Sony tries cutting off homebrew exploits, takes down Vita game downloads

The PS3 didn't have a piracy problem for a long time because of Blu-Rays. For a couple of years after the initial hardware release, BR burners were prohibitively expensive, and the bandwidth required to download a single disc in a reasonable amount of time was also expensive.

There were several high profile hacks on the PS3 that allowed pirated games for a while, even before they removed the OtherOS feature(IIRC, one was a rather ingenious hack that involved tricking the USB handler in order to do a code injection).

The real reason that the PS3 has such a big problem now is because, as we found out with the GeoHotz stuff, Sony didn't actually use any real security for the PS3.

MS and Nintendo took hardware security very seriously. MS has basically made the 360 unhackable without a mod chip at this point through a lot of creative Hypervisor tricks. Nintendo had a similar level of security as Sony(lots of OS holes that have been patched up over the years), but they also use a non-standard disc encoding format, which makes traditional "download the ISO and burn it on a DVD" piracy a lot more difficult because very few DVD drives can actually read the discs to rip them.

  >So you don't agree with this decision by Sony?

The decision less so as much as the handling of it. Sony is a company that apparently has no concept of the word "tact". Any entertainment company out there would patch holes as they're found. Sony does it, Nintendo does it, Microsoft does it.

Sony acting like complete screeching dicks every time, is the difference. The Geohot thing was the final straw for me.

  >Basically you would be happy if Sony were complicit in allowing vulnerabilities to exist and be exploited on their platform.

A "vulnerability" on a game platform is a sight different than a vulnerability on anything else. So in this instance, yes. I'd wish they'd let it alone. What are the implications? People who are going to pirate and break the DRM anyways continue to break the DRM, Sony focuses their efforts on improving their content and software, and nobody else (i.e. the average consumer) is the wiser? Seems fine to me.

  >If you want open hardware buy something that supports it.

No. I will do what I wish with any hardware I purchase. Until such time as Sony grows up a little bit, they remain on my "do not buy from, ever, no way" list.

> If you want open hardware buy something that supports it. Don't punish a commercial company that just wants to do their own thing.

All hardware is open, given enough work. The original creators' intentions have nothing to do with this; it's for the owner to decide.

Homebrewing on the Wii is widely known and Nintendo has taken few measures (none as aggressive as Sony) against it.

Sony's vicious policies towards consumers and hackers are what causes people to attack them, and nobody is suggesting that they be complicit towards vulnerabilities.

Nintendo has never done any such thing. I'll write off such shenanigans as scare tactics until such time as an actual action takes place.

In fact, they go out of their way to tell you, when updating, if you have modified your console that the update may break it, and provide a way to skip the update.

You mean Not Yet ^_^

But it runs on a device with an account that potentially has your credit card linked to it. It has an email address, and like 99% of the population, the same password as something else associated with that email. Handhelds aren't like the Gameboys of yesteryear.