they're playing whack the mole with a large hacker community
Large companies need to realize that they're actually engaging in asymmetric warfare when they do this. The worldwide hacker community that's aware of Sony far outnumbers the internal dev group that did their security.
What's more, Sony suffers from the typical company illusion of hiring the top 1%:
But groups of hackers on the internet have none of the friction that exists in corporations, and so are operating in a purer, less-diluted meritocracy. As a result, companies doing DRM are generally outnumbered by more qualified opponents.
The basic rule of asymmetric warfare, is that you don't take on your opponent in a head-on fair fight. That's absolutely the worst thing to do. You need to turn the situation on its head, like the IRA did. Usually, the outlaw is in the position where, "You have to beat them every time. They only have to catch you once." But the IRA had that turned on its head. They only had to get away with something "once," and the British authorities had to catch them every time.
Companies can deal with pirates, but they have to realize that they are the underdogs, not the big guy in this fight. The best thing for them to do is to figure out how to win without fighting. Failing that, they need to figure out how they can be the ones who "only have to win once."
(I've been figuring this out, and yes, it can be done.)
They're trying to "only have to win once" by going after the top PS3 hackers. All of the defendants listed so far (geohot, fail0verflow) have unequivocally condemned piracy. Sony doesn't go after the pirate developers because, so far, none of them have shown much skill in uncovering new vulnerabilities - they take and rehash what fail0verflow, geohot, et al have done to support piracy. [1] Not to mention it is a lot easier to go after geohot, a guy who believes what he is doing is right and doesn't want to live in a world where he has to hide his research, than an anonymous pirate developer.
[1] The minds behind original PSJailbreak dongle (which enabled backups and piracy) do deserve credit for their brilliant USB exploit. Back to my main point, many have said that the PSJailbreak crew was only able to start their work after geohot exploited the PS3 hypervisor and documented how to do so.
They're trying to "only have to win once" by going after the top PS3 hackers.
That's just plain wrong. All Sony is going to do is to drive all the hacking completely underground. All of it will be black hat.
That's not what I meant about "only winning once." That's just another whack of the whack-a-mole mallet. Here's how you "only win once" while you are forcing your enemy to "win every time."
1) Let people copy and run your game, but require them to pay when connecting to the official company servers.
2) Devote all of your technology and development resources to only detecting pirates, but don't ever take any direct action against them. Don't even let them know immediately if they've even been detected.
3) Ensure that all of the highest glory, fame, and bragging rights in your userbase go to winners of tournaments on the official servers.
4) Take indirect action against pirates, but only in ways which are hard for the pirates to substantiate. Never lock them out, outright, but start degrading their gameplay experience in ways which make them look like they're "whiners." Attack their gameplay experience, but only periodically and when it will hurt them the worst. Start rumors that various cracked versions of the games have bugs. Ban pirates and warez users, but only from the big official tournaments on the official servers, perhaps many months after they've been detected as pirates.
5) Continually update the game, including the detection technology.
In this scenario, those running your software illegally are the ones who will always be looking over their shoulder, wondering if they've been caught. At least at first, no one will have strong motivation to crack the detection technology, since they can run the game anyways. Be continually changing the detection technology, so that any given crack only lasts a month or so. One can even compartmentalize the detection technology, such that any given crack will only work on a fraction of the installed base. If done correctly, you can convince people to simply pay for the game.
This isn't "getting medieval." It's "getting Machiavellian."
Large companies need to realize that they're actually engaging in asymmetric warfare when they do this. The worldwide hacker community that's aware of Sony far outnumbers the internal dev group that did their security.
What's more, Sony suffers from the typical company illusion of hiring the top 1%:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
But groups of hackers on the internet have none of the friction that exists in corporations, and so are operating in a purer, less-diluted meritocracy. As a result, companies doing DRM are generally outnumbered by more qualified opponents.
The basic rule of asymmetric warfare, is that you don't take on your opponent in a head-on fair fight. That's absolutely the worst thing to do. You need to turn the situation on its head, like the IRA did. Usually, the outlaw is in the position where, "You have to beat them every time. They only have to catch you once." But the IRA had that turned on its head. They only had to get away with something "once," and the British authorities had to catch them every time.
Companies can deal with pirates, but they have to realize that they are the underdogs, not the big guy in this fight. The best thing for them to do is to figure out how to win without fighting. Failing that, they need to figure out how they can be the ones who "only have to win once."
(I've been figuring this out, and yes, it can be done.)