Sony Lays the Ban on Any Pirated Software, Pirates Unban Themselves - The UpStream

Sony Lays the Ban on Any Pirated Software, Pirates Unban Themselves

posted Sunday Feb 20, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

Sony Lays the Ban on Any Pirated Software, Pirates Unban Themselves

Sony's cage has been shaken up a lot lately. First, George "Geohot" Hotz, or as we call him The Hotz, went after the PlayStation 3 after learning that they chose to remove OtherOS and other fun things out of the firmware. He disclosed security flaws and the PS3's security codes. It got so much attention that Microsoft started to take notice. Then a rare flub by Sony's fictionally named but not fictionally employed face of the PlayStation 3, Kevin Butler, when he accidently retweeted a post by user "exiva" that contained the PlayStation 3's METLDR root key, which jailbreaks the PS3 and allows you to use Homebrew. That tweet reached 70,000+ followers and was immediately taken down, but the effects have been tremendous.

Because of all this, Sony became very angry to the point where they wanted to get IP information of every person who saw the tweet or watched The Hotz' video on YouTube and wanted to take those people to court. They are even going after anyone who decides to talk about or distribute the first full jailbreak code. When the Internet decided to laugh at them for those insane ideas, they chose a different route.

Want to know what they're going to do if you don't play nice with their hardware? You do? Want to know how to circumvent what they're going to do? That's an even better reason to hit the break.

Sony has gotten very serious and will now lay down the banhammer on anyone that is caught with unauthorized or pirated software. That user would be banned from the PlayStation Network.

Sony released a blog post on their official site and their social media manager, Jeff Rubenstein, said they have heard the Internet buzzing about being concerned with the things they've seen or heard in the gaming media. Sure. Sony is simply playing catchup, hack after hack.

Here's the blog post:

Notice: Unauthorized circumvention devices for the PlayStation 3 system have been recently released by hackers. These devices permit the use of unauthorized or pirated software. Use of such devices or software violates the terms of the "System Software License Agreement for the PlayStation 3 System" and the "Terms of Services and User Agreement" for the PlayStation Network/Qriocity and its Community Code of Conduct provisions. Violation of the System Software License Agreement for the PlayStation 3 System invalidates the consumer guarantee for that system. In addition, copying or playing pirated software is a violation of International Copyright Laws. Consumers using circumvention devices or running unauthorized or pirated software will have access to the PlayStation Network and access to Qriocity services through PlayStation 3 system terminated permanently.

To avoid this, consumers must immediately cease use and remove all circumvention devices and delete all unauthorized or pirated software from their PlayStation 3 systems.

Rubenstein added that,

...this message does not apply to the overwhelming majority of our users who enjoy the world of entertainment PlayStation 3 has to offer without breaching the guidelines detailed above, and we urge you to continue doing so without fear.

Crazy, eh? Well, if you want to continue to use the OtherOS functions and a pirated version of the PS3 software even after you are banned, you're in luck. The pirates have yet again upped the ante in this battle and a new hack has been created that will go into the PSN and allow users to unban themselves. Not only that, as long as you have another console's ID, you can then ban THAT console after unbanning yours. Of course, finding a console ID is a little difficult, but it can still be done.

This is a pretty interesting war that's taking place, but the new hack definitely takes things to a whole new level. Take that, Sony. Internet soldiers!

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posted Monday Feb 21, 2011 by PLuGHiTz

To ban someone from the PSN, don't you first have to have people using the PSN?

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