Now that Sony's security has been breached, instead of trying to fight hackers and stop homebrew and piracy, Sony should embrace homebrew. Sony could use the PSN Store, like an App store to sell or offer for free, Sony endorsed homebrews. I think they should do this for many reasons.

1. People looking for homebrew will check the PSN instead of venturing off in to teh internets and learning how to do it the hacker way. Which is a great defense because even if a PS3 user isn't interested in piracy to begin once they learn how to use home brew and get involved in that world it's really tempting not to play some free games just to see if you'd like them when it's just a download away, then it's really tempting to stop buying games completely once you've played some for free. So if they keep that group of people on the PSN, and feed their curiosity of homebrew they can keep them from being tempted to pirate games. 

2. Sony can make some money off of the homebrew by selling "apps" for a few dollars. 

3. Many of the hackers would be enticed to have their homebrews put up on the PSN where it can reach a much larger userbase and it could potentially earn them some money. 

4. It's a selling feature that may push people to purchase a PS3.

5. Many gamers will love them for it. 

They did they allowed Linux and other OS...until some decided that wasn't good enough for them.

Homebrew isn't the issue. Its the piracy that naturally gushes from it.

Sony is not going to take responsibility for homebrew bricking consoles or causing data loss.

They're doing a fine job already of making the ps3 into a multi media center. Sure the homebrew scene can bring more video formats to the ps3, but ofcourse they don't have to pay license fees....

Who says they will brick consoles and cause data loss? Obviously they will test the homebrew programs much like any other third party program/game Sony distributes. 

But they never distributed homebrew or anything. They never gave a platform for home brew developers to distribute their stuff to the masses or potentially make money. 

That's the point. Promote homebrew and distribute it then you can control it and keep piracy out of it. 

What homebrew?

While I think some kind of app store would be nice for every console it wouldn't lower piracy at all; in fact it would only give the pirates something new to pirate...

except almost nobody cares about homebrew but about piracy, nobody is going to buy a brand new Ps3 and use it to play bad homebrew games, people do it for piracy.