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Comment by mquander | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? We can argue the ethics all day, but from Sony's point of view, this series of events is isomorphic to an expert lockpicker breaking into their office building and then sending a letter saying "if you want your next building to be secure, get in touch with me."

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Which is also not extortion.

I'll have to take your word for it. That literally reads as the dictionary definition of a protection racket to me.

Does it? Exactly which dictionary did you literally find that in? Do you even know what the word "literally" means?

I'm a fair man; let's do some checking. Here's one:

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/prote...

"an illegal system in which criminals threaten to harm you or your property if you do not give them money"

How strange; it's not remote close to what you literally read as a dictionary definition.

I've checked other dictionaries too; same story. Here's an idea; why not open up this magical dictionary you have and see what it says under the word "literally".

I literally found a definition a lot like yours in my literal dictionary. I am sort of baffled at your comment because that sentence seems to be an accurate description of the situation I described in my analogy. Let me

A) I and my colleagues illegally broke into your thing ("harm you and your property"),

B) and you had better hire me to fix your thing ("give them money"), or

C) we'll probably do it again next time ("threaten").

I'm not sure what the source of our disagreement is.

I disagree that your fire department remark from above is a correct way of thinking about the situation, because the fire department does not start fires, nor do they charge for leaflets. What makes it seem like extortion is not primarily that geohot is offering to secure their console. It's that he's offering to be paid to do so in the next breath after helping to exploit their console.

If this were extortion, in exchange for being paid, he'd not do something. What exactly is it that you suggest he will not do, in exchange for money, given that he's already released the crack to the world?

"if you want your next console to be secure, get in touch with me."

I suggest that in exchange for being paid, he will not help crack the PS4.

(I don't actually think that was the spirit of his remark, of course, but it probably is literally true that if Sony hired him, he would likely not help crack the PS4, while as it stands, he may well do so.)

Which would be legally established in the absence of a) proof of intent at the time of the threat and b) proof of the threat itself (way to go, Internet). Just saying..

So there's someone who knows how the locks on your building can be picked, and then offers to tell you how to fix it so they can't? That doesn't sound like extortion. It sounds like someone being helpful.

In case you struggle to draw the analogy here, in this case we have Geohot, who knows a lot about how to do something Sony really want to do, offering to help them do it. That's not extortion.

If you call that extortion, then presumably when the fire department sends out leaflets on how to prevent fires, you call that extortion too.

No, it's like someone buying a lock, picking it in the privacy of his own home, and calling the lock company saying, "hey, this lock is easy to pick, want me to show you how?"

This is called "customer involvement", not extortion.

If the end user does not own the Playstation 3 (it seems to be owned by Sony, from Sony's point of view), I wonder what he paid $499 for.

I wonder if it means anything legally that (at least for the initial period of the console's life) Sony was selling the device for less than cost with the expectation that they would make up the difference with game sales.

I think there is some moral greyness to buying an essentially subsidized console with no intention to buy games -- though now that they probably make a profit on the hardware, that point is moot.

The practice of buying the console with no intention to buy games seems to have been somewhat common among academics, who used clusters of the machines for things completely unrelated to gaming. My research advisor at some terrible state university in Texas had about forty of them for algorithms research purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

The marketing value of a supercomputer built from your company's product is surely worth the loss of subsidy. Each time one of them is built, it invariably results in a bunch of news stories. This helps reinforce the PS3's reputation as the most powerful modern console hardware.

They're probably enabling it in some cases -- the US military has built clusters with thousands of PS3s. I doubt they procured those through Best Buy.

Even if it's not, Sony could have sold unlocked* units at a non-lossmaking value, which would have instantly discouraged a large proportion of the hacking movement. This is what OtherOS provided: a valve for homebrew enthusiasts, why there were no serious efforts for the duration.

*By unlocked I mean "homebrew unlocked" and without the ability to play games.

There is no moral greyness; It's a business model that has it's potential profits and potential risks. If their business model as a flaw, that's not a failing of someone else's morality. We also have no moral obligation to ensure the profits of corporations.

If you agree with Sony lawyers that companies like Sony, along with the current copyright law, are doing a good job of encouraging productivity, then you absolutely ought to feel a moral obligation to help ensure their profits and perpetuate their business model. And I guarantee that many of the people working hard to jailbreak the PS3, believing the opposite, feel a moral obligation to help eliminate that business model. There's nothing about capitalism that suddenly abrogates these decisions.

I was specifically commenting on the practice of buying the console with no intention to buy games. You could make the same argument about purchasing razors with no intention of buying the blades. Copyright law has nothing to do with razors and blades why should it have anything to do with consoles and games assuming no piracy is involved? Does the moral equation change if we're not talking about game consoles? Is morality a factor when purchasing heavily discounted razors at the asking price?

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