PSP Homebrew Scene Going Illegal With Custom Firmwares and Devhook ?

[wraggster]

A concern raised with me about the legality of Custom Firmwares and also Devhook (Not the legal UMD version).

Lets look at Devhook, apart from the UMD version that we have at PSP News the other versions play illegal content and thus not only damage the PSP (i couldnt care less about Sony losing money but if the console was to die then that would be a shame), but they do incredible harm to the real homebrew scene, a scene that likes to stay legal, the sad thing is is that most PSP sites post both homebrew and the more dodgy stuff and glorify it too, some to the extreme of getting it on the big sites like Slashdot, but this isnt the way we want the homebrew scene to be, yes its ok to post hacks and exploits but anything with ISOs is very dodgy.

Then you have the Custom Firmwares, now as far as i know no one apart from Sony is legally allowed to have their firmware for download, i know they even went after sites like lik sang for having a mirror of the firmware, Now the custom firmware releases are good and all but the legality issue is one that should make all PSP webmasters take notice, remember if you host the file and it bricks a PSP then surely the likelyhood of being sued is there.

The real shame is that the PSP Scene which is the biggest ive known isfacing harm and with that bringing a lot of warezers to the homebrew arena.

Id like to hear from Devs, Hackers and any Legal experts their views on the issues above.

[ACID]

Whow that sucks i hope this site doesnt get hit with eanything like this because i personaly love it.

[QueadlunnRau]

Let's all move to China, or some other country that does not care about software legality!!!

JK

I really don't care much for the dodgy iso stuff (I support software companies and buy the games I like after reading tons of reviews) I do however admit I do not own all the emulator roms that I have. As for the custom firmware, I really don't see how that can be too harmful to Sony ... unless they run ISOs. A small part of the PSP's success is based on the homebrew scene, why can't they be like Microsoft and watch the hacking/cracking/homebrew scene and then copy them when new systems come out?

[JesusXP]

I agree with most of what your saying. However Sony is at fault for going to the lengths it has gone to - to prevent us from developing homebrew on the psp. At first we couldnt develop homebrew if we upgraded the firmwares, and then they locked us out of games. I feel like Sony deserves a big *f* you from the entire community anyways. Its rediculous, the only thing the PSP has going for it is the Homebrew community. Had they let us play with the platform from the begining theres no telling where we would be now. Sony tried to keep us out of developing our own software, but they also limited us to using the mediocre features they provided for us. The video playback via only MP4 was gay... converting .mov, divx/xvid avi's, mpg's shot with SONY's digital camera, and other formats is a waste of time and a pain in the ass. The web browsers uselessness, lacking flash or the ability to download and play content from the web was also a rediculous attempt to satisfy the consumer base. I bought my PSP intentionally to program on it. I really didnt expect to be blown away by the games they offered, however I didnt expect to be this dissapointed by the lack luster releases as well. Truthfully, I do own a few games, and I have some .ISO's... I find myself unable to be satisfied by either. There isn't any game I've played addictive enough or likable enough to satisfy a session of playing longer than 10 or 15 minutes... which is usually when I become frustrated and flip back to watching a movie, or listening to music. The two primary uses I would say that I have for this P.o.S. I'm kind of ranting, but I'm frustrated with how lame Sony is. The system design was flawed from the start. Memory Stick Duo ONLY... UMD ONLY... Sony Brand Media... ONLY... bull$#@!.. I dont feel like customizing a machine that you purchased should be considered illegal. If Sony wants to retain the rights to their PSP after I legally purchased it from them, than they can pay me. Why can we not modify the firmware if I know how to do it, and I feel like Sony's firmware is not acceptable? How come this is illegal, yet if Dell offers me ONLY windows XP, theirs almost an uprising of linux people telling me microsoft is monopolizing? I dont understand the differences in OS, versus Firmwares, or why Sony can seemingly get away with monopolizing and pushing proprietery formats vs Microsoft ... maybe someone could explain to me.

[eazy-e]

ppl keeep on hacking

[deftonesmx17]

I'm so sick of hearing about the "bad" devhook that loads ISO's

This drives me nuts more than anything. I bet most of the people around here includuing these high and mighty "I wont use an ISO loader", have at least one of the following. A Xbox that has a custom dashboard on it(most likely using XBMC), have a PS2 with HDloader/HDadvance, have Swap Magic discs, have the boot disc for the dreamcast, etc, etc. All of which leave the possibility to load illegal downloaded games. Yup thats right, even if you just use XBMC for media purposes alone, you are still using a program that has the same illegal possibility as devhook. Not to mention things like XBMC and almost anything compiled for the xbox (including all the EMU's), are made from the XDK, which are highly illegal.

Is it that hard for people to grasp that some of us just can't deal with the load times of fecking UMD's??????????? Take PES5 on the PSP for example. It takes about 2 mins for a match to load from UMD, where it takes about 10-15 secs from an ISO. Not to mention the game runs much much smoother from an ISO and @ 333mhz.

[ENG]

Whow that sucks i hope this site doesnt get hit with eanything like this because i personaly love it.

Yea, it would be a shame for this site to have to change / be shut down because of custom firmware, after all the trouble this site has gone to avoiding iso discussion.

[Briggzy11]

I posted the new devhook here this morning and didnt get in trouble but Kaiser told me I forgot that the data within it was not encripted yet so I had to get the post removed. I understand that anyway but I dont think sony will die because of this homebrew thats for sure. To be honest they make money from it...

...Think about it, Friend shows another friend (without PSP) some homebrew (Like IRIS or Quake), friend without psp loves the homebrew and gets mommy to buy him/her a PSP. simple as lol, trust me I did that and people have done that because they seen my PSP (of course with custom boots and wallpapers etc lol)

EDIT:-

DCEMU wont die either, way too popular now and if sony shut it down, they will P*** off almost every buyer of the PSP haha, and that is not a good business move in my opinion.

[jaws365]

I bought Splinter Cell Essentials to find out it would not load on my FW1.5. When Devhook 0.4 was released it still could not boot the game. I got angry and downloaded the ISO. It worked, I flushed the original UMD down the toilet. I guess that was legal since i actually bought the friggin game.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know how many people uses the legal Devhook instead of the original version.

[Briggzy11]

I bought Splinter Cell Essentials to find out it would not load on my FW1.5. When Devhook 0.4 was released it still could not boot the game. I got angry and downloaded the ISO. It worked, I flushed the original UMD down the toilet.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know how many people uses the legal Devhook instead of the original version.

You could of given me that UMD lol...

...I do use the original version to be perfectly honest with you Jaws, I never even thought of loading up illegal games and I do not intend to either. Devhook put that loader on to show just how powerful the program really is, damm BOOSTER even found out on the new version how to get homebrew working on a 2.71 PSP (Emulated of course)

Wraggster you have shown a few good points about the legality of the things you post on DCEMU and you have done well keeping things legal on the website, out of all the PSP websites that host homebrew you have the most original and you should not have to worry about DCEMU getting closed down or anything like that, as a normal PSP gamer, if i never found this site (The first PSP homebrew site I used) I probabily would not have a PSP now as I personally found it dull...