But if you think that Sony can’t ban you if you play pirated games over PSN, think again. The amount of access Sony has to your machine is greater than you probably imagine. According to a Neogaf user , When you turn on your system, the console communicates with a set of Sony servers, and a log of applications run on the system is almost certainly transmitted. Which means, Sony can know what is running on your system. Also, Sony has the ability to completely disable your console if they wanted to do so, which means it will remain non-functional whether you’re online or offline.

So if Sony can’t fix the security issues by releasing patches, expect to see the ban hammer sooner than later.

Source

Have fun pirates :)

but cant pirates just keep their ps offline?

Yeah.

Stop your fear mongering Gilga-Bush!

Even if they could do this, personally i dont think its as simiple as we think, but the point of these PS3 hacks are that using the mater key. so the console thinks your playing a genunine copy not a pirated copy. so i dont see this working, because how can they identify whoes using a pirated copy from whoes using a genuine, if both copies use the same master key.

Indeed, pirates would probably buy a very cheap PS3 for hacking and playing single player games on it, and if they really want to play online, they will keep an unmodded PS3 with the sole purpose of it.

Also... come on, you guys think hackers won't find a way to revive any PS3 that Sony disabled? Hah!

oh never thought of that, good point

but yea, in dont see how this is going to stop much if people can just not play theyre games online and still pirate

 They may do that, but if someone can make a backup system, it really wouldnt matter if sony does it or not, you could just restore the ps3 with that file... Like a dice here, what is broken will remain broken...

As long as they are offline no-one will have to deal with them online.

This.  Sony may have control on an individual PS3 from a firmware and software aspect but it's not like they can make hardware destroy itself from their servers.