I’m of the general opinion that GeoHot, the hacker who’s gained notoriety for his hacking of Sony’s PS3 and subsequent public release of its root keys, is a giant twat. I realise he’s a really smart guy, with an amazing natural talent for breaking in to digital systems – but he’s also a juvenile jerk who’s largely responsible for the incoming wave of increased DRM on home consoles.
Game designer David Braben of Frontier Developments, responsible for Kinectimals and Wiiware darling Lost Winds, has lashed out against the public dissemination of the PS3’s security and the community of hackers who’ve made piracy-enabling custom firmware available.
“There have been suggestions that releasing hacking information is an issue of freedom of speech. That is such rubbish,†he wrote in an editorial for Develop.
“Hacking into a machine as an academic exercise is one thing. Broadcasting the information is another. We should all be prepared to roundly condemn such people. Right now it is Sony that is hurting. Tomorrow it will affect all of us in the development community, so we should stand against it together, now.â€
“These people are damaging to everyone with a PS3, not just to the games dev community, because of future security measures that will be needed, but there seems to be a blind spot amongst some players, perhaps because they imagine it will mean ‘free stuff’ in the future,†he said.
There will be those who’ll come in and say that Sony should never have removed OtherOS, not being cognisant of the fact that that it was removed after hacking threats in the first place. We could probably argue in circles for eternity – but the fact is that more DRM and security will be implemented in future, annoying the hell out of legitimate gamers, and hackers are the ones to blame.
Source : develop (via GoNintendo)
Last Updated: February 28, 2011
