Is Piracy Damaging the PSP and the Homebrew Scene ?

[wraggster]

The question above, "Is Piracy Damaging the PSP and the Homebrew Scene?"

Lets cast our minds back before the first "UMD Loader" was released, we were enjoying masses of great releases on a daily basis, the japanese coders were ruling the roost and the homebrew scene was thriving then the first UMD Loaders came along and then sites that had posted homebrew were now posting these releases and some were even posting the downloads but to be fair all those sites gave the real homebrew scene a kick in the teeth.

I remember one newsposter saying in a newspost that Pro Evo was released and it worked on some loader, needless to say this was a newsposter on a rather big site who was saying its ok to warez.

Now Sony have forced PSP Wikis Loader offline (not the whole site that certain sites have reported wrongly), does this mean they will come after homebrew sites or just target those who blatently report on loaders and have the downloads and discussion in their forums.

Well i hope its the latter and then maybe the Real Homebrew scene can carry on and say good ridance to the piracy of new PSP titles.

In the quest for visitors some site ops take the easy road to get visitors whether they actually post the files or not but its better to stay legal than risk Jail and fines just to get a few visitors.

[LiraNuna]

Yes, Piracy has destroyed the PSP scene and also the DS's one.

[ataribob]

Piracy has been in all systems ever made.
Nothing new

It will not stop anyone from buying a PSP.
If anything it could get more people involved in buying.

[Insane1]

Piracy has been in all systems ever made.
Nothing new.
Yeah. The thing is it's just getting far more attention these days.

[weak]

ok, i ask again: do we have any evidence that the wiki upload server was forced to close by sony?

back on topic: iso loaders are the main reason people don't update (downgrade) their firmware. so actually it's good for the homwbrew scene. like it or not, that's a fact.

[Produkt]

But with the PSP alot of users found out how much easyer to do it is.

It required a memory stick they would have baught for movie and music any way.

didnt require you to open your console, soder anything, burn cd's/dvd's

it just required a program and a memory stick.

[Smiths]

Can we please stop spreading this false "news" that Sony shut down the PSPWiki?

It was 100% a false "Report" by the cancer news site, containing a quote I'd love to see a Japanese person say. I've never encountered anyone ranting and calling anyone "bitches" in over 3 years here.

Sony had nothing to do with the PSPWiki "shutdown"

The real story is explained here:
http://bbs.pspwiki.to/bbs/test/read.php/board/1132296882/l50
(which I'm sure the talented JC would have found had he actually -- gasp -- researched)

Someone using a Japanese ISP was uploading items that were not allowed (MP4 files, what they contained I don't know). He had been warned before and an explanation had been posted. He kept doing so, so the Wiki people decided to temporarily shutdown that uploader. They are uncertain when it will return, but it is only suspended currently.

Those "b******* at Sony" or whatever as P$PUpdate$ quoted were not even remotely close to this situation.

It should be noted the other Wiki uploaders are all still there, functioning properly.

wraggster, I respect you and this site, but you also are spreading the false news without verification on this stupid matter.

I hope this exposes even further how desperate P$PUpdate$ are to get attention from a dwindling "Scene"; they've taken to completely making up news and quotes that have served to confuse several Japanese sites as well.

Twats are a cancer, and research is good.

- Smiths

[MGFox]

Is Piracy Damaging the PSP and the Homebrew Scene?

That would be an undisputable YES!.

If some jackasses hadn't decided to create an ISO Launcher or even a Ripper, Sony probably wouldn't have given a rats ass about the Homebrew scene and we would all be able to run GTA:LCS as well as Super Mario World without doing some crazy wallpaper stuff!

In the recent present, many advances have been made allowing Homebrew programs to run on 2.00 through this crazy wallpaper. My only hope is that the afformentioned jackasses don't create a ISO Launcher for FW 2.00, that way Sony may allow us to carry on with our Homebrew in peace, by allowing all future Firmwares to be compatible with 2.00, just as 2.5 is now!

The only problem I can see with 2.00 Homebrew, is that apparently WiFi won't be possible. Despite that, with 2.00 you can play the latest games, you can run Homebrew (compatibility is constantly improving) and best of all...No Plague Of Piracy!!!!

