Yes, I do owe you an apology, honestly, I did not look much into the Xbox 'homebrew' scene. I made a poor assumption, that Xbox's CPU key was as secured as the PS3 or PSP which prevents digital signing of code. In any case, I relooked into Xbox's exploits, and would like to question some of the claims that you made:

"2.  Lets say your 360 comes up with the xmas tree lights fault, this could be recovered potentially in the same manner by dumping the firmware and injecting your keyvault into a CFW which would allow you to then reflash back to stock if you wish. -> if you dump stock firmware then reflash you will fix nothing as you need to extract the key vault, decrypt it then fix the issue and reinject into stock firmware."

"Xmas lights fault", which specific fault are you talking about? RROD? What are you doing in the CFW step to fix the issue before reflashing back to stock?

"3.  Lets say your 360 has a E71 error which is a firmware fault on occasions, CFW allows you to fix that too."

Again, I am interested how does CFW fix this. According to http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=484726 (this site deals with modded xboxs)

and their comment for E71 is : "E71: Dashboard Error - Error within Xam.xex: possibly a dashboard update error, Check below in the "Console Reset Codes" for instructions. If that does not work there is no other solution and the console must be sent back to MS for repair."

"4.  On the original Xbox if your HDD died the console was a brick for all intensive purposes.  Guess what CFW would allow you to install another drive and lock it to the Xbox thus allowing it to function again."

"1.  Lets say for instance your 360 DVD drive board dies and you do not posess the drive key for it.  You can do the JTAG hack or one of the earlier fixes if it is exploitable to retrieve the CPU key on that console and hence decrypt the key vault giving you the DVD key so you can put it into a new drive and it will work fine."

Both above methods are detectable by M$ which would result a CPU key ban, which is might as well making your xbox a deadweight.

"5.  The Pandora hack on PSP's can recover some bricked PSP's that failed normal software updates. -> It is a hack"

I guess accessing a built-in debug mode for reflashing is considered a hack these days. I personally consider it an exploitable feature on the PSP but that is my own definition.

Just curious on the status of the legal lawsuit? Whos actually filing the lawsuit? ACCC or your legal represenative(s)?

You may have a case with warranty violation, so I think they should refund your PS3 if you still have your recipet and still have warranaty. My 'magical consumer right comment is directed at the people who no longer have warranty and want to file against bait advertisement which I don't think holds water due to the time limit.

Looking at: 

"

TRADE PRACTICES ACT 1974 - SECT 68A

Limitation of liability for breach of certain conditions or warranties

             (1)  Subject to this section, a term of a contract for the supply by a corporation of goods or services other than goods or services of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption is not void under section 68 by reason only that the term limits the liability of the corporation for a breach of a condition or warranty (other than a condition or warranty implied by section 69) to:

                     (a)  in the case of goods, any one or more of the following:

                              (i)  the replacement of the goods or the supply of equivalent goods;

                             (ii)  the repair of the goods;

                            (iii)  the payment of the cost of replacing the goods or of acquiring equivalent goods;

                            (iv)  the payment of the cost of having the goods repaired; or

                     (b)  in the case of services:

                              (i)  the supplying of the services again; or

                             (ii)  the payment of the cost of having the services supplied again.

             (2)  Subsection (1) does not apply in relation to a term of a contract if the person to whom the goods or services were supplied establishes that it is not fair or reasonable for the corporation to rely on that term of the contract.

             (3)  In determining for the purposes of subsection (2) whether or not reliance on a term of a contract is fair or reasonable, a court shall have regard to all the circumstances of the case and in particular to the following matters:

                     (a)  the strength of the bargaining positions of the corporation and the person to whom the goods or services were supplied (in this subsection referred to as the buyer ) relative to each other, taking into account, among other things, the availability of equivalent goods or services and suitable alternative sources of supply;

                     (b)  whether the buyer received an inducement to agree to the term or, in agreeing to the term, had an opportunity of acquiring the goods or services or equivalent goods or services from any source of supply under a contract that did not include that term;

                       whether the buyer knew or ought reasonably to have known of the existence and extent of the term (having regard, among other things, to any custom of the trade and any previous course of dealing between the parties); and

                     (d)  in the case of the supply of goods, whether the goods were manufactured, processed or adapted to the special order of the buyer."

So basicaly Section 3C, should be a cause for concern on your case. You need the court to be convinced that the  "the person to whom the goods or services were supplied establishes that it is not fair or reasonable for the corporation to rely on that term of the contract."

