Judge extends Oz PS3 mod dongle ban
Gadget's manufacturer identified
The Australian Federal Court has maintained the injunction banning four local retailers from importing and selling the PSJailbreak USB dongle that allows PS3s to play pirated games.
Two of the defendants, OzModChips and Ryan Emmanuel Caruana, both stated their intention at a hearing this past Friday to tell the supplier of the the PSJailbreak that all outstanding orders be delivered direct to Sony's lawyer.
PSJailbreak Devices, the organisation behind the dongle, was identified by the court as Chinese company China Sun Trading Limited - at least, that's the company that's the owner of the Honk Kong bank account OzModChips and co. paid into to get their dongles.
The judge, Justice Dodds-Streeton, reaffirmed his previous ruling that PSJailbreak must not be imported into Australia by the defendants, who must not distribute the product to anyone else in any way.
Any dongles they already have must be handed over to Sony's lawyer.
The case is now adjourned until 9 September at the earliest, on which date any of the parties can give 24 hours' notice that they wish to take it further. That includes requests by the defendants to have the ban lifted, and for Sony to request damages.
The respondents present at the 3 September hearing accepted the court's orders without admission.
Even so, Sony has, for the moment, blocked PSJailbreak's sale Down Under. It's true that code which does almost all that the PSJailbreak did is freely available, but its use is beyond many a would-be player of ripped off games since it requires both compilation and tweaking to allow pirated games to be played - as it stands, the code does not permit this. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Sony brought this onto itself
I don't think Oz has overturned any ban on region coding, or on mod chips.
Mod chips were permitted to allow Australians to buy games overseas, which the Court decided they should be allowed to do no matter what Sony thinks.
The challenge against PSJailbreak was (apparently - no official confirmation of this yet) because it bypasses copyright protection mechanisms, which *is* against Australian law.
Sony brought this onto itself
Had it reincluded Software-based PS2 BC in future PS3 updates and left OtherOS alone and honor it's promise to keep the PS3 region free more truthfully, this wouldn't have happened. PS2, PS1, DVD and Blu-Ray region codes are still honored, and PS3 region coding could be enforced simply by stamping a blu-ray ABC-style region onto a PS3 game disc or through a simple software-based PS3 model check.
And I'm saddened that Australia would overturn it's decision that region-locking is illegal. Saddened and disappointed.
Doubt it.
3.21 only had "removing OtherOS" as its "must-have feature", which led to many PS3 owners calling it a downgrade. The only FW update you'll see will be the one blocking this vector, or another vector; it won't magically bring on new features. And you'll have to upgrade, as the PSN doesn't allow you to connect with older FW; their FW-checking stuff was beefed up after the whole 3.21 fiasco.
Freetards vs. Homebrew+OtherOS
Most of the driving forces behind cracking the PS3 were enticed to do so after OtherOS was killed. Unfortunately, once these guys cracked it, the freeloaders immediately use the acquired skills enable piracy on the device, under the guise of 'backups'. This is a load of bull, as the PS3 already installs a good portion of the game on the HDD, so the BluRay disc isn't used as much, so there isn't that big a risk of BR scratching.
And *still* no way to get OtherOS back. That should've been the main goal, if this toy had enabled that, it would've given them legal standing to not only keep on the sales, but probably force Sony to re-enable OtherOS on future firmware updates. But noooooo... they wanted free games. While I think that the "piracy == theft" argument is pretty much flawed, I do not condone piracy.
Protest.
Don't give Sony another $.
Traitorous swine. I will never forgive them for that April fool's day patch.