Cheers,
Fox

[10shu]

That would be an undisputable YES!.
If some jackasses hadn't decided to create an ISO Launcher or even a Ripper, Sony probably wouldn't have given a rats ass about the Homebrew scene


well... it wouldn t have change a thing...emulator are piracy too in a way...and beleave me if sony didn t do anything against it. they would have got news form nintendo lawyer pretty quickly...

if you buy a nintendo games(for exemple..)...you have to play it on the nintendo console the game is design for.Otherwise it s illegal...game company like you to buy there game on every platform...even old game (streetfighter2,namco museum,etc...)it s money for them...

I think if the psp scene slowdown it s because most of the easy thing as been done...the next emu need a good knowledge in memory managing and 3d optimisation good knowledge of the psp hardware... just give it time...

[MGFox]

10shu,

I don't want to start an argument, but I am afraid I must disagree on a few points:-

1) Homebrew != Emulation

Personally, I most frequently run Doom or Quake on my PSP, they are open-source and id Software generally support the spread of their games to other systems. But on top of source ports, a lot of Homebrew software is original, the content not infringing on any IPs or Copyrights.

2) Nowadays Classic Emulation is Tollerated

The XBox, Dreamcast, GP32, GP2X, GBA, DS and even Mobile Phones...to name a few, are all consoles (or devices) that can run Emulators. And they don't seem to have Nintendo Lawyers knocking at their door, heck, some of them are Nintendo consoles. Any of the consoles could have been updated, just as the PSP was, by either Flashing BIOS' or just increasing security on later console releases...but weren't, because Piracy of their own games wasn't a general risk, it did exist, but wasn't as easy to access as it is on the PSP.

I don't want this to turn into a "is emulation illegal?" debate...because as the law stands, you're right, it is...but the point is "how much do companies care?". If emulation was a huge legal problem, how did the GP32 last? and how did the GP2X come to be?

Cheers,
Fox

P.S. It's late and I'm tired so if this seems rude or spiteful, that was not my intention and I apologise!

[10shu]

i guest the gp 32 last cause nobody care about it...it s not a mass market platform.
for the xbox ps2...you need a to mod your hardware wich is illegal too...:)

i use nintendo as an exemple ;cause they was suprem 1st on handle market. and i guest they dont like to see there old game running on other platform especially when its the SONY psp...

remember nintendo continue sell nes, snes game on the gba...and retrocompatibility is one of there main selling point...the revolution will be able to play classic game from nintendo catalog...well you will have to buy the games from there server...

be sure those old games make money to game publisher and they don t like you to get them for free...

ok...ok...quake and doom are opensource...thoses are not illegal..:)...;)

[Hevyduty]

Whether PSP Wiki was shut down by Sony or not (appears to be not), let me just say this. If Sony ever decides to shut down homebrew sites like this one, then it's because they want to shut down homebrew sites. Or to put it another way, if Sony acts like they can't recognize the difference between piracy and homebrew, it's because Sony has made a conscious decision NOT to recognize the difference. They might use piracy as an excuse, but it's just an excuse. Don't buy it.

There are a lot of things that we can blame on piracy, like potentially fewer games being made for the system, but we shouldn't allow Sony to use it as an excuse to inexcusably shut down sites unrelated to piracy.

[MaxSMoke]

I'll tell you this, Spam is KILLING this website. What is with these annoying floating adds? How much more pimping do you need to do on this site? It seems like ever other story is an ad for Lik Sang. :p

As for Piracy, companies love to harp on it, but it rarely has any real impact on sales. The first Playstation had lots of piracy and so did the Dreamcast. Some people like to blame the Dreamcast's demise on Piracy and ignore that the Playstation made even more warez. The fact of the matter is, piracy is incredibly minor issue. It's a nice big red flag that companies like to drag out and wave whenever their products are failing because of other more pressing issues, like poor quality, over saturated markets, bad pricing, and bad marketing. It helps to cover up for these issues that they are incapable or unwilling to address.

