Hacking Group: "It's the beginning of the end for Sony"

[NJ5]

The Fury said:

In this case it is about rights of a company because of my view on who owns the Software installed on a PS3. I can do what the hell I like to my physical PS3, I can take a baseball bat to it, shoot it with a gun, make sweet love to it if I really want and Sony can do nothing about it (of course maybe the UK Police might after they find out I own an illegal firearm or did something unspeakable). But a piece of software is not the same and has many more rules attached to it, you licence software in whatever form, you don't buy. This is why I see as what he did as wrong, it wasn't his software to tamper with and it certainly wasn't his master code to release. If he was a good person he would have told Sony about this obvious flaw, let them fix it with an update and never updated his PS3 so he can create all the homebrew he wants. Sony might have thanked him for that.

I'd presume he settled because of costs, his laywers would have said, 'You can't afford this or us, settle', Sony didn't want the added expence but were making a point. I'm a little guy and nothing Sony (the big bully) has done has harmed me, it's other 'little guys' who have.

I think your distinction between hardware and software is wrong, both from a personal perspective and the legal perspective. It is legal to reverse engineer and alter software just as much as hardware (as long as no copyright laws are broken by distributing the altered software of course).

If he was a good person he would have told Sony about this obvious flaw, let them fix it with an update and never updated his PS3 so he can create all the homebrew he wants. Sony might have thanked him for that.

That would be the common procedure in the security community for security flaws in server software, but not when it's just about a jailbreak of a gadget which doesn't put any data at risk.