David Braben on ownership, theft, freedom of speech and the outsiders
When we buy a house on a plot of land, we don’t own the mineral rights even if we ‘own’ the land.
A local coal mine does not have to seek out the permission of the numerous owners of all the different columns of rock they are tunnelling through, nor can the ‘owner’ of the surface tunnel sell the coal or oil that might be there, unless they have a separate right to do so.
Even with the surface ownership, we cannot do what we like.
Almost all countries have some sort of building/planning control, and that is a good thing. Maybe it is annoying to us, but it also stops our neighbours doing things we might hate. In effect we have a licence to use the land a certain way from the country in which it sits, but we call it ‘ownership’.
Buying a PlayStation 3 (for example), also does not give me unrestricted ownership of it. If I ‘dig’ into it, I can’t just sell or even give away all the information I find. It really annoys me when hackers claim they can do what they like with what they find, especially when it is destructive to the security of all the other PS3 machines.
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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.
If someone buys the same model of car as me, and then after studying it at length announces to the world a good way of breaking into that car, it hurts me.
I will have to take extra security measures thereafter, and it damages the manufacturer of that car. In this case though, there is not an equivalent blind spot, perhaps as finding a quick way of breaking into all cars of that type does not mean free fuel in the future.
Almost everyone would agree it is a bad thing, and would get angry with such a person.
There have been suggestions that releasing hacking information is an issue of freedom of speech. That is such rubbish. Some freedoms of speech are also curtailed for sensible reasons. Broadcasting easy ways of breaking into cars is bad for everyone affected, as is the freedom of speech cliché that is always wheeled out – shouting ‘Fire’ in a cinema, which creates a real risk of harm to others. It is common sense not to do it.
There is a more subtle side to this not ‘getting’ ownership. That is the failure to acknowledge intellectual property rights, and rights to a service.
When we buy a new car, we buy an item and a service. In this case, it is mostly the item we are buying, but the service is significant. This is a service, and if you sell the car, the warranty and maintenance cover does not restart.
A game is an item and a service too, except there are people out there trying to prevent publishers and developers detecting whether a game is new or has been sold again.
The equivalent is adjusting the paperwork and registration number on your second hand car to get a new warranty and free maintenance out of your garage.
We see shops using polishing machines on used game discs, and even replacing the outer sleeve to make a scratched game look new. With a game, the service is a combination of the single player game and online support.
Online bandwidth per user is something that gradually dies down after a game is some months old – but if it is then passed to another user, those costs are incurred all over again for the new user – but the publishers providing the service see none of the ‘pre-owned’ revenue to cover it.
It is all about what is reasonable. 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.
Consider then the hackers as coal miners.
Coal miners can't mine any land they want though. Even you as the owner of a particular piece of land can't invite miners in as you please.
I think it's a good column for challenging people's notions of absolute ownership.
IMO it should be possible for companies to offer a completely closed box where you don't have a god-given right to do whatever you want with it. When you buy such a box you are entering, implicitly or otherwise, an agreement about whether you can run your own code on the box or not - an agreement that does benefit you. The fact that these boxes are closed allows platform holders to run a business model that enables them to invest in (expensive) games for your enjoyment. If you don't think these benefits are worth it, then don't buy closed systems. A PC will be much better for you if 'absolute ownership' is paramount for you.
On the car analogy, though, I don't know if it's akin to breaking into a car - if someone hacks the PS3, my PS3 remains un-broken-into unless I opt to hack it myself. However I guess one could make the argument that hacking activity can still negatively affect my experience of my PS3 - via PSN cheaters etc.
* We Don't condone Piracy
Hacking is a hobby to some, and to some it's nothing more than a challenge. And I think it's fair to say that most hackers don't really care about big business.
Often hackers claim that it's for 'Homebrew' and experimentation and they don't condone piracy.
Ok, they might not condone it, but they enable it. Of that there is no doubt. They just choose to ignore the problem of piracy claiming it's nothing to do with them. Sorry, but they're wrong.
Sony's removed OtherOS because GetHotz wanted more access to the hardware. Linux was on there, working fine and Sony were happy to leave it there, but GH just couldn't leave it alone. He had to have more access, right down to the metal.
* What's in your firmware
If you install a custom firmware, you have no idea whats embedded in there. There could be code to steal your PSN ID, Trophies or even your payment details.
How confident are you that you're not going to get ripped off?
* Hollywood Style Costs
Games cost HUGE amounts of money to make. GT5 cost around $60,000,000. Games are highly complex pieces of work with dozens of people working on them. It's not like the old days of Elite (no disrespect David! Elite is still a great game). So piracy does have more of an impact on the developers these days.