The reality is that it's hard to pirate stuff, and it's always been a chore that most people wouldn't bother with. Piracy has only really existed among a small collection of hackers and computer enthusiasts. Most people hardly know which store has the software they want, much less a friend that can give it to them for nothing. On the upside, because these enthusiasts are the people most likely to pirate software, they are also the people others often turn to for software and hardware buying advice. This, in turn, helps to drive sales. Just think about this for a second, name ONE computer user that you really respect for their knowledge that doesn't have a collection of some kind of warez tucked away somewhere? If you don't use alot of software, you can't be knowledgable about it. And due to cost issues involved, only a millionaire could afford to buy every peice of software they ever tried. If you don't use software, you can't know much about it. This form of "exploration" just comes with the territory. It's great and all to throw out these slogans like "Piracy costs the industry 100 Billion dollars a Year", but that's based on the idea that if there was no piracy that ALL software copied would have been sold. Do you think a 15 year old is going to drop $2000 on a copy of Maya? Most likely not.

And then there's the work involved in using warez. Think about this, would your mother or grandpa spend 20 to 100 hours to downloading a movie they could just buy in the store for $15? Would they spend 5 hours researching how to install a warez copy of Coded Arms, even at the risk of distroying their PSP, when the game costs $30 at Walmart? Heck, most PSP owners have NO CLUE on how to install Homebrew game, even though there's 50+ FAQ's that can walk even a child through the whole process. My poor sister can't even figure out how to get MP3's on the 1GB memory stick I bought for her PSP. Can you believe that? And she's not alone. Most people don't know anything at all about how to use Warez, even if you put a CD in their hand and gave them a manual! It's hard work, it really is. There's only %10 of us that are technologly savy enough to handle doing such a thing, and only %5 of those are actively trading or downloading any of this stuff. That means %99.5 of all users don't know how to handle using warez.

Do you think Apple's iTunes music store makes millions of dollars because John and Jane Doe *Like* paying for music? It's because the vast majority of people don't know HOW to get real MP3's or what to do with them to get them on their iPod. They don't even realize they can rip their own CD's, using the iTunes software that's *already* on their computer! Think about it, how many people do you know that still call their computer case a "CPU"?

Here's a shot of truth for you:

Sony is cracking down on Homebrew because it makes them look stupid as a company to have hackers using their hardware. This has nothing to do with piracy. They heard the word "Hacked" and they panicked. You see, in the real world of grown ups, there's a certain level of honor and respect one company must have for any hardware, before they will invest the time and money to make software for it. Sony doesn't want people to think their hardware is poorly made. And to have it "Hacked", in any way, shape, or form, is making their look like fools. Even something as benign as Homebrew.

Sony doesn't want *ANY* hacking, *NO* Homebrew, and *ZERO* development that isn't made under their direct supervision. People pay millions of dollars for these software kits, licenses, and to have their games pressed into UMD's. That's a huge investment! And to see Joe-Smow in HomeBrew land playing a game that Sony didn't authorize, that was made for free, is an insult. Not to mention that fact that the PSP has to be hacked to make this work, meaning that the PSP is poorly made. This is how business people think.

Of course, they don't see the benefits of Homebrew to the end consumer. They don't care. It's all about the word "Hacked" being applied to the PSP. "Hacked" is a bad word to these people. It's right up there with "Worms", "Viruses", "Union Wages". It means the PSP is poorly made. Who wants to sink millions into a video game console that can be "Hacked"?

Personally, I love Homebrew, I think it's the shiz-nick. But Sony doesn't, and they see *ALL* types of hacks as an invasion of their hardware, and a humiliation to the Sony name.

[vidgrip]

Piracy has been in all systems ever made.
Nothing new

It will not stop anyone from buying a PSP.
If anything it could get more people involved in buying.

The problem is the system will die without third party support, and what company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in development of a game that will be copied and distributed the week it comes out?

[10shu]

The problem is the system will die without third party support, and what company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in development of a game that will be copied and distributed the week it comes out?

...check news groups...every single game release on any platform is on the internet on dayone.!. piracy don t really stop game develloper... majority of people still buy there games...

