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EFF Rips Sony Over PS3 Hacking Lawsuit
The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a statement condemning the console manufacturer's litigious posturing toward a group of hackers who jail broke the PlayStation 3.
“For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure," the organization's statement reads. " We’ve also been concerned that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be abused to try to make alleged contract violations into crimes.”
“We’ve never been sorrier to be right. These two things are precisely what’s happening in Sony v. Hotz.
The statement comes on the heel of a lawsuit Sony filed against jailbreaker George Hotz and a hacking organization known as fail0verflow, which broke through the PS3's security measures. Downloading the group's jailbreak allows users to install homebrew applications on the console, and potentially use it to play pirated games. Since the lawsuit became public, rumors have started circulating that Sony is looking into requiring gamers to input a serial number like PC CD-keys and verify them with Sony's authentication servers. The EFF also aired concerns about Sony controlling what consumers do with hardware they own.
“Sony is sending another dangerous message: that it has rights in the computer it sells you even after you buy it, and therefore can decide whether your tinkering with that computer is legal or not. We disagree. Once you buy a computer, it’s yours. It shouldn’t be a crime for you to access your own computer, regardless of whether Sony or any other company likes what you’re doing.”
[Source: Gamespot]
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