* Protecting Developers
Sony also has an obligation to third party developers (as well as it's own devs) to ensure their system is locked tight, to maintain the highest return.
* Bullish Tactics
Still, I'm not sure that Sony kicking down doors and taking away peoples kit is a good thing. I suppose it's Sony attempt to make an example of a few naughty boys and girls, and the rest will cease and desist.
* In The End
Read your terms and conditions in your PS3 manual. I think you might find it an interesting read.
Surely the issue here - and I'm surprised David hasn't mentioned it - is that, whilst you're buying the hardware outright, you're getting a licence to use the operating system on it. So when you "buy" a PS3, you're essentially acquiring two seperate rights. The right of ownership of the physical goods, and a licence to use the software. And, when you accept the licence to use the software, you'll agree you won't back engineer, disassemble, modify, etc the software.
I'm not sure David really needs to make it more complicated than that.
"If someone buys the same model of car as me, and then after studying it at length announces to the world a good way of breaking into that car, it hurts me."
Uh, no, if someone found an efficient way of breaking into my car, I'd MUCH rather know about it than not. After all, then I can take countermeasures against it. If I'm ignorant of the fault then it's only a matter of time before someone sinister finds out and exploits it. I would congratulate said person on making my vehicle safer in the long run. This is why moronic arguments like this lead to laws like the DMCA, which helps protect over-zealous corporations at the expense of real security research.
You can't dispute that when you buy a games console, you own the hardware. Buying a house or buying a plot of land is completely different to going out and buying some electrical goods. What you choose to run on your console should be your business. Geohot really only tripped up by publishing Sony's keys, since that could be counted as copyright material. Sony absolutely have the right to ban anyone with a modded console, but come on, my old DVD player could be made to be region free if I pressed certain buttons on the remote, if I tell someone about this does this make me a villain?
I have (gladly) hacked my PS3. I do not pirate games. I have never played an online game on my PS3 at home (even before hacking it), and have no desire to go online with it in future. I altered my PS3's boot sound and icon, just because I felt like it, and I learned a little about the way the PS3 works in doing so.
I know I don't speak for a lot of people (especially those only looking to hack their consoles for piracy), but am I really harming the industry by doing that?
I ought to add that I don't own the software on my PS3, as that is copyright of Sony if I'm not mistaken, but I do own the hardware that I have, and I'm pretty sure that if Sony ask for their PS3 back then UK law would be on my side in telling them to eff off. As far as I can tell, as long as I am not harming anyone else, or their on-line experience, then it is mine to do with as I please.
Oh yeah David, it is funny how there were no complaints about second-hand games in the industry until the past year or so. If the companies are too tight-fisted to pay for their bandwidth usage generated by second hand games sales then they shouldn't have a multiplayer aspect to their title to begin with, especially since if that is the case then it is obvious that they had no intention of supporting that aspect of the title for too long after the game's release anyway. I guess I could go onto say that if they have no intention of supporting multiplayer conponents a while after a games release then they may as well just pour the resources that are used for making those aspects into making an amazing single-player experience, but that is a debate for another day.
No analogies, just my little opinion.
This probably ranks as one of the most idiotic analogies I have ever heard. And to think, Braben used to be credible and important... how the mighty have fallen.
What the hell has the coal or oil, underneath a plot of land purchased for surface development, got to do with anything? It's like saying, if you put a PS3 on a cupboard, you have no rights to look inside the cupboard.
"If someone buys the same model of car as me, and then after studying it at length announces to the world a good way of breaking into that car, it hurts me."
So what... Is there a law against doing that? No! Can Ford or any other manufacturer prevent them from doing that? No! If that person found out by breaking into THEIR OWN CAR, then there is nothing anyone can do about it... get the idea?
"Almost everyone would agree it is a bad thing, and would get angry with such a person."
No they wouldn't... they would get angry with the manufacturer for leaving such an exploitable entry point open. They would also get angry with the manufacturer, if they overreacted, and welded all your doors shut. If I bought a security system with a flaw in it, and nobody told me, how would I defend against someone exploiting it. Information is knowledge, repression of knowledge is ignorance... a fitting assessment of Braben's diatribe.
"When we buy a new car, we buy an item and a service. In this case, it is mostly the item we are buying, but the service is significant. This is a service, and if you sell the car, the warranty and maintenance cover does not restart."
