Sony terms & conditions come second after a law of the country mate. In my country sony can't do shit if I hack my console. Only if I pirate can they proceed and prosecute me.

Right. This of course completly ignores the three years the community spent learning about the system, understanding the CPU's, RAM, getting Linux to run on it, documenting limitations, discussing ideas, trying different things...this guy has a LOT of knowledge base to draw on. It's not like he lived in a cave, bought a PS3 and worked it out all by his lonesome in 5 weeks.

It took Boeing 7 years to get the 787 dream liner in the air. It holds over 250 people and can fly 10,000km.  It took the wright brothers TEN whole freakin years to get their single passenger plane to fly 250m. Not impressed with the wright brothers, nope, not at all!

Why do people hate Sony? 

 because they lay on the DRm a little too thick...

Taken from YOUR sig:

"wish #2 Less DRM on the PSN video store, and the addition of music"

OK, the hack removes DRM from videos. Still hate the hack now? Still willing to kill to prevent it? Hmmm....

Well this is now being reported on the BBC so I guess it is gaining credibility. The one worrying thing I took from the BBC article was not only the fact he intends to let the world have all the information but that he would be supplying the root key he discovered ensuring that this will be the flood gates.

The guy seemed pretty determined with regards the iPhone providing updates so no reason to believe he will not do the same here.

Ultimately though it will depend on how easy it will for joe schmo to implement on his own PS3. I am thinking it will be a little more complicated.

Be careful with gross generalizations there. If a hack is distrubuted that 'harms' Sony, they can, and will,  take action. The definition of 'harms' is up to Sony to define first. Harming their reputation is enough. True, a judge may redefine the definition of 'harm' at your very, very expensive trial and find you have not harmed Sony and the hack is therefore legal. But unless you can afford a very, very expensive trial I wouldn't be bragging about your hacked PS3!

Countries with the strongest public participation in the court system are more prone to be influenced by deep pockets as they are more easily bought*. So if you live in the USA, Sony wins automatically.  Canada, Australia and other common law countreis also give Sony a big advantage. European countires would be next, bu you would have a fighting chance at least. Hopefully you live somewhere without a strong populist court system. China might work for you. Ni Hao ma!

Took the classes, but not the Bar. therefore IANAL.

* should point out the reverse is also true, those same Big Pockets get hammered with ludicrous lawsuits by the people. So it works both ways...

Sony should have that man killed. Make it look like an accident.

Two death threats in one post you could say this guy hit a nerve.

I am not sure what his legal position is but Apple do not seem able to silence him so I think it may not be as straightforward a prosecution case regardless of the country or judicial system employed.

Indeed.

I'm not sure why people are saying that a firmware update will undo all the hacking. I'm under the impression that as soon as a system has been hacked once, it's relatively easy to get around the updates (i.e. it won't take another three years). Also (and I hope no-one was implying this), he isn't stupid enough to update his firmware in the middle of hacking. I bet his system's firmware hasn't been updated since he got it.

Apple's situation was different, it was just allowing more people to get access to the phone and using it on other service providers. If anything more people bought the iPone because of this.

As for Sony this could cut deep into their pockets if people are able to pirate games since that is a major source of revenue for Sony. So any console they sold right now for pirating reasons would be sold at a complete loss with no possibilty of recouping it since they wont be buying software.