[VG News] Piraterie in der Zukunft
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PS3: Next Victim in The Modchip Wars?
By Mike · Publish Date: 2006/02/23, 10:00 o'clock
There are probably sixteen people in the world who still don't know what a modchip is. In case you're one of them, allow me to enlighten: a modification chip is a device which -- when soldered, screwed, or otherwise shoehorned in to a gaming console -- disables the region lockout chip, enabling a user to play import games. Modding also opens up the console to homebrew developers who wish to produce games and software for the console, and many great software packages such as the Xbox Media Center have been born of such efforts. But perhaps most significantly, the installation of a mod chip enables backup games and bootlegs to run on the system like normal games. [...]
To say the least, it's a controversial issue. In the United States, mod chips have been at the center of heated debates about fair use, reverse engineering, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Internationally, it's no less controversial of an issue. In a high profile Australian case, the Australian High Court ruled that the modification of consoles was the right of the owner, this following an epic legal battle waged by Sony to make sure that Aussie gamers couldn't import the considerably cheaper US versions of Playstation titles. In England, similar efforts by Sony proved far more successful. A bitterly fought legal war ultimately saw modchips ruled illegal throughout the UK.
Sony has been clear already that they are out to prevent modding of the Playstation 3, fair use or no. But how realistic are Sony's anti-chip aspirations, and how successful can they be in preventing piracy? There are three factors which contribute to the viability of piracy on a given console; the ability to run pirated games on the hardware, the ability to get the pirated goods on to the hardware, and the ability to obtain the pirated software in the first place. Let's take a look at the details of these hurdles to pirates, and what Sony can do to protect its system.
Sony has been clear that protecting their intellectual property is their main concern with this generation of hardware, stating that pirates, and not other companies, are their main competitor in Asia. To this end, it's safe to assume that Sony will be pulling out all the stops in their efforts to combat piracy on the PS3.
While the PS2 and Xbox were both cracked very quickly, there's reason to believe that mod chips for the PS3 and 360 will be very slow to reach the market. Under the condition of anonymity, a leader in the mod scene advised me that hackers working on the Xbox 360 got "more than they bargained for" when tackling the new system. "The Xbox used some pretty basic tricks to keep piracy to a minimum, but the 360 is very hacker unfriendly," he explained, pointing out that every chip on the 360 uses real-time 4096 bit encryption -- a system far more secure than even that used for financial transactions. It seems likely that Sony will use a similar chip-level protection scheme for the PS3. In spite of this, the hackers remain confident; "Both systems will be cracked, no doubt. It will just take time. Really, the PS3 will probably be broken before the Xbox 360, because that's the console the Chinese hackers will be focusing on."
But beyond the hardware limitations, there are a number of logistical challenges which will undoubtedly bane pirates. With dual-layer Blu-ray discs storing up to 50GB, the question quickly becomes how would pirates even distribute the games? While bandwidth is certainly getting cheaper, connection speed would bottleneck any piracy efforts. A relatively speedy 768kbps internet connection would face download times in excess of two weeks to obtain a single game via BitTorrent, and a Square Enix release spanning multiple discs could literally require months to download. On top of that, saturating an internet connection for days at a time would no doubt draw the ire of one's internet service provider, making the download of Blu-ray discs a logistical nightmare for the foreseeable future.
And even once one obtains a Blu-ray title, how would they get it to the console? Back in the day, Nintendo and Sega were able to effectively neuter piracy by printing their games to proprietary cartridges. While blank cartridges (and the devices to upload pirated games to them) were certainly available, the cost was astronomical, and as a direct result, the average consumer had no idea that piracy was even an option. Sony seems to have established a similarly strong protection method by using its proprietary Blu-ray technology for the system. Burners for Blu-ray discs won't be cheap or readily available for the early years of the PS3's life, and one blank single-layer Blu-ray disc is expected to retail for $50 when introduced to the consumer market, with dual-layer speculated to be debuting at $80.
So ultimately one must wonder, even when the PS3 is cracked, will piracy really pose a problem? Sony's hardware will eventually be bested, but the challenges in obtaining the Blu-ray data and actually get it burned on to a disc may prove a brutally effective deterrent to many casual bootleggers. Faced with the prospect of thousands of dollars in hardware purchases and hundreds of dollars in blank media costs, it seems likely that all but the most devout hackers are going to throw their hands in the air and say, "screw it... we'll just BUY the damn games." --
>> # top # | Q: PS3 Center.net
PS3: Next Victim in The Modchip Wars?
