No Prisoners, No Mercy: Nipped in the bud
Nipped in the bud
If you are a member of the mmo community at large, or even know someone who lives in our little corner of the global village, chances are you have already heard of one of the famous (or should we say infamous) residents…one George Hotz. Among what we are sure are his other accomplishments in life, wherever it may take him, he is most noted for “jailbreaking” the playstation 3, and is one of the individuals who did the same for (or should we say to Iphone) On January 10, 2010 Mr. Hotz announced that he had successfully hacked what was thought to be the only fully locked and secure system in the current generation of consoles. As a result he had read/write access to the PS3 memory, having hypervisor access to the processor as well.
Flash forward a year to January 12, 2011 and we find Sony suing George Hotz for violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (source). One of those siding with Hotz in the matter at hand is Research Professor of Computer Science for Carnegie Mellon University (as the professor points out he is NOT speaking for Carnegie Mellon University).
Free speech (and free computing) rights exist only for those determined to exercise them. Trying to suppress those rights in the Internet age is like spitting in the wind. – David S. Touretzky (source)
Professor Touretzky had originally posted a mirror of the code that Hotz used, but as of the 27th of January 2011 said, “I have disabled my mirror until I can get back to Pittsburgh and look more closely at the current state of things.”
The reason for the professor’s caution is that Judge Illston of California has ruled that California can try the case “due to the concept of ‘purposeful direction’ where the defendant ‘committed an intentional act, expressly aimt at the forum state, cusing harm that the defendant knows is likely to be suffered in the forum state.’” (source)
Mind you no one on the NPNM team is an attorney, no have any of us played one on television (though our own Julie was a paralegal for awhile). Still we can’t help reflect on the comments by Hotz’s lawyer, Stewart Kellar:
“The code necessary to ‘jail break’ the Sony PlayStation computer is on the Internet. That cat is not going back in the bag…Indeed, Sony’s own pleadings admit that the code necessary to jailbreak the Sony Playstation computer is on the Internet. Sony speaks of ‘closing the door,’ but the simple fact is that there is no door to close. The code sought to be restrained will always be a Google search away.” – Stewart Keller, Via Arstechnica
No matter who is right or wrong in this case (if indeed there even is moral high ground) Sony will have a time trying to stop members of the global village from jailbreaking the PlayStation. It strikes us as an attempt to herd thousands of cats back into the same bag.
Et Al
As listeners to the No Prisoners, No Mercy podcast know, our own Julie has been diligently at work on a costume with design (and later sewing) help from Fran. Here are some of the early efforts completed on what is to be a Steampunk Liberated Borg Klingon costume.
