Not all contracts are legal, even if they are agreed to by both parties. To give an extreme example, if you write a contract with a professional killer for him to kill you, that doesn't make it legal for him to kill you. Contracts don't override the law.

Removing advertised features from a product that people have bought is shady IMO (not that I'm a lawyer).

PS: This goes beyond the PS3 by the way. The same kind of discussion pops up regarding DRM in games and other software. Just because a company writes something in a ToS, that doesn't make it legal.

All national legislations state a set of customer rights that can not be overridden by a user license stipulation, which is why many of the Apple/MS/DRM shenanigans have limited legal meaning in many countries.

Still, if you bought a PS3 with the Linux feature you're not being forced to remove it. You'll just have to live with an old firmware, which incidentally means you won't have access to PSN. But I'm pretty sure they have clearly stated somewhere that you must keep your firmware up-to-date to have access to PSN, and that they are in no legal obligation to grant that free access all the time to every user.

Now, if you had a paid-for contract that granted you access to PSN and never cited the firmware then you might have a case, but as things stand, it doesn't look like it.

PS: this comes from a digruntled user of "Other OS", as I actually liked tinkering with my Linux installation.

True, you're not forced to stop using Linux. But you are forced to either stop using Linux, or stop playing new games and Blu-Ray movies.

If a car company said "from now on you can either use the accelerator or the brake pedal in your car but not both" would that be legal?

wait wait wqait wait.... didnt they JUST say like a week or so ago they WERENT removing it amid rumors they WERE!

ah well i THOUGHT i would use it but since the cpu locked down its not so great anyway...so i never used it...meh

@NJ5

Weird similitude for many reasons and not very useful.
Basically the facts are that while "other OS" and PSN were bullet points for promoting the console, I'm pretty sure that nowhere in _legal_ terms Sony is really obliged to keep granting you the same free PSN services that were active the day you bought your console.

Future BluRay standards work the same way, really, and the same is true of games. As long as they put "requires a BluRay3D capable player" or "requires firmware 3.25+" on the movies/games they are legally in the clear because they are giving the informed user all the necessary info.

why use it? its slow and crappy and glitchy. plus its on a console not a pc.

Oh no.. there goes MikeB's dream of having AmigaOS on the PS3..

I get your point that Sony can hide behind some technicalities, but technicalities don't always put you in the clear in legal terms.

Reasonable expectation would be that when one buys a product, one expects it to keep having the features that were advertised. Breaking this expectation without an extraordinary reason seems shady, that's all.

People are very mad at geohot->Blog

I dont know if this is a good idea. But without GPU use Linux is not that good. Some features are good but i can simply plug my Notebook in my TV and make more then the PS3 ever could do.

Still its not that great. It doesnt prevent things from happening just slowing them down. Hackers will be able to workout a solution and transfer it to the PS3. Sooner or later. I guess it will take a couple more years.

Sony has proofed they are able to design a system which is so hard to hack that it prevents piracy from happening. Hopefully Nintendo and MS will follow.

People, you can send your thank letters to GeoHot
just go to google type “ps3 hack GeoHot” and TADA.