2. The xmas tree light fault is a alternating red and green fault code which isn't standard and is generally related to a keyvault error for example incorrect region coding.  By alternating red and green I mean the top two LED's in the quadrant will flash green and the bottom two will flash red, they will then switch so the top is red and the bottom green and flash in that order.  It is not a RROD and doesn't return any secondary codes.  I don't blame you for not having heard of it as its quite rare in most unmodded consoles but becoming more regular in hacked boxes where people screw up modifying the key vault.

3.  E71 is indeed a dashboard error, I don't know why but on occasions I'm guessing bad blocks develop in the nand that were not present at manufacturing and so aren't flagged as they should be.  If the bad block happens to fall in a essential dashboard file (which are obviously stored in the nand or an arcade couldn't work) then updating by normal means probably doesn't pickup the bad block and keeps writing data to it.  If you manually read the nand using a spi flasher then you can identify where bad blocks occur and rebuild a new firmware image with the bad blocks remapped to other areas of the image so they will not be damaged when you write back to the nand.  I would also add that E71 isn't always a software fault and a GPU reheat can resolve some of them, although they generally end up as RROD with a secondary 30022 code eventually.

4.  If the xbox was online before you apply the softmod then it would be banned due to the marriage theory when reverted to stock.  If it hadn't been online though and you swapped the HDD, you could quite happily game on it until they discontinued Live recently as they were unable to detect when you reverted to original firmware and whether the HDD was the original or not.  You may actually be able to clone the identity of one HDD's serial number onto another to get past the marriage theory but I never needed to goto such lenghs personally.  This would make the first half of my post redundant.  Most people didn't clone though because they wanted to install bigger HDD's which wouldn't work with a cloned firmware installed.

1.  No you're still wrong I'm afraid.  You dump your original firmware using a flasher.  You build a image, you write it back.  You apply the JTAG hack.  You get your CPU key.  You use a flashtool combined with your CPU key and original nand dump to extract your dvd key.  You use one of the DVD firmware flashing programs to write back a stock firmware image with your DVD key.  You then write back your original firmware dump and remove the JTAG hack.  The console is now back in its original factory state and is not detectable as having been modded.  I know this for a fact because I have done it.

5.  Semantics, either way we both see its merits for fixing faults surely.  For instance it allows you to replace the wifi board in a PSP that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Don't worry, you all will update to newest firmware and you might not even know it. I think first ones will be those who are connected to internet. After a while when older games get goty versions etc. there will be updates on game discs that will update your firmware. Do this or do that you are screwed and can take only rubber fist into your hmm... donkey. :)

http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/4/22/sony-can-update-ps3-firmware-without-asking/

Actually I'm not suing them and to my knowledge the vast bulk of people aren't directly suing them. What's happening is that they're lodging a complaint with the ACCC. Basically it's the equivalent of going to the police and pressing charges for a more direct and personal case of theft or fraud. What happens from there is that the ACCC investigate, pass rulings and can from there, if they find Sony has breached the law, they can fine Sony, order restitutions and recalls to be paid out and in extreme cases, they even have the power to revoke a company's trade licence here, which should by some turn of events (say Sony being fined and ordered to compensate customers through retailers and refusing to cooperate with the ACCC) result in it being illegal for Sony to trade in Australia in any way shape or form, until that revocation of their trading license was overturned. That's how much power the ACCC has in this situation.

I realise I'm using the most extreme outcome possible, but I want people here to understand that this isn't merely a case of a lawsuit as in civil proceedings, but rather undertaking criminal proceedings against Sony through a government regulatory body.

From there, I suspect people will proceed with lawsuits based on a successful outcome. To answer your question about my situation, I shouldn't comment on the situation right at this minute.

Ok if you're saying this then you clearly don't understand how contract law works. To begin with any contract which breaches a country's laws is legally null and void. The company can swear blind that their actions are legal, but it's about as credible a stance as a serial killer claiming their homocides are legal. Furthermore under contract law, if duress can be proved, and in this case there is a clear case of it (not to mention that the "choice" breaches consumer protection laws whichever way you look at it) and so once again, their contract here is legally null and void.

If you're going to try and use EULAs and T&Cs to argue a case, you need to understand just what scope they have in regards to the law.

