Most people that know me know that I am against piracy. I pirated a lot of software as a child on my Commodore 64, and I realize now that I played a small part in the downfall of that machine. I don’t ever want anyone else to experience that guilt.
Just before the end of the year, there was a fantastic video of a group of guys explaining how the PS3 was finally cracked. If you are into this type of thing, then I recommend the following video.
If you are not into this type of thing, however, then I ask that you to turn your attention away from the how and toward the why. In order to answer that question, however, we have to go back a few years.
At the 2008 C3 convention, a group of developers explained how they cracked the code for the Nintendo Wii. During the presentation, a table was presented showing the security level of various systems and the time that it took to crack them.
At that time, it was almost an off-hand mention that the PS3 was not cracked specifically because it came with the native ability to run Linux. The hackers didn’t care enough about the piracy to hack it for that purpose; they were only interested in running Linux, and once they had that ability, they were sated.
This is important because it lends credence to the hackers’ assertion that piracy is a side-effect of, and not a motivation for, hacking the machine. Of course, Sony’s proclamation that their system is secure coupled with the removal of the OtherOS functionality is akin to poking the sleeping bear with a sharp stick; nothing good is going to come of it, and you have nobody to blame but yourself.
I thought The Last Guardian would be the thing that convinced me to buy a PS3; now I’m more interested than ever.