060' post='4795064']
Most electric servicers own the meters and loan them to you as part of their provided service. I think in the US from my quick googling if you tamper with the meter, they are allowed to charge you the full amount of possible electricity you could have received through the meter, which is thousands of dollars per month.

Well, you don't own PS3 either. Sony lets you use it.

Same thing. You didn't buy it, you paid for the privilege of the service. Well, perhaps things weren't worded exactly like it, but they will be on next version or next update.[/quote]

I don't even have a console, but does Sony loan the PS3 to users? I mean, do you have to give it back when you're done with it? So far I know you don't sign any contract when you buy the closed box. Does it has some sort of EULA inside? What if I bought it used without manuals or certificates? Is that even legal?

Well, you don't own PS3 either. Sony lets you use it.

Same thing. You didn't buy it, you paid for the privilege of the service. Well, perhaps things weren't worded exactly like it, but they will be on next version or next update.

That would possibly be an even worse marketing strategy than merely behaving as if it is so. If the license were actually worded like that competing companies would seize upon the opportunity to claim they give users more freedom by, you know, actually letting people buy their consoles. And they would, of course, be right to do so.