If they think the government will help them stop the boats..........................................

I'd imagine the court would have to follow High Court precedent.

Me too..  they must think they have some sort of alternative angle to fight it this time, or just want to lose a lot of money again.

All PS3 games are region free anyway - maybe that was a pre-emptive move on Sony's part to negate that argument? The only thing I can imagine changing is region coding on blu ray movies, but I find that nearly all of those are region free, and pretty much all of them are released here anyway.

Is movie region encoding a hardware or a software thing, by the by?

Is movie region encoding a hardware or a software thing, by the by?

software implemented in hardware (the drm chips).
i dont think sony will win an appeal, not without showing that ALL the games and movies are region free and available in australia.

Gordy this modchip allows you to put a backup onto your HDD, so it takes away the need for changing discs.

Gordy this modchip allows you to put a backup onto your HDD, so it takes away the need for changing discs.

And allows the distibution of softcopy piracy?

I think Sony will win easily. The only thing this device really does is make backups of games. Region coding has nothing to do with this, especially since all PS3 games are region free.

Gordy this modchip allows you to put a backup onto your HDD, so it takes away the need for changing discs.

And allows the distibution of softcopy piracy?

Whoops this comment was actually aimed at Jack. He was working out what legal reason he would use this for, eg. region free games and blu-ray.. I was pointing out something else which is completely legal as long as you have the real copy in your house.

I thought they had started to implement region encoding on games?

I know they have started on bluray movies, but at the moment this does nothing to overcome that side of things.

Having games on the hard-disk would be useful. Having to put in the disc every time to play does kind of spoil the point in some ways.

I've still not seen any region encoded games. I pretty regularly get a couple when I visit the states and I've never had a problem.

And yeah, blu rays I think are a studio by studio thing. Eg. Universal doesn't lock them but I think Warner Bros does.

Am I the only one getting images of Bender in Futurama where he presses a button and the TV extends an arm holding a beer, flips the top and then pours it onto his chest. To which Bender exclaims "what is this, the middle ages?" and then struggles to move 6 inches to get the beer to fall into his mouth?.....

You have to hit a button, take the CD out, open a case and put the new one in - it's hardly a massive effort ya lazy buggers =p

It's not a massive effort, but in a day and age where it's possible, why in the world can't we if we physically own all of the property?

I do weights and stuff while games are on their load screens and in cut-scenes.. Getting up to change the disc isn't exactly exercise and therefore it's not lazy if you choose not to do it.

You do weights during cutscenes?

Ya sometimes, when I'm in the mood for exercise.

It's better for you than eating chips, I found.

Lifting weights in front of it isn't a bad idea, as long as you don't drop them on your PS3 or other vital equipment like your foot

Anyhow, in other news the hack has gone open source (piracy aspect removed), and can be programmed onto freely available boards. Under most country's laws is not illegal to distribute such code. Sony can't stop this one now. Most games are strongly multi-player focused these days, so unless you only want to play offline it won't be much use.

My friend works out every time he feels like going on Facebook, he's actually turned from a weedy little dweeb into a fairly buff dweeb. Did I just use the word dweeb?

Yeah, I think MC has a point. Almost every other medium has the same thing. Kindle for books (which weren't digital content in the first place (mostly)), iPods for music, Steam sorta has it for games on PC. And yet games still rely, mostly, on physical content. Xbox are slowly turning their library digital but not at a huge rate, and it's still either own the disc or own the digital.

Surely there's a way that they can program a disc install to devalidate that disc or the install on another console? I suppose that limits sharing games between friends, and used sales at all, but there's gotta be a solution.

I wouldn't be surprised if next gen every release is backed on both disc and digital download from the start, say even with steam-like pre-downloads so you're ready to play at midnight. It's possible the advertising cash could even subsidise subscription based services like Live, but I doubt MS will back away from more money.

As for strong multi focus Pred, I agree to an extent, but I still think there's a huge amount of single player games that could be hurt. There are a bunch of games with multiplayer that I never even touched. Bioshock and Uncharted, looking at you.

Today the ban against the chip has been continued indefinitely (not that it probably matters any more)... http://www.ps3news.com/PS3-Hacks/ps-jailbreak-found-illegal-by-australian-courts-1/

Amusingly, they have been told they must inform distributors in HK to send all orders to a Sony representative, and not those that were going to distribute it. Will be an interesting test of China / Australian relations.

Free country eh..

Free country eh..

Technically, no country is "free" - we have laws in place to enable equality and harmony. This is one such law. I'd be rather pissed if I put 3-4yrs of hard work into a game and some dodgy little distributer circulated a chip that allowsed ppl to rip me off.

I was more wondering how a court, at the insistence of a major company with millions of dollars can tell an individual to contact a company *overseas* and get them to deliver all stock to somebody else, instead of the people that paid for them. At the time of order, the items weren't illegal.

True, but they've done it with other things. Those super bright lasers people were shining at planes. And prohibited weapons, you're legally obliged to give any unregistered weapons to the police etc.