[PunishedOne]

I'll tell you this, Spam is KILLING this website. What is with these annoying floating adds? How much more pimping do you need to do on this site? It seems like ever other story is an ad for Lik Sang. :p

As for Piracy, companies love to harp on it, but it rarely has any real impact on sales. The first Playstation had lots of piracy and so did the Dreamcast. Some people like to blame the Dreamcast's demise on Piracy and ignore that the Playstation made even more warez. The fact of the matter is, piracy is incredibly minor issue. It's a nice big red flag that companies like to drag out and wave whenever their products are failing because of other more pressing issues, like poor quality, over saturated markets, bad pricing, and bad marketing. It helps to cover up for these issues that they are incapable or unwilling to address.

The reality is that it's hard to pirate stuff, and it's always been a chore that most people wouldn't bother with. Piracy has only really existed among a small collection of hackers and computer enthusiasts. Most people hardly know which store has the software they want, much less a friend that can give it to them for nothing. On the upside, because these enthusiasts are the people most likely to pirate software, they are also the people others often turn to for software and hardware buying advice. This, in turn, helps to drive sales. Just think about this for a second, name ONE computer user that you really respect for their knowledge that doesn't have a collection of some kind of warez tucked away somewhere? If you don't use alot of software, you can't be knowledgable about it. And due to cost issues involved, only a millionaire could afford to buy every peice of software they ever tried. If you don't use software, you can't know much about it. This form of "exploration" just comes with the territory. It's great and all to throw out these slogans like "Piracy costs the industry 100 Billion dollars a Year", but that's based on the idea that if there was no piracy that ALL software copied would have been sold. Do you think a 15 year old is going to drop $2000 on a copy of Maya? Most likely not.

And then there's the work involved in using warez. Think about this, would your mother or grandpa spend 20 to 100 hours to downloading a movie they could just buy in the store for $15? Would they spend 5 hours researching how to install a warez copy of Coded Arms, even at the risk of distroying their PSP, when the game costs $30 at Walmart? Heck, most PSP owners have NO CLUE on how to install Homebrew game, even though there's 50+ FAQ's that can walk even a child through the whole process. My poor sister can't even figure out how to get MP3's on the 1GB memory stick I bought for her PSP. Can you believe that? And she's not alone. Most people don't know anything at all about how to use Warez, even if you put a CD in their hand and gave them a manual! It's hard work, it really is. There's only %10 of us that are technologly savy enough to handle doing such a thing, and only %5 of those are actively trading or downloading any of this stuff. That means %99.5 of all users don't know how to handle using warez.

Do you think Apple's iTunes music store makes millions of dollars because John and Jane Doe *Like* paying for music? It's because the vast majority of people don't know HOW to get real MP3's or what to do with them to get them on their iPod. They don't even realize they can rip their own CD's, using the iTunes software that's *already* on their computer! Think about it, how many people do you know that still call their computer case a "CPU"?

Here's a shot of truth for you:

Sony is cracking down on Homebrew because it makes them look stupid as a company to have hackers using their hardware. This has nothing to do with piracy. They heard the word "Hacked" and they panicked. You see, in the real world of grown ups, there's a certain level of honor and respect one company must have for any hardware, before they will invest the time and money to make software for it. Sony doesn't want people to think their hardware is poorly made. And to have it "Hacked", in any way, shape, or form, is making their look like fools. Even something as benign as Homebrew.

Sony doesn't want *ANY* hacking, *NO* Homebrew, and *ZERO* development that isn't made under their direct supervision. People pay millions of dollars for these software kits, licenses, and to have their games pressed into UMD's. That's a huge investment! And to see Joe-Smow in HomeBrew land playing a game that Sony didn't authorize, that was made for free, is an insult. Not to mention that fact that the PSP has to be hacked to make this work, meaning that the PSP is poorly made. This is how business people think.

Of course, they don't see the benefits of Homebrew to the end consumer. They don't care. It's all about the word "Hacked" being applied to the PSP. "Hacked" is a bad word to these people. It's right up there with "Worms", "Viruses", "Union Wages". It means the PSP is poorly made. Who wants to sink millions into a video game console that can be "Hacked"?

Personally, I love Homebrew, I think it's the shiz-nick. But Sony doesn't, and they see *ALL* types of hacks as an invasion of their hardware, and a humiliation to the Sony name.


Great, great great post right there. Read the entire thing. Agree 100%.

[soatari]

They should make this post a damn front page headline!


