SCEA granted an TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER!

[garyopa]

In our on-going exclusive in-depth coverage of SCEA's court-room battle with the PSJAILBREAK'ers, we have got another new court document, this one is signed order by Judge WILLIAM H ALSUP granting SCEA a Temporary Restraining Order against the named Defendants along with of course the currently un-named John Does #10 thru 100!

The order basically states the following:

1. Defendants and their officers, employees, attorneys and representatives, and all other persons or entities in privity or acting in concert or participation with defendants, are immediately temporarily restrained from selling, offering for sale, marketing, advertising, promoting, installing, distributing or otherwise trafficking in circumvention devices, including but not limited to any or all of the PS3 Jailbreak devices, any copies or versions of backup manager or any other hardware or software that bypasses technological copyright protection measures in SCEA’s PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system;

2. Defendants shall preserve all communications, including email communications, and other documents relating to their purchase, sale, receipt or distribution of circumvention devices, including but not limited to the PS3 Jailbreak devices, the backup manager or any other hardware or software that bypasses technological copyright protection measures in SCEA’s PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and that defendants shall not delete, remove, transfer or in any way dispose of such communications and documents;

3. This order shall be binding upon the parties to this action and all other persons or entities who receive actual notice of this order by personal service or otherwise;

4. This order will be effective upon plaintiff’s posting of $5000 security with the court pursuant to FRCP 65(c);

5. Plaintiff shall serve defendants, defendants’ resident agents or counsel with a copy of this order;

6. This order shall remain in effect until the date the hearing on the order to show cause set forth below or until such further dates as set by the court or stipulated to by the parties.

This order covers the currently named defendants:

VLAD GAZOUNE doing business as ZOOMBA LDC; SHOPPSJAILBREAK.COM
THAHN NGUYGEN doing business as USATECHCITY, LTD
ARTHUR BATES II doing business as PSP PIT STOP
TOM NOOKER doing business as BUYPS3JAILBREAK.WEBS.COM
ALEX ESQUIVEL doing business as NDSGAMER
BIN LE ZHONG aka BEN LEE doing business as PS3BREAKONLINE.COM
FAI KING FONG doing business as PS3BREAKONLINE.COM
HUANRAN LEE doing business as GETPS3BREAK.COM
and currently unnamed JOHN DOES #10 through #100!

The above people have until October 8, 2010 at 12 PM PDT to file a written reply to this court order in defense, and then SCEA has until October 12, 2010 at 9 AM PDT to file an update to their defense.

The big showdown starts in front of Judge Vaughn R Walker for a hearing on the order to show cause on October 12, 2010 at 10 AM in Courtroom 6, 17th Floor, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco CA 94102.

For the full history to this story see our previous in-depth PS3 Wikileaks threads on this complete showdown between SCEA vs. PSJailbreak Hackers!

Wikileaks - Part 2: http://psx-scene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67646 (Garyopa's Wikileaks Special #2: SCEA vs Hackers!)
Wikileaks - Part 1: http://psx-scene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67178 (SCEA is hard at work to find you!)
The Original Start: http://psx-scene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65284 (SCEA starts court action against USA PSJailbreak!)

[livehifi]

Holy heck! I see the backup manager and circumvention software and devices mentioned, but what does the PSGroove open source project qualify as?

Is it a circumvention device? It does not allow copying in and of itself, nor does it condone it (in terms of the team that developed it).

Furthermore, the hardware devices that don't advertise as PS jailbreak boards have no violation.

Lastly, if a device states that it is "PSGroove compatible", it does not indicate any violation of any standing orders... does it?

I could only imagine PSGroove might be infringing on Sony's ownership of the "PS" acronym. However, PSGroove is different than "PS Groove" or "Playstation Groove", of which it is neither. Imagine something calling itself "PSYclone" or "PSYONIC". Same deal, just a matter or circumstance, which is hardly relevant in terms of literal english.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: There should really be some DISTINCTION between copyright infringement and running unsigned code. They are two totally different things.

[Cyber Akuma]

Why is Sony essentially tossing millions of dollars down the drain when everybody (and I'm sure Sony themselves too) know they can't stop this?

I have never seen somebody cry like such a baby that their system got hacked, not even Apple is this much of a child over jailbreaks.

[yoshi314]

it's more convenient for sony if there is no distinction.

I have never seen somebody cry like such a baby that their system got hacked, not even Apple is this much of a child over jailbreaks.

that's because
- ps3 sdk is very expensive
- ps3 dev hardware is very expensive
- ps3 security meant that piracy was a non-issue. so developing for ps3 really paid off for game studios.
- BD discs are more expensive to make compared to dvds.

i bet this is one of major sources of income for sony - just licensing of the devkits and sdk. second is the money they get off games distribution and selling.

now most developers might think back and consider ps3 games not so profitable anymore. ps3 hardware is barely manufactured at a profit, and the advantage of being more secure than other consoles doesn't matter anymore.

