Sony has recently sued company OzModChips to prevent them from selling and distributing PS3Jailbreak dongles, basically small USB drives that allowed purchasers to hack/modify their PS3 consoles. OzModChips, once they discovered the way to hack the PS3, stupidly “opened up shop” online and began to sell the modification tools online for about $100, making them a prime target for a lawsuit. To the best of my knowledge the hacking did not enable any sort of questionable features (as I don’t think the modded PS3s could run “backup” games), but Sony still found the hacking tools dangerous enough to sue.
The response by the hacker community?
The PS3Jailbreak code used by OzModChips was released open source, meaning anyone can download it freely as opposed to paying the $100+ the company charged before. The only caveat is that downloaders will have to purchase a USB development board to install the code on for it to work on the PS3, making the entire endeavor cost only about $20-30. There are now a ton of people (I know some) who would never have purchased the $100 dongle before who are now doing so because of the much cheaper price and readier availability.
Whoops.
Tags: Hack, lawsuit, mod chips, OzModChips, Playstation 3, ps3, PS3Jailbreak, Softmod, usb
