I'll cut to the chase for this one, since there's one big news item of the month that's taken all the headlines. I speak, of course, of the PSN downtime.

For those of you unaware, the Sony PS3 network (PSN) has been the subject of much discussion lately, having been intruded upon (among others) by a group called 'Anonymous Hackers' some weeks ago as a protest over the case against George Hotz.

Enter April, where Sony has found itself in even deeper trouble. News has come to light towards the end of the month that the most recent down time, leaving PS3 players without network connectivity and online multiplayer options for the past two weeks (as of this post), relates to an even bigger hack of their security system.

Sony has since detailed that user information, including personal credit card details, could have been attained by the hacker(s), and are working around the clock to completely rebuild their system towards a relaunch of PSN some time this May.

For those MobyGamers caught up in this crazy turn of events, please unsure you've altered any passwords that you may have used for other accounts besides your PSN, and double check your bank account and/or credit cards over the coming weeks and report any suspicious info asap. Always best to be safe than sorry.

Oh, and something relating to portals and talking turrets came out last month. Unless the cake lied to me again.

*shrug* Sony deserves all of it and more. Personally, I added them to the boycott list alongside Vivendi (and whatever other companies they hide behind) and Ubisoft.

Tell me more. Why Ubi and Viv?

Crazy DRM anti anti-"piracy" mainly. Ubi started with StarForce and ended up at this insane always-connected thing, Vivendi (now ducking behind Activision-Blizzard, which they have 52% of) ended up with what you now see in Starcraft 2 (and is well pointed out in Katharian Berg's review of it), but before that, despite having the biggest cash cow in the industry's history in the form of WoW, making more in a month than most games earn in their entire "lifespans", have been bitching about "piracy" all along and over here I even saw news that they held conferences and sent experts to train our police in tracking down and punishing on-line "pirates" several years ago. Way I see it, the only proper user response to a company that makes such a mess about the fact that some people don't actually buy their products and makes it so much more difficult and frustrating for those who actually do to make use of their purchases is to make sure that nobody buys anything from them anymore, see how they like that.

Generally I see EA listed as being "like Ubisoft, only worse" in various "what's wrong with PC gaming" lists, but I can't say anything about those because I haven't been interested in any of their releases in a long time, so don't care what they do and don't even know.

Good luck with that. The law enforcement has better things to do like tracking down human trafficking cartels, drug lords, and psychopaths like me, much less care about virtual crimes (funds depending). It's the European law firms the pirates have to worry about. Donkey holes. :p

Copy protection isn't much of a problem these days I reckon (morality depending). Buy the game, get the crack.

If you need to get the crack in order to play it anyway, why the hell buy it?

Because I need money to eat and pay my rent.

Then stop being at war with your potential customers and get rid of DRM.

(And don't get me started on the "need money" thing. "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we can't eat money." That one's always true...)

I don't put DRM in my products. And that's exactly my point.

Developers make games. Publishers sell games and put DRM in games. If you don't buy the games you are hurting the developers much more than the publishers. Because a developer usually only has one game on the market at the time, while the publisher can always fall back on the revenue of a dozen other games.

And I am against DRM, because it's unethical means to turn ownership into licenses. But as a developer I don't have a say in the matter.

Oh, just some gamers I've noticed with morality issues. Don't want to screw the developer but want to screw the publisher. Me, I just want a screwdriver. :p

I generally go with that idea, don't want to screw the developer but want to screw the publisher. But I want to screw the publisher FAR more than I want to avoid screwing the developer, because the developer allied with the publisher against the potential customers by using their services.

As for the morality of it, my take is that any program you couldn't (operating system) or wouldn't (in my case, antivirus) use your computer without, plus any program you use in order to earn money, needs to be bought. For anything else, well, they need to make it truly worth it if they want your money, and the first step is to show they're on your side. DRM in general, and anything developed from StarForce onwards in particular, is clear proof that they're NOT on your side, so act accordingly.

But... I remember hearing something once about Atari "trying to work with developers to persuade them to drop DRM from their titles". Was that just marketing or...?

(So how do you get rid of publishers... Well, I have a working hypothesis...)

It's just a matter of perspective actually. I consider none to be at fault.

Squeezing every once of profit from the consumer is the basic principle of economics. From that perspective, their argument is that the consumer is not forced to purchase a product.

Pirates and other dubious activities emerge from one or more of the various factors: cheap consumers allowing a high demand, product costs in comparison to a region's GDP, legal awareness (morality and income depending), and enforcement.

Also the availability, accessibility, and most important whether or not proper equipment and skills are available for product imitation/duplication. If you don't want people copying your products, try the banana industry. :p

"I’m trying to work up to posting my ideas about a future copyright law in detail..."

Don't go there. Trust me. Intellectual Property is the civilized version of the basic instinct: "I'm pissing on this tree, it's mine" which in turn is in contradiction to the basic instinct that we mimic behaviors to advance. Which somewhat explains why we haven't conquered the galaxy yet. :p

Hell, all forms of tax was once considered to be temporary once upon a time. I warned...er...my past reincarnation did. But does anyone listen to any of my reincarnations? Nooo.... :p

Yeah, that post's from Sep 2009 and didn't go there yet (just posted various more rants on the "piracy" issue). But I don't think anyone'd argue (well, ok, some would, but let's not talk about those) that it needs to be illegal to republish someone else's work (or something strongly based on someone else's work) as your own, and especially that you shouldn't be allowed to earn anything from someone else's work (which could in a way describe what publishers do). The problem is that they take it much further than that.

