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Comment by simba-hiiipower | Hacker News Reader

i'd say it’s less-so 'cheering on' or having a soft spot for them, but rather, they seem to have an understanding that, like it or not, copyright holders do have a right to enforce their property, and that not to expect otherwise is idiotic (especially when their enforcement is brought-down via denying access to services they provide).

and while i agree that its surprising given the source, they do seem to take a pretty pragmatic view on the issue. i mean we’re not talking about a record industry suing a 13-year-old girl for sharing a few mp3s here.. to have done this you would have had to seriously modify your console and probably violated nearly every line in the service’s terms of use in the process. xbox live is a service after all and they’re under no obligation to continue offering it to those who egregiously abuse it.

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Funny how standards differ, really; there'd be a lot of eyebrows raised if Apple or Google (or Microsoft, on their mobile platform) started denying use of their network services to jailbroken/rooted users.

that really isn’t a fair comparison at all and i’d imagine if the article was about them suspending accounts associated with any/all hacked consoles then the tone would've been very different..

in this case, they’re denying access to their service to users who both: violated the tos by messing with their devices, and (more importantly) utilized that to steal a product (one that cost likely in excess of $100MM to develop).

even if you’re in favour of less restrictive copyright law, or against closed systems in general, there still are, and in my opinion should-be, limits. and i wouldn’t fault apple either if they locked-out jailbroken iphones that allowed users to freely download paid app-store apps (or music/videos from itunes), and i’m sure the developers of those apps (or content publishers) would agree.

To go one or two steps further:

Would it be acceptable for Sony to boot you from Playstation services if they detected you were watching a bootlegged copy of a $100m film from one of their studios?

Should Apple close your iTunes account if Fox's movie studio tells them you're watching $100m films on your Mac?

it’s obviously a sticky situation and different people draw the line at different places. some would probably argue that they should; i personally wouldn’t.

where i draw the line (and where i personally see a clear distinction), is when the service itself is being utilized to facilitate the infringement. in the examples you cite, the services (playstation network, itunes) are not involved in the infringement, they just happen to be tied to devices on which the infringement is taking place. i think it would be a different if case people were freely streaming (paid) movies from the playstation store or itunes; i feel that’s more analogous to what’s happening here because the connectivity that comes with the service is tied to the product being stolen.

i guess it’s sort of an odd-line to draw, but that’s how i see it.

also, to clarify on my point from above, i didn’t mean to imply that the cost to develop/produce the good ia necessarily a major factor, nor should the fact that it be from the same entity that runs the service; $100MM to microsoft is no-different than a couple thousand to an indie dev and, in both cases, it’s in the service provider’s best interest to prevent theft directly facilitated by their network, and i'd say they’re right to do it.

Yes. Sony can do what they want within their own walled garden.

Now whether or not such a thing would be feasible ... is another story.

Well, do either of your examples cause the experience of other networks users to degrade, when you've modded the content you're playing?

The only reason I jailbroke(?) my 3gs was so that I could use an app that allowed me to adhoc wifi because they wouldn't (even though they could). Would it be fair of them to lock me out?

i don't think so, and i don't believe they would. as stated above, to me, that sounds like a pretty different case..

there are plenty of hacked xboxes around that, similarly, add/expand functionality. i see nothing wrong with that, and looking at kinect, microsoft dosen't seem to mind much either (and in that case, actually seems to encourage it).

i don’t see the issue here as being one about 'jailbreaking' itself, but rather 'jailbreaking for the purpose of theft'. in your example, you've modified your device to download an app that otherwise would not be available via the app store (i'm assuming it was freely offered). but if you had done the same, but were downloading a paid app, let’s say angry brids, for free, then that’s a different story..

Jailbreaking/rooting is not a crime and does not deny anyone their rights. It's not at all comparable.

I think his intention was making the comparison to people with jailbroken iPhones that have pirated apps on them, which is pretty much the largest reason on a very short list of reasons why non-enthusiasts would jailbreak.

Microsoft didn't ban people for having modded consoles, but having a modded console was necessary for this. The jailbroken iPhone with pirated apps seems perfectly analogous, and I think people would be far less friendly to these same tactics by Apple (or Verizon?) in that scenario.

>which is pretty much the largest reason on a very short list of reasons why non-enthusiasts would jailbreak.

Yeah, no. Free tethering is a much bigger deal than simple piracy.

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