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Comment by andjd | Hacker News Reader

So, there is a defensible reason for this carve-out.

For generations now, video game consoles have had very aggressive cryptographic pairing of parts, done in the name of securing the hardware against hacking by the console owner. This is done to prevent mods to enable cheating and piracy. Given that consoles are often sold at a loss with profits recouped on game sales, there's a justification for this.

Providing replacement parts for game consoles would also require tools to re-pair the replacement parts. If these tools need to be provided to independent repair shops, there's approximately a 100 % chance of them getting leaked and destroying the security of the console.

I'm not going to say that this is a good or a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that there's a real reason for lawmakers to treat game consoles different than phones or computers, and that it isn't necessarily a sign of corruption.

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This is also done for iPhones, which have not been exempted.

The "security" of the console against "unauthorized" software is arguably against the public interest. Is it really to the customer's benefit to exclude software providers from the market? Haven't we been round this with app store discourse?

> consoles are often sold at a loss with profits recouped on game sales

This used to be true, but is it still true?

The purpose of gaming consoles is to play games, and allowing cheating software on them ruins the experience for others. Consoles are not general purpose computers, they have a specific use which is gaming, and it is reasonable to protect the fairness required to have a good experience when using it in the way it was intended to be used.

Phones are not general purpose computers, they have a specific use which is to communicate with people over a distance.

See?

But you can in fact turn it around, because both phones and games consoles are in fact general purpose computers that are able to execute any program, before the arbitrary limitations are imposed on them by the manufacturers.

My point is that it is normal for special purpose devices to be regulated in such a way that prioritizes their primary purpose. And this is true for smartphones. The parts of your phone that must comply with telecom regulatory standards are locked down in black boxes separate from the main system.

The problem is this doesn't prioritize their primary purpose. It ensures that the device will simply stop functioning within a relatively short time frame. This sort of crypto-locking of parts makes them impossible to fulfill their primary purpose when a part fails and the manufacturer won't sell a replacement part. It's unacceptable to brick devices in the name of cheat defense.

I disagree. If it is not playable due to the manufacturing failing to prevent cheating, there is no need to replace parts on it, as it would be broken either way. A fair playing field is essential part of a functional game.

If the immobilizer on your car fails, it will brick your car too. The solution isn't to prohibit immobilizers and shrug our shoulders at car thieves, it is to require manufacturers to provide parts. Which we have long done for cars in the US.

TL;DR: Don't prohibits locks that protect consumers just because the lock could need maintenance. Require the manufacturer to provide parts for the lock.

I have a Nintendo Switch, I've literally never used it to play a game where cheating is a concern. Cheating in games is not a crime and it's not worth bricking devices to avoid.

I'm glad your experience has been fine. That doesn't mean that everyone has the same experience. Cheating in games can easily become criminal, and people have been arrested for doing so. Even though cheaters are often not prosecuted, these activities can often amount to fraud or hacking.

This is correct to be honest. rooting your phone doesn't ruin other peoples phone experience unless you perform actually illegal conduct perhaps (maybe some hacks or w/e?). Cheating in a game is not illegal, so companies need to take it upon themselves to prevent it. This is honestly fairly logical. it does not at all compare to PC or Phones.

And when people "root their phone" they are just modifying part of the device. The baseband is closed source and illegal/impossible to modify in order to protect the network and spectrum.

Some of us do get pretty close and modify stuff like EFS to enable/disable functions (voNR) and enable bands that were present but not legal at the time the device was certified. In US, band 77 was disabled on many devices but later became legal to use. The manufacturers didn't want to pay for the recertification but the device is capable otherwise. We also sometimes add band combinations (for carrier aggregation) that the manufacturer missed.

There's at least four different cases which are being conflated:

- genuinely third party software, e.g. the short lived Playstation Linux => "good"

- modified software (usually "bad" but we can find non-bad cases)

- piracy. "Private servers" probably count under this

- preservation (unfortunately indistinguishable from piracy, but covers what happens when required online services shut down)

Yes, but console makers don't really get to choose how, or with what intent, downstream users will modify devices if given a window to do so.

You don't need to lock down a console and prevent "unauthorized software installs" to prevent cheating. You do what game developers have been doing on PCs for years: validate all of the player's actions on the server, look for players with suspicious patterns of activity then ban them.

Behavior analysis is one approach used on PC games, and it has varying degrees of success. There are weaknesses to this approach and it tends to be a cat-and-mouse game of cheat developers adding fuzzing and anti-cheat developers adjusting their behavior analysis. Visit forums for games that use this kind of anti-cheat and you'll see people complaining about cheaters.

More popular games have shifted towards anti-cheat systems that run at ring zero and prevent you from playing the game unless it is happy with everything running on your system.

AFAIK, it's still true for Sony/Microsoft but hasn't been true with Nintendo for a while, I think since the Gamecube (when they stopped trying to play the performance game).

Why must the government pass laws to protect the specific business model of exactly 3 mega corporations, a business model which harms consumers and harms competition?

The DMCA exception for consoles is the same thing. The government is just taking these companies word for it, and harming everyone else. If Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo can’t survive without these handouts from the government, then why should they? It’s not like game consoles are a necessity. The free market is what should decide whether a business model succeeds or not.

And regarding privacy, that’s bs. If consoles somehow become overrun with piracy, then publishers can just move their games to other platforms. PC is much easier to pirate on, is in general used by more tech savvy people, and it doesn’t have a rampant piracy problem. Steam wouldn’t be as successful as it is otherwise.

Even if we accept this argument, the parts you're talking about are a tiny proportion of video game console parts.

There's no reason you shouldn't be able to e.g. buy replacement analog stick parts.

The trend of "securing" (i.e. sabotaging) hardware against the owner is a large part of why these laws are needed in the first place.

>Given that consoles are often sold at a loss with profits recouped on game sales

I've wondered about this before: how is this not anti-conpetitive pricing? Is it okay because Sony/MS don't raise prices?

US law in that area looks more at consumer harm, not incidental harm to other companies, IIRC. There's a separate way to get in trouble here around predatory pricing, but I think that's more complicated (you have to be doing it specifically to drive people out of business). It depends on what the rest of the market does. See https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Specifically

> Pricing below a competitor's costs occurs in many competitive markets and generally does not violate the antitrust laws. Sometimes the low-pricing firm is simply more efficient. Pricing below your own costs is also not a violation of the law unless it is part of a strategy to eliminate competitors, and when that strategy has a dangerous probability of creating a monopoly for the discounting firm so that it can raise prices far into the future and recoup its losses.

> Is it okay because Sony/MS don't raise prices?

Yes exactly this.