This line is hilarious from someone who objects to used games. Maybe he would like to apply that theory to the Online Pass debate. No the warranty doesn't start over, but it also doesn't terminate with immediate effect either. A new owner isn't forced to buy a brand new warranty, if some of that warranty exists.
"Online bandwidth per user is something that gradually dies down after a game is some months old – but if it is then passed to another user, those costs are incurred all over again for the new user – but the publishers providing the service see none of the ‘pre-owned’ revenue to cover it"
Utter bullcrap! People are still playing counterstrike over the net today... people who bought the game on day one, are STILL PLAYING IT NOW!
And just to drag back his failed car warranty analogy, if Ford said "sorry Fiesta owners, not enough people are buying Fiestas anymore, so we're cancelling the rest of your warranty... if you want to continue with a warranty, then you get a new one with a new Focus", people would go ballistic.
If I buy a car with a 5 year warranty, I get 5 years warranty. Who would buy a brand new car if the warranty was defined as "some months"? Which is exactly how the service support on a game is listed.
"so we should stand against it together, now"
And the communal sobbing will be deafening.
Sorry Braben, get back in your box... you made more sense when you were saying nothing! How about you concentrate on why gamers are getting short-changed, shafted with DLC, and forced to be Beta testers on unfinished games sold as new? Oh, that's right, because that's how you earn your wages... my mistake.
@4: Does that license forbid you from "replacing" that software?
Braben, I paid for my ps3, I paid for the various software titles on my ps3, and the ps3 is sitting in my home, it uses the bandwidth I pay for when I go online, I'll do with the ps3 in my home what I want.
If Sony doesn't like it, they should get into the rental business with their ps3 rather then selling the ps3. Same with developers. Although I don't pirate, I am not going to fall for your failure logic.
Incidentially, whethere you get "mineral rights" and what "mineral rights" are varies.
Take a look around you, there is alot of information on the internet that someone or another doesn't like and is sure someone should not be allowed to publish because of some law or another.
Until you are ready to have your words yanked by a law and get thrown in jail because someone doesn't like them, you should not be condoning someone elses gets words get yanked and that person thrown in jail.
Your insinuation that buying a pre-owned game is piracy is nothing but your greed and bias showing through.
Firstly, a private agreement is not above the law, meaning that a private agreement can be illegal in the first place so non of the parties can hold legal rights on that agreement.
Secondly, legal practices may lead to monopolization and yet the common good is above any individuals right. Based on that an iphone can be legally jailbroken and if you want an analogy as close to reality as that, debate on that.
You make an excellent point, Dave. Breaking into your PS3 is illegal, just like breaking into your own car.
It's funny, even when you spoon feed people the facts they still want things for free. I think ego is a problem with a lot of hackers and hacker supports. I paid a lot of money for a unaltered Playstation experience and now the online PSN community is under attack by this ego driven crap. Ignorance.
Continuing with your car analogy, what if your car's maker decided to disable your Mp3 player a year after purchase?
Trust me, Sony is not hurting and the only reason what Hotz did is illegal is because congress can be bought and sold by lobbyists like ESA, MPAA, and RIAA.
this has to be reposted. I am not the original poster- but more people need to see this.
This probably ranks as one of the most idiotic analogies I have ever heard. And to think, Braben used to be credible and important... how the mighty have fallen.
What the hell has the coal or oil, underneath a plot of land purchased for surface development, got to do with anything? It's like saying, if you put a PS3 on a cupboard, you have no rights to look inside the cupboard.
"If someone buys the same model of car as me, and then after studying it at length announces to the world a good way of breaking into that car, it hurts me."
So what... Is there a law against doing that? No! Can Ford or any other manufacturer prevent them from doing that? No! If that person found out by breaking into THEIR OWN CAR, then there is nothing anyone can do about it... get the idea?
"Almost everyone would agree it is a bad thing, and would get angry with such a person."
No they wouldn't... they would get angry with the manufacturer for leaving such an exploitable entry point open. They would also get angry with the manufacturer, if they overreacted, and welded all your doors shut. If I bought a security system with a flaw in it, and nobody told me, how would I defend against someone exploiting it. Information is knowledge, repression of knowledge is ignorance... a fitting assessment of Braben's diatribe.
"When we buy a new car, we buy an item and a service. In this case, it is mostly the item we are buying, but the service is significant. This is a service, and if you sell the car, the warranty and maintenance cover does not restart."
This line is hilarious from someone who objects to used games. Maybe he would like to apply that theory to the Online Pass debate. No the warranty doesn't start over, but it also doesn't terminate with immediate effect either. A new owner isn't forced to buy a brand new warranty, if some of that warranty exists.
