Let me condense the conversation for you: Blah blah blah, free marketing, blah blah blah, wouldn't have bought it anyway, blah blah blah, DRM never works.

Then you move your code to the server and this never bothers you again. This defeats piracy so well it works in China.

More or less.

1. Sony removes "Install Other Operating Systems" option from the PS3 OS.

2. Out of frustration at corporate policy for REMOVING major features from hardware/device paid for and owned by millions, the hackers start working.

3. Months later, GeoHot releases (what I understand to be) the root private encryption keys for the device.

3.5 (forgot this) fail0verflow group circumvents the PS3's security system using this work from GeoHot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4loZGYqaZ7I

4. Other hacking groups, now with the keys to the kingdom, begin working on hacking the PS3 to allow the installation of any software, not just officially released/signed/blessed releases. This results in a "jailbreak" for the PS3, much like what jailbreaking does to the lock-down security on an iPhone.

(This is when things start to go south)

5. A technique for loading your own software onto the PS3, circumventing the system's security checks comes out.

(Now the door to pirating PS3 games is open. Download images, burn the Blu-rays, pop them in the PS3 and play).

6. Another hacking group, using some portion of this manipulation, actually manage to get their PS3's logged into the private developer-based PSN network (it's a full copy of the real PSN network specifically for developers actively working on titles that need to test things like updates or addon downloads/installs).

7. It is discovered that the PSN-Dev network does not do real credit card authentication before items are purchased and downloaded. So for example, if I work at BioWare, and I'm on PSN-Dev, I can technically download any of the standalone games from the network and play them by entering a credit card of "111" or something silly - http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gx6o4/im_a_moderator...

8. The hacking group is able to pull software off the network, for free, and leak it to the web.

9. Some point very shortly after this, the real PSN gets the full intrusion.

I forget if the two are related or not... I don't recall if the group went PSN-Dev > PSN and that is how they got in, or if there was another group that did the straight PSN hack.

That is the gist of the avalanche that started with "We are removing Other-OS install support". Different groups piggy-backing on each other's work to retaliate.

The endless backlash against Sony seems to have been the result of them going after GeoHot.Then at some point it stopped being about retribution for him and just became the popular thing to do.

It is sort of getting old, so unless Sony does something to re-ignite the flames, I imagine the groups will move on in a month or two.

[Links]

fail0verflow's presentation on how they circumvented the PS3's security (really cool presentation): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4loZGYqaZ7I

Post supposedly from one of the internal Sony folk during the total media black-out when the network first went down explaining the console-Dev-PSN-network issue: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gx6o4/im_a_moderator...