Authorities performed an early morning raid on a home in Germany and confiscated computer equipment suspected in hacking the Sony PS3.

Originally Posted by graf_chokolo
February 23, 2011 at 11:52 am
Guys, SONY was today at my home with police and got all my stuff and accounts. So be careful from now on.

The suspect soon after released all his work to the public and into torrents.

Originally Posted by graf_chokolo
February 23, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Guys, i don’t joke, it’s serious.
And to prove it, i kept my word and uploaded all my HV reversing stuff.
Upload it everywhere so SONY couldn’t remove it easily. Grab it guys, it contains lots of knowledge about HV and HV procs.

Here is my HV bible: Sendspace.com upload.com 2shared.com < - Coolstuff.rar [164mb]

He then posted the legal documents he was served with and his plans to continue unilaterally work to get Linux on the PS3.

So, SONY you failed again, you took my equipment but my mind is still free and you canot control it. You failed again. They are just tools, i can get new ones and will continue my HV reversing and bringing back PS3 Linux which you took from us. If you want me to stop then you should just kill me because i cannot live without programming, HV and Linux kernel hacking You know who am i and where i live, so come and get me !!!

Sony has been fighting this war for many years. A brief history of important battles was recently posted on Make.

I couldn’t find one location that documented Sony’s all-out war on makers, hackers, and innovators, so I started my own (and it isn’t pretty). The talented artists, designers, and engineers who work at Sony deserve better, and their customers deserve better. Don’t worry, I’m not just going to spank Sony. I’m going to give Sony some ideas to right this ship and also let them know it’s time to reconsider suing George “geohot” Hotz, the Playstation 3 hacker Sony is dragging to court for unlocking his PS3 to run his own software on it.

I find it interesting that the alternative approach that Make advocates is to emulate none other than a company founded by the son of a powerful lawyer who openly despised hobbyists and hackers — Microsoft

Sony should take a page from Microsoft’s playbook and develop a PlayStation SDK for innovators with Hotz. Microsoft saw all the amazing projects and hacks with the Xbox Kinect, and they embraced it.

Bill Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists in January 1976 perhaps has more significance now than ever. He not only was proven completely wrong in his assertions about quality in code, but his company has completely and utterly reversed itself; it has embraced hobbyists as innovators and partners to help increase the appeal and expand the market for their products.

Note the tone of this message on Twitter from a Microsoft product manager.

It is yet to be seen whether these fights significantly influence consumer. Microsoft certainly has not fared well in the market when compared with companies that have found a way to turn themselves into media content license warehouses. For what it’s worth, after watching the above events unfold I decided to donate my PS3 to those less fortunate and order Microsoft’s Xbox as a replacement.