Sony is making an aggressive attempt to go after anyone who has posted or is ?distributing? the first ever jailbreak code for the Playstation 3 console. The company is not just going after these people but they are going as far as demanding Google give the IP addresses and any other information they may have of people who have either viewed or commented on the jailbreak video that is on a private youtube page.
This aggression stems from a lawsuit against George Hotz, 21 years old from New Jersey. He published a video about a month ago showing code that would make the PS3 able to play pirated games. Currently the video has been taken off the site as a U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered it to be removed. It does seem Hotz has breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
So DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) has been created for a civil or criminal offense to traffic in wares meant to circumvent devices protecting copyrighted works. However, one of the more interesting things about the DMCA is not what is in the act but what is not. If you were to perform the same type of hack to a mobile phone it would be completely legal. It seems that over the summer the U.S. Copyright Office exempted cell phone jailbreaking from being covered by the DMCA (somebody must have gotten slammed with overages). So if you have a mobile phone you can run the apps of your choice on a mobile phone without fear of being criminally or civilly liable for a breach of the DMCA. It does make you wonder why the government would let you jailbreak a phone but not other types of digital devices. One has to wonder the logic behind letting mobile phones be jailbroken but keeping a strong hold on devices like the Playstation and XBOX. Maybe the government doesn?t like their cell phone plans and just wants to torture the mobile phone providers?
