Interesting read. I haven't gone through every comment, and skimmed most of the history part of the post dealing with Sony's past "trangressions," but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents about a couple points that were made. Excuse me if these points were already brought up.
I think the analogy between hacking Kinect and hacking the PS3 is a bit off. The proper analogy would be if the XBox360 were hacked and Microsoft decided to embrace the hackers by releasing an SDK for the XBox360. Hacking the Kinect and releasing an SDK for it is akin to hacking the PS Eye/Move to work on the PC and releasing an SDK for it. Dr. Richard Marks supports releasing an SDK for the PS Move, but I doubt Sony will ever release it. And while Sony isn't "embracing" Move hackers by releasing the SDK, I haven't heard of them going after anyone who hacked the DualShock3, PS Eye, or Move controllers to work on the PC. While I would love to see Sony release something akin to XNA and have their own counterpart to XBLIG, I'm not going to berate them for not doing so.
I fail to see how the last part of the article, regarding innovators, bears any relation to what is being discussed. Yes, independent innovators have been responsible for some of the greatest breakthoughs in science and technology. And no, I don't want to see any innovators stifled. But I don't see how hacking the PS3 is in any way innovative, or motivated by the desire to progress science and technology. I disagree that GeoHot is some sort of hero or role model we should all admire, though I readily admit that he is very smart and talented.
Personally, I don't believe that Sony has a case. I despise piracy but hacking is completely different, and I think anyone attempting to relate the two is grasping at straws. What would be scary is if Sony does win, because it could set a dangerous precedent for future cases. I'm not going to go as far as claiming that people who don't see this fact are "sheeple" and I'm not quite prone to believe in some sort of dystopian future as I think some others are, but I am conscious to how future cases/laws could pan out depending on the outcome of this case.
Piracy is a whole different can of worms, and I'm not going to touch it in this thread. I don't even think any discussion about piracy belongs here.
As a final thought, I hope 2 things. I hope that Sony can secure the PSN from hackers. I don't think there is anything they can do now to stop people from hacking their PS3's, but I really do hope that they can stop those people from using the PSN. Not because I hate hackers, but because I would hate to see third party developers lose faith in the PS3, and I think securing the PSN would at least help alleviate any concerns they might have.
And I hope that Sony drops or loses their cases against any hackers. If they want to go after someone, they should be going after people who are pirating their software (good luck with that), not people who are doing something within their legal rights (for now at least).
