Sony looks to be taking a page from ‘Hackers’ Dade Murphy, “mess with the best die like the rest”. At least in terms of their policy on PS3 jailbreaking. The electronics empire has filed a restraining order against well-known iPhone hacker Geohot and other individuals for allegedly bypassing “effective technological protective measures” in PS3 firmware version 3.55.
The purported jailbreak for firmware version 3.55 allows Playstation 3 owners to run custom packages on their console. The ultimate goal of the project being a return of the “Other OS” option, a feature Sony terminated with the launch of the PS3 slim last year. While the feature was certainly welcomed, especially for the Linux folks — there were a number of security risks.
Most notable was the ease of backing up both PS3 games as well as Blu-ray movies to the internal hard drive. Today’s restraining order is likely the start of a much longer battle between Sony and the hacking community. A modern day tale of the movie ‘Hackers’ is likely to unfold, though we don’t expect to see Angelina Jolie on rollerblades anytime soon.
For now Sony is playing the strong arm, hoping that Geohot and his legion of hackers will retreat from the threat of further legal action. For those of you keeping track, Sony was successful at halting the sales of PS3 Jailbreak in Australia last August, but much like the iPhone jailbreaking saga — each firmware update is simply another test for the hacking community.
What do you think about the PS3 jailbreak? If the ultimate goal is simply to allow the “Other OS” option to be enabled, wouldn’t it be easier if Sony just restored the functionality instead of hiring the legal department to stop a group of hackers from enabling a feature previously available on the console? Sound Off.
Via CNet
