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Unprecedented?

In this case decided in 2005, Sony received over $6 million in a copyright infringement judgment against a small online retailer who violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. §§ 1201 et seq., by selling computer chips that allowed unauthorized copies of PlayStation games to be played on the PlayStation console.

http://www.patentarcade.com/2010/07/case-analysis-sony-v-fil...



There was never much of a PlayStation One homebrew or Linux scene though, was there? So it'd be hard to argue that the PS1 device had any useful purpose other than piracy.

Unlike with PS2&3, where for a while there Sony pretty much endorsed alternative uses of the console.


That may improve the moral standing, but I don't see how it affects the legal situation. There's no right to homebrew in the DMCA (sadly).


There was a homebrew community, using things like the Action Replay cart @ caetla/catflap rom, cf: http://jum.pdroms.de/PSX/psxdevstart.html

Also, there was the official Net Yaroze system - which had similar restrictions to ps3 Linux - no cd data, and no good access to the GPU: http://jum.pdroms.de/PSX/psxdevstart.html


Unprecedented to sue those hacking a console with the sole intent of using it for Linux and homebrew, yes.

(Yes, suing over piracy is not new, and that's what Sony is doing here. But that doesn't change the fact that none of them support piracy.)




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