PSP Homebrew Scene Going Illegal With Custom Firmwares and Devhook ?

July 21st, 2006, 15:33 Posted By: wraggster

A concern raised with me about the legality of Custom Firmwares and also Devhook (Not the legal UMD version).

Lets look at Devhook, apart from the UMD version that we have at PSP News the other versions play illegal content and thus not only damage the PSP (i couldnt care less about Sony losing money but if the console was to die then that would be a shame), but they do incredible harm to the real homebrew scene, a scene that likes to stay legal, the sad thing is is that most PSP sites post both homebrew and the more dodgy stuff and glorify it too, some to the extreme of getting it on the big sites like Slashdot, but this isnt the way we want the homebrew scene to be, yes its ok to post hacks and exploits but anything with ISOs is very dodgy.

Then you have the Custom Firmwares, now as far as i know no one apart from Sony is legally allowed to have their firmware for download, i know they even went after sites like lik sang for having a mirror of the firmware, Now the custom firmware releases are good and all but the legality issue is one that should make all PSP webmasters take notice, remember if you host the file and it bricks a PSP then surely the likelyhood of being sued is there.

The real shame is that the PSP Scene which is the biggest ive known isfacing harm and with that bringing a lot of warezers to the homebrew arena.

Id like to hear from Devs, Hackers and any Legal experts their views on the issues above.

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