Nintendo released a recent update that once again tries to secure some existing bugs on the console, breaks some things, deletes others. This time they’ve also gone around and modified the TOS. As usual, mass panic ensues.
The people who are panicking can be divided roughly into two groups (non exclusive):
- The pirates
- The clueless
This should go without saying, but we don’t want to have anything to do with the former group. Nintendo is obviously going to fight piracy (and that’s going to hurt homebrew). We’ll have to deal with the homebrew part, but don’t expect that to help piracy in any way. It may, or it may not. And if it doesn’t, pirates will have to deal with fighting nintendo themselves.
The usual messages about WADs, “backups”, and all that crap are going straight to /dev/null, and we’re seeing... More »
Movie pirates are distributing fake Blu-ray movie titles in China, which are essentially ordinary DVDs passed off as Blu-rays.
According to a WSJ report, the counterfeit Blu-ray discs are ordinary DVDs that hold the same movie content as the original Blu-ray but it is encoded in the AVCHD format. AVCHD is based on the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video format, enabling recording of high-definition 1080i and 720p video onto cheap DVD discs.
"We are concerned and are assigning priority to this issue," said Mike Ellis, the Asia-Pacific managing director for the MPA.
The issue came into the surface last month when authorities raided a big stash of the new pirated discs in China, which is often at the leading edge of piracy trends.
The MPA estimates that within the next six months the high-definition discs could account for 10% of $224 million that its m... More »
Yesterday we reported news of Microsoft starting a new wave of XBox Live bans on modded XBox 360 consoles.
Today, Microsoft's Major "Larry Hyrb" Nelson has confirmed it stating the following via his blog linked above:
Xbox 360 Console banning: I’ve gotten a few messages and seen some forum threads pop up on console bannings so I thought I’d post and let folks know what’s up.
In our our continued effort to keep gameplay safe and secure for our community of more than 14 million members, Microsoft has taken action against a small percentage of Xbox 360 consoles that have been illegally modified in order to play pirated games.
You should know that modifying your Xbox 360 console is also a violation of the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void your warranty a... More »
Nintendo has confirmed to MCV (linked above) today that flash cards such as the R4 will not with the Nintendo DSi.
This news does not come as a shock to most, and was suspected by many Nintendo DSi owners who reported on it last week.
To quote: Nintendo has confirmed to MCV that today's reports claiming that SD-card based piracy hardware the R4 will not work with the upcoming DSi are correct.
The platform holder was not able to confirm whether this is a deliberate feature of the newly redesigned handheld. However, judging by recent history it’s not unreasonable to presume this is the case.
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Back in September, it was ruled that an indexing Web site operated legally as it didn't host copyrighted material and linking to infringing material is permitted under Spanish law.
Now it appears as if this notion has gained extra support as a court has decided that a torrent site which was previously shut down by authorities actually operated legally.
To quote: In July 2007 we reported on the case of TodoTorrente.com, one of Spain’s largest BitTorrent sites. After a year long investigation by Spain’s Anti-Piracy Federation, an announcement was made by the Directorate of Police and Civil Guard - the site had been raided and closed by judicial order while the administrators arrested.
According to Spanish police, the site caused the entertainment industries 535,000 euros in losses and made 30,000 euros in profits. Unfortunately the authorities didn’t have the benefit of foresight, which would’ve given them an understanding of how Spanish l... More »
Hexus (linked above) is reporting that hackers are 'bamboozled' by the security on the PSP-3000. They discuss whether a hack will be found, and explore the possibility that Sony has won its battle against PSP piracy and homebrew.
To quote: It's still early days in the life of the PSP-3000, which was released approximately 3 weeks ago, but Sony will be happy to hear that hackers have so far failed to exploit the latest hardware revision.
So far hackers have only been able to swap its CPU with that of a PSP Slim, but haven't been able to exploit the hardware in the same way as previous models.
Dark_AleX, one of the most popular PSP sites for the hacking and homebrew community, has been unable to find a work around to hack the hand-held and the community as a whole appear to be stumped as to whether it will even be possible.
If it can't be hacked then Sony will have finally won its long battle against piracy and the homebrew comm... More »
DreamStream to employ military-grade encryption to secure Royal Digital Media's new optical media format, which exceeds Blu-ray's HD capabilities.
Press Release: Los Angeles (PRWEB) - DreamStream has signed on to encrypt Royal Digital Media's new optical media format. The agreement will allow RDM to employ DreamStream's military-strength encryption in the copyright protection of their high-definition discs.
The deal marks the first time a military-grade encryption has been implemented in the copyright protection of commercial motion picture discs.
"DreamStream and RDM's technologies align perfectly, as they both rest exponentially beyond the standards currently being employed," said DreamStream's Chief Development Officer Ulf Diebel, in a statement issued at the signing in Paris.
DreamStream is the first company to implement a 2,048-bit encryption in consumer media. AES encryption, used in Sony's Blu-ray discs, relies on only a 128... More »
A picture (below) was released on the Internet yesterday of a retail copy of Far Cry 2. Many were skeptical on the legitimacy of the picture, but not too long afterwards more reports starting coming in that many Gamestop store managers have received copies of the game.
Whether this is an actual broken release, date or just a manager being a bit cocky is still unclear. It wouldn’t be a bad idea though to check your local retail stores tomorrow to see if you can sneak a copy out.
If that’s not enough now we have yet ANOTHER batch of reports indicating that Far Cry 2 has been leaked onto the Internet. Which console you may ask? Well the 360 of course!
The Xbox 360 has really been taking in a lot of early releases of games via torrents, and its quite ironic how these torrents are directed towards the 360 rather than the PC platform many developers consider to be a pirate jungle.
At least this leak isn’t as bad as Fallout 3 where ... More »
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