I guess it comes down to Sony showing just how shit headed they really are, they take things away, people try to get them back, and get screwed over it. All I know is that if there is a PS4 I sure as hell won't be touching it, because they are acting worse then Microsoft and it's hard to top those assholes! I'm not a big fan of paying more for things that get handicapped as a company sees fit down the road for their own benefit...

i think that is normal sony reaction. it was the same with ps2 - they tried to stop production of the discs, and finally removed hdd support out of ps2. things like that only tend to create backlashes from users.

the different part now is that people don't hesitate to use leaked SDK. i don't think it was like this in early days of ps2. that certainly is a bad thing.

[Vegeta]

Wow, $ony are going psycho

[Typo]

Holy heck! I see the backup manager and circumvention software and devices mentioned, but what does the PSGroove open source project qualify as?

Is it a circumvention device? It does not allow copying in and of itself, nor does it condone it (in terms of the team that developed it).

Furthermore, the hardware devices that don't advertise as PS jailbreak boards have no violation.

Lastly, if a device states that it is "PSGroove compatible", it does not indicate any violation of any standing orders... does it?

Good question livehifi.

Lets read the important part in reference to this question.

.......including but not limited to any or all of the PS3 Jailbreak devices, any copies or versions of backup manager or any other hardware or software that bypasses technological copyright protection measures in SCEA’s PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system;

This is really loosly worded. In effect, since they start this part off with "Including but not limited to" I have to think they hope maybe some idiot will turn in stuff even though it wasn't mentioned in the court case specifically.

The fact is this. PSGroove allows unsigned code to be ran on the system and it sounds like sony's lawyers are trying to imply (or maybe are just outright saying) that this is the same thing as copyright infringement. They refer to it as "bypassing technological copyright protection measures" and I have to wonder they will get away with this.

If they do get away with it, it would seem that then even PSGroove would be at risk.

We all know there is precedence here that will hopefully work in our favor and that is the iphone jailbreak court case....Fingers crossed.

[_zaphod_]

Sad thing is they may have a case...

The fact is the copy protection measure for games is in fact intended to prevent unsigned code from running. It just also happens to render the blu-ray games impossible to duplicate without breaking this protection.

So it can be argued that any form of jailbreak on this device is a DMCA violation. Note that there's a special exemption for cellphones. This is needed because otherwise jailbreaking IS a DMCA violation. Sony knows this. That precedent only led to a DMCA exemption to allow it to work, and said exemption is specifically for cellphones.

In other words, they really think they can win, so they are trying to. The PS2 and PS1 predate signing, so they couldn't use this legal technicality before.

I hope they fail. But even if they succeed, the boards are still legitimate multipurpose devices as long as they are sold blank. Someone simply needs to write an additional application for one of these development boards that doesn't bother anybody to prove this.

Also, there's the small matter of there being no clean toolchain to compile homebrew. Until one is developed, that's a valid attack angle against PSGroove.

[yoshi314]

The fact is this. PSGroove allows unsigned code to be ran on the system and it sounds like sony's lawyers are trying to imply (or maybe are just outright saying) that this is the same thing as copyright infringement. They refer to it as "bypassing technological copyright protection measures" and I have to wonder they will get away with this.

technically speaking, exploit does bypass various protection measures.

but psgroove does not bypass copy protection checks. it has those features disabled.

[mеdi01]

i bet this is one of major sources of income for sony - just licensing of the devkits and sdk. second is the money they get off games distribution and selling.

They sell about 100 million PS3 games annually (interesting is, that it is roughly the same as Xbox, with roughly the same number of consoles sold and despite the fact that xbox was cracked ages ago). Imagine how many devkits/sdks and at what price one should sell, to make as much money.

PSGroove allows unsigned code to be ran on the system and it sounds like sony's lawyers are trying to imply (or maybe are just outright saying) that this is the same thing as copyright infringement.

Well, but didn't Apple's lawyers try the same regarding jailbraking iSomethings and didn't they fail miserably? (see link below)

U.S. Declares iPhone Jailbreaking Legal, Over Apple’s Objections

Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.”

Copyright Office concluded that, “while a copyright owner might try to restrict the programs that can be run on a particular operating system, copyright law is not the vehicle for imposition of such restrictions.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-jailbreaking/

[squarepusher2]

How does this affect anyone not living in the US?