So what else did your past incarnations warn about? :p

You'd be surprised. It would depend on a specific cultural hegemony. In Indonesia, once upon a time, it was considered a compliment to blatantly steal one's (now known as) trademark. Since it would signify that such a brand was indeed popular in quality. Word by mouth would consequently keep the imitators from gaining market since only the name is imitated but not the quality of the product.

In west, the very culture of arts (and music...and ironically, software) is based on plagiarism. In those days where they still had dragons running around :p, guilds and schools jealously guarded their specific method of skills and education. Coming up with something totally new was considered controversial enough for banishment (like Beethoven inventing that jazz tune).

Then god created Leonardo da Vinci (who had since lost his job as being a castle builder) began inventing stuff and petitioned monopolies to the king...who delegated the request to the ancestors of IP lawyers. :p

That's a good point though. Becuase in many (most?) cases where companies whine about IP, it is really more about the original IP owner being too f'in lazy or cheap to make a product worth shit. Abuse the law to intimidate and bully your competitors, rather than putting in effort to make a good product yourself. Of course that's rather in the patent than the copyright or trademark areas. It's no longer about learning from others and creating a good product. It's a about perverting our laws into granting you a monopoly.

Reminds me of an example presented in a paper I read once, where Louis Vuitton sued a manufacturer of Chinese knock-off handbags for trademark infringement and damage to LV's reputation. They won on the trademark infringement charge. But after they brought the knock-off to a LV store for repairs and even they didn't notice that it was a fake, the courts concluded that the quality of the knock-off is so high, up to par with the original, that there is no way they could have damaged the reputation of the brand. Effectively proving that LV's prices on handbags are inflated by a couple of hundred or thousand percent for simply the brand.

Which is why IP lawyers are so dumb and are most of its legislation. The considerations of quality, price, accessibility, sociology, are ignored when it comes to the concept of property.

There is little legal philosophy regarding intellectual property rights on why it exists, for what purpose, etc. Other than that pissing on a tree territorialism. Seriously, 15-50 years before someone else can piss on that same tree?

Sony may deserve it, but their customers don't. I'd rather hackers attack Sony, and not our fellow gamers or their credit cards.

Sure, rather have it like that, but it's a bit hard to attack a company without affecting those who support it through their purchases and behavior. Which leads me to the fact that said fellow gamers aren't quite so innocent, even if their fault is just that they don't care what their behavior and purchases support. It's quite a big fault...

Anyway, from all I'm hearing, this was a pretty regular attack from a cyber criminal who took advantage of Sony currently being distracted by their battles with Anonymous and, exploiting security holes which obviously shouldn't have been there in the first place, did what all criminals do, taking things for their own gain without any concern for others. If that data will actually be used for identity theft or credit card fraud, the culprit needs to be found and properly punished (but Sony also needs to answer for allowing it to happen in the first place), because that has nothing whatsoever to do with any just cause and can't be justified in any way. If, however, we'd be talking of Anonymous' DDoS attacks on their servers or any other potential attacks and hacks, including some that could perhaps make people completely unable to use PSN (again), wipe servers or delete user profiles and save games stored on-line, and all sorts of other such things, without actually taking anything that the attacker could use for personal gain, I'll call it fair game, just for the reason I mentioned in the first paragraph.

There was talk of the PSN reopening today or over the course of this week, withdrawn from Sony now because they want to do further security checks.

By now they better have something awesome in store as the promised compensation for the affected customers.

Yeah, like access for 3.55.

Don't supposed anyone out there did a class action number on them?

This.

The wolves and the lamb voting on what's for dinner again. Somebody really needs to give that lamb a bazooka!

From a Sony press release, the "Welcome Back" program to thank customers for their "patience, support, and continued loyalty", will include a 30-day membership for PlayStation Plus and free downloads that will differ from region to region.

They are also providing a free one year membership to an identity theft protection agency. At least in the US. Sheeeeet.

Yikes!

IMHO, Sony deserved what they got. Remember this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

Prosecuting hackers like Geohot for fiddling with a piece of hardware that they legitimately own makes you think that in the current climate, it would be possible that appliances begin shipping with software-like licenses in which you own nothing, you just license their use.

Sure, Sony makes good electronic devices, and I admire them for that (I love their TVs and my PS3) but no way I support prosecuting pirates.

Sony deserved what they got, too bad innocent customers were caught in the middle, but I guess the only way to make Sony bleed was to hit them where it hurts the most: money.

Hardware makers should already know that when your protection is beaten, there's no solution. The gates has been opened. There's no way to close the Pandora's box. Better search for alternatives than to track down offenders. Prosecuting individuals is useless and won't prevent ppl from running backups and it also won't ruin your business (M$ and the big N are healthy even though piracy has been rampant on those other consoles for YEARS!)

Hardware makers should already know that when your protection is beaten, there's no solution.

Mandatory firmware updates, ...

Prosecuting hackers like Geohot for fiddling with a piece of hardware that they legitimately own makes you think that in the current climate, it would be possible that appliances begin shipping with software-like licenses in which you own nothing, you just license their use.

When you buy a product you accept the EULA or whatever they call their legal wishwash. Don't agree to that? Don't buy it. Still buyin'? Don't be a moron and get caught. End of story lol.