Maybe I misunderstood your point because it seemed to me you were arguing that you didn't really buy the software, you only licensed it, therefore you weren't allowed to reverse engineer it.  I was arguing that under fair use you didn't need to have bought the source code in order to reverse engineer it.

In any case, one of the fair uses of reverse engineering is for the purposes of being able to run homebrew, which is exactly what they were trying to do.  Whether they puposefully or inadvertantly opened the door to piracy and cheating is something that needs to be proven in a court of law but there is certainly no guarantee they will be able to do that.  In the past the courts have tended to side with the "hackers" for lack of a better term.

http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise25.html

"It is clear that, at least in the Ninth Circuit, legitimate reverse engineering to learn how to interoperate with another computer program is a fair use. Congress appears to agree. In the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as part of the anticircumvention provisions added as Section 1201 of the Copyright Act, Congress specifically recognized reverse engineering needed for interoperability as an exception to the anticircumvention rules:"

Like I said, some people are going to find whatever excuses to bash Sony.

You could already play "backups"(including games released after 3.41) of games with the PSjailbreak/PSgroove program. You could not run homebrew or a linux os(around the corner) without the keys. Its kind of hard to make a case that they were working on alternate OS's just to play backups since the ability was available for everyone months before.

And your point?

So a judge denied Sony's request for the IP addresses and personal information of people who posted, viewed or commented on videos/articles about the hacks from sites such as Google/Youtube and Paypal.  Wow, the judge must be so anti-gamer and a complete Microsoft or Nintendo fangirl to deny Sony such a reasonable request.

I for one am shocked.

I don't think he is trying to be confusing Deskpro2k3. He's just trying to explain things in law and the fact your analogy isn't accurate.

A more accurate analogy (in current law) is this...

Sony have made a lock for your front door which has a key which is no one is able to copy.

Everyone's home is secure, the world is happy.

Geohot is a Sony Lock owner who is curious how to make a copy of the key so he disables HIS lock on HIS door and figures out how the mechanism works.

Having done this he realises what is required for key duplication and constructs a machine which will perform this for him.

Feeling rather pleased with himself he then publishes the Blu Prints for said machine on to the Internet. This ensures anyone with a modicum of tech know-how can create the same duplicating key machine.

SONY go mental as the main selling feature of their locks is redundant.

GeoHot has NOT copied anyones keys but his OWN. He had not broken any laws in lock disassembly.

He is not guilty of any CRIME.

:O I don't think its right to prosecute viewers, as there is no law against reading an article.  I searched what the contents of the new update were right when it came out and wound up with a page that had a couple people talking about how far they were into hacking it already and what they were doing...granted it made absolutely zero sense.

No Cypher, you're confused too. My example is so straight forward to understand. Let me break it down for you. He owns the hardware yes, not the software. Now the analogy of a lock.. Creating a device to open it and then sharing it.. The software is the key. He doesn't own that key. Now these root keys which in your analogy open locks, they are used to verify that a game is genuine, and with that knowledge, hackers and pirates can essentially trick the console into recognizing counterfeit software as the real deal. You can choose to download firmware updates, but if your hardware is compromise, the secuirty update will not allow you to log in online.

So in other words, somebody found the keys to the game developers shops. He went ahead and made copies of it. Or shows people how to create one. Do you understand now? Look, it is just an example.

Sony is wasting money and doing irrepreable damage to its name cause they are idiots.

Hopefully you got that my post was extremely sarcastic :P I didn't think a /sarcasm at the end was necessary.

Of course it was going to be denied, the request was ridiculous and was seriously overstepping some bounds.  That's what I've been saying all along.