GeoHot Sees Hope in Video Game Console Jailbreaking

In a great post by wired, George Hotz, aka GeoHot, speaks out about the future of jailbreaking and video game consoles. While under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s unlawful to hack a gaming console or a tablet like the iPad, their is hope in the near future. Every three years the U.S. Copyright Office entertains requests to create temporary loopholes in the law that makes it unlawful to circumvent encryption technologies in items that you buy and it’s that time again.

It’s part of a long-running showdown between the big copyright holders who view the world as divided starkly into creators and consumers, and a motley coalition of librarians, digital rights groups, disability activists and hackers who seek to preserve a world where people can re-purpose, upgrade and build upon the devices and media they legally buy, just as hackers, painters and culture jammers have done for decades before the DMCA.

“I would really like to get back into that scene,” Hotz said in a recent telephone interview.

With Sony putting up a fight worried about game piracy and Hollywood worried about DVD piracy the battle won’t come easy. “The proponents assert,” the association’s attorneys told the Copyright Office, “that the consumers buy and or own the movie.”

“If the exemption is granted, it is virtually certain that successful hackers, under the guise of the exemption, will create the tools that enable even novice users to make, distribute, download and play back illegal copies of games,” Sony attorney Jeffrey Cunard wrote (.pdf) the Copyright Office.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, “why iPhone jailbreaking is OK, but not for video games.”

Check out the rest of the post over at Wired by clicking the source link below.

[Source]

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