Update: a few points of clarification: this article, as most articles on my blog, is a personal opinion. I am not a journalist, and this is not a news website. I am disappointed as a (long time) customer by Sony’s attitude (not only in this lawsuit, but in general), so I decided to raise my voice, as a customer and a developer. I decided to stop buying Sony’s products, but I am not calling for a boycott of any kind. I just wanted to show that not everybody agrees with what Sony is currently doing, and I expect some of the readers of this article to disagree with me, this is how we can get interesting discussions on the subject. The more people talk about it, the best. The worst would be for this lawsuit to go under the radar.
Sony America is suing Geohot for the whole PS3 jailbreak thing. Hopefully my opinion on the subject is clear: I believe Sony deserve to lose this lawsuit.
I’ll try to give details below, by discussing a few arguments I’ve seen on the internet.
Sony have no choice but to lock their system if they want to protect their business

The goal of most hackers around the world is to give freedom to hardware/software owners. The goal of hardware/software companies, like all companies, is to make money. These two goals are not incompatible. Some software and hardware companies manage to make lots of profits without locking their system. Like it or not, Windows is a good example of such a system. Last time I checked, you are still allowed to run Openoffice on windows. You are still allowed to run Skype. You are still allowed to run Firefox. Actually, the last time Microsoft even tried to make their own product more “visible” on their own platform, it backfired.
I’m shocked that companies such as Sony or Apple haven’t been sued by the European Commision yet, given how devices such as the iPhone or the PS3 revolve around a huge customer locking system (locking the user in a hardware/software/distribution system vicious circle).
Sony have no choice but to lock their system in order to protect game developers and the future of video gaming

Ask that to real game developers, not to Sony. One of the major reasons for Sony to lock their gaming system is to have control on both the customers and the game developers. By adding a DRM system to their console, they guarantee that game developers cannot sell a game for the PS3 without Sony getting a good share of the money. They are also using their huge power on the video game market to ensure that they get exclusive content (at least for a given period of time, such as Final Fantasy 13), preventing the devs from making money on other platforms. They are not trying to protect video games, but their business.
Systems such as Android, Windows, or Linux, prove that you can have a system with lots of applications and games, without locking the hardware in a single distribution system.
Hackers do this for piracy, and cheating in games

In their lawsuit against Geohot, Sony are using clever marketing techniques to make Geohot look like the bad guy. One of the most obvious ones is the major confusion (blindfully transmitted by so-called “technological websites”) that they intentionally create between hackers, cheaters, and pirates.
Hackers are people who like to understand how their hardware works. If the PS3 was a car, being a hacker would be equivalent to opening your trunk and see how the engine works, or tweak the engine in order for it to work with solar energy rather than gasoline.
(Online) cheaters are the guys who headshot you in Modern Warfare. Let me make one thing clear: Hackers and Cheaters are NEVER the same guys, because hackers rarely spend their time playing, and when they do, they are ethical about it. If the PS3 were a car, cheaters would be the people taking a parking spot for the handicapped, or not stopping at the red light, just because they think it’s fun.
Pirates are the people who play illegal copies of games. If the PS3 were a car, pirates would be the people using the highway for free. They don’t contribute to the cost of the highway, making it more expensive for the other users. Again, I tend to believe that hackers are not pirates, because they have other fish to fry.
My point here, beside the crappy car metaphor, is that Sony is trying to have “normal” customers believe that hackers are the same thing as pirates and cheaters, which is not the case. They are suing the wrong guy.
The PS3 hack by Geohot and fail0verflow made the PS3 gaming experience less enjoyable because of online cheaters

Hackers did not put the bad programming in the PS3 security system, it was here in the first place, and they just found it. The same goes for game cheats such as Modern Warfare issues online. It’s not hackers’ fault if this game had a badly programmed security scheme. Additionally, hackers such as Geohot or fail0verfl0w did not program these cheating tools.
It’s a well known fact in all IT companies that security in online systems should be handled on the server side. Would you trust a bank

There will be nearly 30 3D-enabled games on the PlayStation 3 by the end of 2011, Sony has promised.
A graphic posted on the PlayStation Blog titled "The Year of 3D" made the pledge, pointing at Uncharted 3, SOCOM 4 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One as among the highlights.
It also provided some stats to show how 3D uptake on the console was gathering pace.
Apparently 20 per cent of all Killzone 3 single player demo downloads were in 3D, and there were more than 83,000 downloads of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011: The 3-D Experience Exclusive Sneak Peek in one week earlier this year.
"Apparently, we're not the only ones ready for winter to be over," commented Sony communications manager J T Tidwell.
"PS3 continues to serve as the home for all things 3D entertainment," he added elsewhere in the blog post. Come this Friday, Nintendo might have something to say about that.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...tles-this-year

So here's a dilemma that some gamers may have faced: do you want a console with great processing power but coupled with some glowing lollipops, or one with futuristic controller-free motion gaming at the cost of Blu-ray playback? Well, for us mere mortals it's either one or the other, but Shantanu Goel went ahead to combine the best of both worlds: Xbox Kinect on a PS3. The video above is our man demonstrating his early software mod, which can currently recognize basic gestures like quickly pushing your hand towards the screen twice to activate the X button, as well as the usual waving around for navigation. While it's obvious that this project is still at its infancy, Goel's already working on beefing it up by adding full game profiles and skeletal tracking support, so with a bit of help from the community, hopefully it won't be long before we get to liberally throw grenades in Killzone 3 without having to worry about damaging the TV. Maybe Kevin Butler will also see the lighter side of things, too.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/21/x...are-come-true/

PCs aren't just a bit more powerful than PS3 and Xbox 360 - they're up to 10 times more powerful. So why aren't PC games 10 times their console equivalents? Because of Windows' meddling DirectX API (application programming interface), that's why.
"It's funny. We often have at least 10 times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look 10 times as good," scoffed AMD graphics card mouthpiece Richard Huddy to Bit-Tech.
"To a significant extent that's because, one way or another and for good reasons and bad - mostly good - DirectX is getting in the way."
Huddy added: "I certainly hear this ['make the API go away'] in my conversations with games developers."
DirectX is made by Microsoft. To run a game on Windows - the most popular PC operating system around - you need to use DirectX. In simple terms, it's DirectX that controls what your graphics card can do.
On console that's not the case: developers there can program "direct-to-metal", as Huddy calls it.
"By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all," Huddy went on to say.
"If we drop the API, then people really can render everything they can imagine, not what they can see – and we'll probably see more visual innovation in that kind of situation."
What sort of nut-case developer would want to program "direct-to-metal" on PC, you ask? Crysis maker Crytek; "Yes, that would appeal to us,' the developer said.
The Xbox 360 supports DirectX 9.0c. The PS3 doesn't use DirectX, what with it being a Microsoft technology. The most current version of DirectX is 11.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...horsepower-amd