"Online bandwidth per user is something that gradually dies down after a game is some months old – but if it is then passed to another user, those costs are incurred all over again for the new user – but the publishers providing the service see none of the ‘pre-owned’ revenue to cover it"
Utter bullcrap! People are still playing counterstrike over the net today... people who bought the game on day one, are STILL PLAYING IT NOW!
And just to drag back his failed car warranty analogy, if Ford said "sorry Fiesta owners, not enough people are buying Fiestas anymore, so we're cancelling the rest of your warranty... if you want to continue with a warranty, then you get a new one with a new Focus", people would go ballistic.
If I buy a car with a 5 year warranty, I get 5 years warranty. Who would buy a brand new car if the warranty was defined as "some months"? Which is exactly how the service support on a game is listed.
"so we should stand against it together, now"
And the communal sobbing will be deafening.
Sorry Braben, get back in your box... you made more sense when you were saying nothing! How about you concentrate on why gamers are getting short-changed, shafted with DLC, and forced to be Beta testers on unfinished games sold as new? Oh, that's right, because that's how you earn your wages... my mistake.
"Buying a PlayStation 3 (for example), also does not give me unrestricted ownership of it."
Except, it does. It's called the First Sale doctrine. It certainly applies to the hardware, and in fact also applies to the firmware since it certainly qualifies as "a computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product."
It is disingenuous to conflate a government regulation designed to protect the public with a corporate policy designed to protect Sony's profits. Conflating used games with piracy is full-on libelous. Polishing a used disc and putting it in a new sleeve is no more illegal than a used car dealership repainting, waxing, and maybe reupholstering a used car.
Speaking of car analogies: not only is it a ridiculous comparison (the PS3 hacks do not let the hackers get into your PS3 or steal your games, downloads, or save data), but if someone discovered a really easy way to steal a particular model, the manufacturer would almost certainly issue a recall immediately, if for no other reason than to save face and maybe convince their customers that they shouldn't buy a competitor's model.
Ultimately, the keys are numbers. They cannot be copyrighted, patented, or trademarked, so they are not Sony's IP at all. They were (past tense) trade secrets, but Sony would have to prove that Geohot got the keys via a leak instead of honest reverse engineering.
Sony needs to make it clear that you are not buying the PS3. It cant be on "sale" then. They need to say pay for the privelege and also acknowledge that they are not responsible to maintain any level of service or support any feature. Go on Sony make it clear to potential consumers then!
I wonder how they are going to compete with more open platforms offered by fast rising China & Korean firms eager to please consumers?
No one wants to be told by their parents what to do, how to have fun - no one wants to be told what to do by Sony. Fact is I would happily pay $$$$ to sources of hacked Sony products just to be sure their road blocks are removed. IF I buy Sony at all. I'll repeat that so that it crystal clear... I will pay more for a Phony than an as-is Sony. I see a big trade opening up!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0el-URgCZw
Oh noes, he's teaching people how to pick any kind of tumbler lock! We're all at risk, anybody can now break into our houses!!11!1
Get real.
If I keep the game instead of reselling it and play it, I will still be using the bandwidth.
Everybody complains about piracy, about sales they lose, about second hand games etc. Just do what Blizzard does: make awesome games that people WANT TO PLAY, offer support of them FOREVER(well, almost) instead of kicking out versions of FIFA every year (which never add any substance to the game anyway).
btw, I myself am a developer having worked for Ubisoft in the past (their internal policies suck as much as their external ones). It is conceited to believe that if people WANT TO SELL your game they have no right. Make people WANT TO NEVER SELL your game - because it's awesome, because they have fond memories of it, because it offers great service more than a decade after it's launch (think StarCraft and the original battle.net). If you fall short of making me as a gamer love your work, it is your fault alone.
It is partly bad though that people have disclosed details about how the PS3 handles personal data. Yes, it's a huge oversight of Sony to let their console send out plain text of my private data, but now that the information is out in the wild, unless Sony "issues a recall" - makes a patch to the console AND their servers, anybody can spoof my traffic and get my data. It should have been handled a bit differently (sending a private notice to Sony about the flaw, giving them a chance to respond and patch it instead of turning it into a public vulnerability) but sadly to most hackers their 'street cred' is more important.
However, I also believe that if I bought the hardware, it's mine to tinker with, fully, at the cost of losing my warranty. And while disclosing sensitive information should not be illegal, I do believe discretion about such should be common sense.