I'll ask again: could it be that Sony is not in trouble because OtherOS has not been eliminated from consoles, but that access is merely blocked. Technically, they could say in court that the feature is still there, just not accessible until Sony can figure out a way to stop hacking. I doubt they won't be able to postpone any judgment that way until they fix their problem.

Replied to the first time this came up but it did not seem to add for some reason. The answer is a flat out yes. The problem with it being there but inaccessible is that according to consumer protection laws, if you buy a product which the manufacturer claims is capable of performing certain functions or tasks and a person buys it with the intention of performing said functions and tasks, then the consumer must be able to perform said functions or tasks with said device. Even if the function is still present; while the consumer is unable to use said function on said product, consumer protection laws have still been broken. EULAs and T&Cs do not override those laws, but rather the very opposite- consumer protection laws override any T&C or EULA which contains terms which breach those laws. It's literally that black and white.

This is something those defending Sony either cannot comprehend, or simply do not want to comprehend.

also on the same token the consumer protection law's also can be used to show that Sony is doing just that. protecting the consumer's hardware from remote hack's!

Sony would also be liable if they did nothing to prevent further attack's.

this is about they removed the function of install other OS out of the xmb to prevent further security breaches across PSN, not the removal of Linux in of it's self.

because

the consumer does not OWN the right's to the Xmb. Sony can and will update the security of the xmb just like any software company.

you and other's may say there is no way that a remote hack can happen, but as was shown even with the protection's in place the PS3's security was Breached by a "Consumer" when the Term's of service state's and which that consumer agreed to not to try to bypass the security and protection's of the PS3 OR PSN anyone that uses the CFW on the ps3 to gain access to PSN with a PS3 that still has Linux installed will be breaking that term's of service Sony removed the security threat of a linux enabled PS3 to PSN, thus Sony took what ever step's that they can to prevent remote hacking attempt's.

if sony did nothing Sony could be Liable by not doing anything they may be liable for:

NEGLIGENCE

The failure to use reasonable care. The doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do, or the failure to do something which a reasonably prudent person would do under like circumstances. A departure from what an ordinary reasonable member of the community would do in the same community.

example:

Sony would have to prove Prudence in this, which they have so

if Sony can prove within reason that such a hack could be done remotely across their network, then it can be shown that Sony is protecting the consumer's that own the PS3 from external hack's.

example:

this firm:

Root Labs offers design and review services for embedded and kernel security, crypto, and software protection.

what solution did they give to use as a countermeasure

it remains to be seen what security measures Sony has taken to address a hypervisor compromise. One countermeasure would be to lock down the OtherOS environment, since the attack depends on the ability to manipulate low-level OS memory structures. They could be using a simpler hypervisor than the GameOS side (say, one that just prevents access to the GPU). Perhaps the SPEs have a disable bit that turns off the hardware decryption unit, and the hypervisor does this before booting OtherOS.

while I do not like the fact that Sony had to remove the Other OS install function from the XMB of the PS3 they did it for a security reason and the

magistrate will most likely see it that way.

 If it can be shown that the company which make's the product is in prudence to protecting the Consumer's who purchased their product, than that company can reasonably be viewed IN COMPLIANCE and would not be culpable.

what Sony made is definetly against European Law. It doesnt matter that they tried to protect their customers:

First they declared their PS3s as Home PCs so they could avoid certain taxes and then they take out the feature ?


They advertised the PS3 in the beginnig as more then just a Console they had even an own Linux distribution. They sold Consoles with the promise you can play (online) games use the webbrowser watch bluerays and install Linux but its impossible to do that with the PS3 today.

They do STILL advertise the PS3 as an open Linux system:

http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html


They violated definetly the EU laws thats why Amazon Uk refunded the guy from neogaf.

If you have still warranty your product is just not working in the described way so you should be theoretically able to get your money back.

And this is not over yet imo. Sony made sure it works with US laws but it violates EU and Australian law. And depending on the people it could actually cause trouble for Sony. Its definetly a big strike against their Image and I do know people which are going to sell their PS3 and buy an Xbox. It doesnt matter if it was important or not, if it worked good or not or if noone cares or not. It was just wrong and noone is above the law. Aslong as a Company acts in a certain area they should respect the laws in said area. I read from people going to police and reporting an offence against Sony.

I dont care too much about it but its wrong. If they would have released a free game on PSN to make up for that it still would be wrong but most people would be happy about it. The way Sony did it was shortsighted.