yeah we should especially side with the people that like cheating in games online and pirating... great point thranx

Sony often engages is posturing behavior in an effort to intimidate opponents. The truth is that the threat is purely a very ficticious one. They know firstly that case law is probably not on their side, and neither is the spirit of the law. They want to imply that both are however. Hoping that you will buy in to that notion. Sony will throw a lot of jargon at you, and run a hundred lawyers at you. However the jargon is garbage, and the lawyers are unarmed. The truth is that possession is nine tenths of the law, and courts favor ownership.

Thus Sony limits its litigation. They will never go to trial. A trial will establish a precedent. A precedent which will most likely be on the side of the consumer. Were that to happen the flood gates would be open. They aren't going to hand the modifying community a weapon to use against them. This all said don't buy into the crap. Sony never has a real case in the matter of modified code or hardware. This is the same reason that Microsoft never goes after modders. They just block them from their online service. Which is a free service, and they are not obligated to provide. Especially if you use code to steal software, harrass other users, or have altered the hardware from its intended function. In such cases they are well within their right not to do business with you, and you have no real expectation to receive the service.

People who own things have every right to do what they want with them. You are not renting from Sony or squatting. You aren't in a legally binding contract with them either. You cannot sell someone something, and then impose any kind of contract after the fact. Sometimes I think people view game companies like Darth Vader. Like they can change the rules as they see fit. Having trouble understanding treat your console like it was your car, and you will see how pain painfully unlawful half the powers they claim to have are. Like changing a term or service immediately active in the middle of a subscription service, and claiming they have the arbitrary right. Don't buy into the bullcrap. They are all full of it, and they really do know that. They just blow hard praying you aren't going to call their bluff.

Speaking to Anonymous that evidence is painfully flimsy, and more to the point unreliable. The source alone makes it all suspect. Sony needs to have answer and some justification. What better justification then saying a large organized yet decentralized group orchestrated a massive attack. What worse excuse if a couple guys did this on their weekends. One says they failed, but they faced a hard challenge. The other says they failed, and there was no excuse at all. That all said if Anonymous did plant that message it still doesn't mean they were involved in the data theft. All it could mean is that the defenses at Sony were truly paper thin, and they may have had dozens or hundreds of incursions into their network. Which means making themselves a target was a real blunder. This could make capturing the real attackers almost impossible.

com·put·er/kÉ™mˈpyoÍžotÉ™r/Noun

If they violate them, Sony has every right to not admit them in its network and to kick them away if they were already in (because to enter it you have to explicitly accept them, so the main objection against "automatically accepted" EULAs, TOS', etc doesn't apply in this particular case). But nothing else. You have every right to have cheaters (with modded consoles or not) banned from PSN and to play with honest people, but users have every right to mod for purposes that remain within their personal rights without affecting you or other people. At the same time, you have every right to give up some of your rights, but you have no right at all to give up them for other people.

@dsister

since the xbox is also a computer why isn't microsoft being sued for banning people from xbox live who have modded their console... you seem to have a better grasp of this issue so please explain that to me

I can't think of a better way to explain it than Thranx's post. You own your PS3/Xbox, whereas Microsoft/Sony own XBL/ PSN 

So let's say I purchase a game and/or a console new at retail.  I expect it to run "as is" until (in this day and age) the manufacturer provides an update that should improve (and sometimes degrade) its performance in which I agree to.  In this case, what rights am I giving up and how is it a harm to others?

surely you can see therefore that you are contradicting yourself :

" I should have the right to hack, and modify it in anyway I see fit."

"anyway that i see fit" includes modding to access xbl and psn, hacking, cheating online, piracy etc

well that is if you agree that people who hacked the ps3 were going online and interfering with the system ( like with xbox )

What? O.o 

I said PS3 was a computer and I had the rights to modify it anyway I want. PSN isn't a computer, and I don't own it, so I don't have the rights to modify it. 

you're dodging what i said

"anyway that i see fit" includes modding to access xbl and psn, hacking, cheating online, piracy etc

well that is if you agree that people who hacked the ps3 were going online and interfering with the system ( like with xbox )