"When we buy a house on a plot of land, we don’t own the mineral rights even if we ‘own’ the land."
I'm not sure you want to follow that analogy to its logical conclusion. Unless you want to argue that the security infrastructure of a product does not belong to its manufacturer.
You see, you don't "own the mineral rights" because the minerals belong to the community, which is why it's the State, it's appointed voice, who gets to hold them.
Odd to rage against the hackers and not the corporation that botched its security, both in silicon and in staff, to such a degree that every link in the chain of trust was compromised.
Have to wonder who he (and the other hacker scapegoaters) would rage against if the hack was kept secret and one day 100% of online PS3s sent their saved credit card details to some hidden server and then promptly bricked themselves. (Blatant worst-case, but at least with Failoverflow's transparency, we at least know what *is* possible in terms of malicious damage).
I note that Sony hasn't yet declared it fucked up and is going to review practices like allowing firmware updates via removable flash media (PSP and PS3 both easily cracked by non-techies thanks to that) or finding out quite how the mega-top-secret info instrumental in both the PSP pandora battery crack and PS3 signing vulnerability got leaked to the hackers in the first place.
Dear poor IP owner the only right you have is to have an exclusive right to TRY and make money off copies of your works and cull hackers/cheaters from your network other than that you own NOTHING ELSE, not my ears, not the disc the IP is on, not the file on my PC not the sound or lights in the air. You are limited to attempting to profit off the sell of copies thats your exclusive right.
Of coarse copy right have been raped and warped to allow more but slavery was legal at one time so at the end of the day its just another scoff law the public has to care about to get over turned.
zippydsmlee.wordpress
You admit that there are legitimate reasons to hack a PS3, yet you still say we should condemn those who do it? If I hack my PS3, I'm not automatically committing piracy, nor am I automatically ruining another PS3 owner's experience, so again, why condemn those who do it? Because it CAN be used maliciously? Condemn the pirates and the exploiters, but don't condemn the hackers.
Developers are banding together to force you to buy things without ever taking ownership of them, soon even software will be ever more like this. But to be honest if you want your PS3 to behave like a computer, why not just buy a computer instead of an advanced toy?
You want to stop cracking? Write secure code.
You want to stop hacking? ... you can't!
end of line
According to the law, 'hacking'(not the breaking into bank accounts type) and 'reverse engineering' are legal. I've not done that subject for over 7 years, but there are precedents on such cases. For the record, both Nintendo, Lexmark and SEGA lost their case against reverse engineering and even the use of copyrighted headers required to create usable code.
p.s. It might not be Lexmark, could have been Cannon, but if anyone *really* wants to have a pick at it just ask a question at one of the homebrew development forums, someone may respond with plenty of past cases and point out sections of the law ... there are also many books on computer law that cover this.
Oh, and really poor analogies.
"If someone buys the same model of car as me, and then after studying it at length announces to the world a good way of breaking into that car, it hurts me...Almost everyone would agree it is a bad thing, and would get angry with such a person."
What rot... of course it's not a bad thing - it improves the security of all future cars, and creates a new generation of people who understand car security. That's what security research does, and it makes us vastly more secure over time. Imagine that WEP wireless encryption was still in use for critical networks today! A few knowledgeable individuals would have exclusive access to wireless networks everywhere (and for a fee, you could get access too!) - and the legitimate users would have no idea they were exposed.
More importantly though, the security of the car is designed to protect the buyer of the car from theft by 3rd parties (at which point he/she would lose their car stereo, or maybe their car), not protect the property from its rightful owner.
This PS3 hacking is more like something that overrides a remote locking mechanism for my car that only allows me to drive it if the police state I live in (in this case, "Sonyland") verifies I'm the original buyer of the car, and restricts me from driving it on unapproved roads, and maybe also some other arbitrary conditions they decide on - e.g. I'm not a dissident going to a protest rally that my Sonyland overlords don't like very much.
You buy the hardware, you own it. End of story.
Perhaps freedom of speech that harms others should be restricted, but even assuming that is the case, who has been hurt due to the PS3 being hacked? Where is the blood on the streets?
This article strikes me as a poorly argued self-serving rant by someone who profits from game development. For the avoidance of doubt I don't think it's wrong to profit from game development, and the fact you have an incentive to be biased doesn't necessarily mean you are, but in this case it does explain why you have taken such a biased point of view.
Think about the precedent you would be setting - this would mean that any company could sue / imprison any individual for miss-using any hardware sold to them. Imagine how few programmers / scientists / physicists / innovators there would be in the world, if creativity was stifled in this way.
