Last week bells were ringing in the PlayStation 3 user community of PSJailbreak, a USB dongle that claimed to enable users to copy games to their own storage devices (including the PS3’s internal hard drive) as well as run homebrew applications for the PS3. Sony itself has been noticeably silent about PSJailbreak, but now some of their response strategy may be coming to light: an Australian court has temporarily barred the sale and distribution of PSJailbreak in that country, and ordered inventory turned over to Sony for analysis.
According to a copy of the court ruling, posted by PS3Hax, Australian citizens are barred from selling or distributing PSJailbreak; the court also ordered a limited number of the PSJailbreak devices be turned over to Sony for analysis, including destructive analysis, so long as Sony pays retail price for the devices. The court’s injunction applies until August 31; Sony has until then to make its case the injunction should be continued. If the court doesn’t agree, the devices could conceivable go back on sale.
The move probably marks Sony’s first steps in countering PSJailbreak; the company is no doubt working on firmware or other software patches to prevent PSJailbreak from working in any jurisdiction.
The Australian ruling is interesting because, in Australia, mod chips for gaming consoles are technically legal, although the copyright infringement they enable is not. In most of Europe and the United States, the merely circumventing copy protection technology, regardless of whether any copyright violation occurs, is illegal.
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