I'll tell you this, Spam is KILLING this website. What is with these annoying floating adds? How much more pimping do you need to do on this site? It seems like ever other story is an ad for Lik Sang. :p

As for Piracy, companies love to harp on it, but it rarely has any real impact on sales. The first Playstation had lots of piracy and so did the Dreamcast. Some people like to blame the Dreamcast's demise on Piracy and ignore that the Playstation made even more warez. The fact of the matter is, piracy is incredibly minor issue. It's a nice big red flag that companies like to drag out and wave whenever their products are failing because of other more pressing issues, like poor quality, over saturated markets, bad pricing, and bad marketing. It helps to cover up for these issues that they are incapable or unwilling to address.

The reality is that it's hard to pirate stuff, and it's always been a chore that most people wouldn't bother with. Piracy has only really existed among a small collection of hackers and computer enthusiasts. Most people hardly know which store has the software they want, much less a friend that can give it to them for nothing. On the upside, because these enthusiasts are the people most likely to pirate software, they are also the people others often turn to for software and hardware buying advice. This, in turn, helps to drive sales. Just think about this for a second, name ONE computer user that you really respect for their knowledge that doesn't have a collection of some kind of warez tucked away somewhere? If you don't use alot of software, you can't be knowledgable about it. And due to cost issues involved, only a millionaire could afford to buy every peice of software they ever tried. If you don't use software, you can't know much about it. This form of "exploration" just comes with the territory. It's great and all to throw out these slogans like "Piracy costs the industry 100 Billion dollars a Year", but that's based on the idea that if there was no piracy that ALL software copied would have been sold. Do you think a 15 year old is going to drop $2000 on a copy of Maya? Most likely not.

And then there's the work involved in using warez. Think about this, would your mother or grandpa spend 20 to 100 hours to downloading a movie they could just buy in the store for $15? Would they spend 5 hours researching how to install a warez copy of Coded Arms, even at the risk of distroying their PSP, when the game costs $30 at Walmart? Heck, most PSP owners have NO CLUE on how to install Homebrew game, even though there's 50+ FAQ's that can walk even a child through the whole process. My poor sister can't even figure out how to get MP3's on the 1GB memory stick I bought for her PSP. Can you believe that? And she's not alone. Most people don't know anything at all about how to use Warez, even if you put a CD in their hand and gave them a manual! It's hard work, it really is. There's only %10 of us that are technologly savy enough to handle doing such a thing, and only %5 of those are actively trading or downloading any of this stuff. That means %99.5 of all users don't know how to handle using warez.

Do you think Apple's iTunes music store makes millions of dollars because John and Jane Doe *Like* paying for music? It's because the vast majority of people don't know HOW to get real MP3's or what to do with them to get them on their iPod. They don't even realize they can rip their own CD's, using the iTunes software that's *already* on their computer! Think about it, how many people do you know that still call their computer case a "CPU"?

Here's a shot of truth for you:

Sony is cracking down on Homebrew because it makes them look stupid as a company to have hackers using their hardware. This has nothing to do with piracy. They heard the word "Hacked" and they panicked. You see, in the real world of grown ups, there's a certain level of honor and respect one company must have for any hardware, before they will invest the time and money to make software for it. Sony doesn't want people to think their hardware is poorly made. And to have it "Hacked", in any way, shape, or form, is making their look like fools. Even something as benign as Homebrew.

Sony doesn't want *ANY* hacking, *NO* Homebrew, and *ZERO* development that isn't made under their direct supervision. People pay millions of dollars for these software kits, licenses, and to have their games pressed into UMD's. That's a huge investment! And to see Joe-Smow in HomeBrew land playing a game that Sony didn't authorize, that was made for free, is an insult. Not to mention that fact that the PSP has to be hacked to make this work, meaning that the PSP is poorly made. This is how business people think.

Of course, they don't see the benefits of Homebrew to the end consumer. They don't care. It's all about the word "Hacked" being applied to the PSP. "Hacked" is a bad word to these people. It's right up there with "Worms", "Viruses", "Union Wages". It means the PSP is poorly made. Who wants to sink millions into a video game console that can be "Hacked"?

Personally, I love Homebrew, I think it's the shiz-nick. But Sony doesn't, and they see *ALL* types of hacks as an invasion of their hardware, and a humiliation to the Sony name.