By Mike · Publish Date: 2006/02/23, 10:00 o'clock
There are probably sixteen people in the world who still don't know what a modchip is. In case you're one of them, allow me to enlighten: a modification chip is a device which -- when soldered, screwed, or otherwise shoehorned in to a gaming console -- disables the region lockout chip, enabling a user to play import games. Modding also opens up the console to homebrew developers who wish to produce games and software for the console, and many great software packages such as the Xbox Media Center have been born of such efforts. But perhaps most significantly, the installation of a mod chip enables backup games and bootlegs to run on the system like normal games. [...]
To say the least, it's a controversial issue. In the United States, mod chips have been at the center of heated debates about fair use, reverse engineering, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Internationally, it's no less controversial of an issue. In a high profile Australian case, the Australian High Court ruled that the modification of consoles was the right of the owner, this following an epic legal battle waged by Sony to make sure that Aussie gamers couldn't import the considerably cheaper US versions of Playstation titles. In England, similar efforts by Sony proved far more successful. A bitterly fought legal war ultimately saw modchips ruled illegal throughout the UK.
Sony has been clear already that they are out to prevent modding of the Playstation 3, fair use or no. But how realistic are Sony's anti-chip aspirations, and how successful can they be in preventing piracy? There are three factors which contribute to the viability of piracy on a given console; the ability to run pirated games on the hardware, the ability to get the pirated goods on to the hardware, and the ability to obtain the pirated software in the first place. Let's take a look at the details of these hurdles to pirates, and what Sony can do to protect its system.
Sony has been clear that protecting their intellectual property is their main concern with this generation of hardware, stating that pirates, and not other companies, are their main competitor in Asia. To this end, it's safe to assume that Sony will be pulling out all the stops in their efforts to combat piracy on the PS3.
While the PS2 and Xbox were both cracked very quickly, there's reason to believe that mod chips for the PS3 and 360 will be very slow to reach the market. Under the condition of anonymity, a leader in the mod scene advised me that hackers working on the Xbox 360 got "more than they bargained for" when tackling the new system. "The Xbox used some pretty basic tricks to keep piracy to a minimum, but the 360 is very hacker unfriendly," he explained, pointing out that every chip on the 360 uses real-time 4096 bit encryption -- a system far more secure than even that used for financial transactions. It seems likely that Sony will use a similar chip-level protection scheme for the PS3. In spite of this, the hackers remain confident; "Both systems will be cracked, no doubt. It will just take time. Really, the PS3 will probably be broken before the Xbox 360, because that's the console the Chinese hackers will be focusing on."
But beyond the hardware limitations, there are a number of logistical challenges which will undoubtedly bane pirates. With dual-layer Blu-ray discs storing up to 50GB, the question quickly becomes how would pirates even distribute the games? While bandwidth is certainly getting cheaper, connection speed would bottleneck any piracy efforts. A relatively speedy 768kbps internet connection would face download times in excess of two weeks to obtain a single game via BitTorrent, and a Square Enix release spanning multiple discs could literally require months to download. On top of that, saturating an internet connection for days at a time would no doubt draw the ire of one's internet service provider, making the download of Blu-ray discs a logistical nightmare for the foreseeable future.
And even once one obtains a Blu-ray title, how would they get it to the console? Back in the day, Nintendo and Sega were able to effectively neuter piracy by printing their games to proprietary cartridges. While blank cartridges (and the devices to upload pirated games to them) were certainly available, the cost was astronomical, and as a direct result, the average consumer had no idea that piracy was even an option. Sony seems to have established a similarly strong protection method by using its proprietary Blu-ray technology for the system. Burners for Blu-ray discs won't be cheap or readily available for the early years of the PS3's life, and one blank single-layer Blu-ray disc is expected to retail for $50 when introduced to the consumer market, with dual-layer speculated to be debuting at $80.
So ultimately one must wonder, even when the PS3 is cracked, will piracy really pose a problem? Sony's hardware will eventually be bested, but the challenges in obtaining the Blu-ray data and actually get it burned on to a disc may prove a brutally effective deterrent to many casual bootleggers. Faced with the prospect of thousands of dollars in hardware purchases and hundreds of dollars in blank media costs, it seems likely that all but the most devout hackers are going to throw their hands in the air and say, "screw it... we'll just BUY the damn games." --
>> # top # | Q: PS3 Center.net
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