Geohot, the hacker who has had more than his fair share of trouble with the big guns at Sony, has denied having anything to do with the devastating attack which took the Playstation Network offline. “To anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I’m not crazy, and would prefer to not [...]
Tomorrow a week will have passed since Sony took its Playstation Network completely offline. The company has given only the most token of updates in that time and in the meanwhile the rumor mill has been churning. However, new information has surfaced which points to Sony’s action being prompted by an unprecedented piracy threat.
Last week news broke that hacker George Hotz had settled his legal dispute with Sony. Hotz had been a very, very naughty boy and had found ways around Sony’s PS3 security and put details on the Internet. Sony were very angry indeed and decided to teach Hotz a lesson by getting a whole bunch of [...]
In a piece today in The Times, Sony boss Michael Lynton yet again champions 3 strikes for alleged pirates and states that combating piracy could add millions to the economy. He also says that due to piracy, in 2008 Hollywood made the lowest number of movies in the last decade. So where did its record earnings go?
In 2005 there was a huge scandal when it was revealed that Sony’s attempts to crack down on music piracy had got out of control. The company included a rootkit (XCP) on many of its music CDs which was installed on the user’s PC without permission. Now a court has ordered compensation to be paid to an XCP victim.
Sony claims that there is a downward trend for pirated PSP games, and that more people are handing over money for games, to join what the company calls “the good side”. It is unclear where Sony sourced this data, but statistics gathered from BitTorrent trackers show an increase in PSP piracy.
In a keynote speech at the Broadband World Forum, John McMahon, President of Sony Pictures Television asked ISPs to join their battle against piracy. McMahon further said that DRM is one of the major causes of piracy, but says Sony doesn’t have any plans to get rid of it.
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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