But patenting covers independent inventions of the same algorithms. And it's frequently used for ideas that are profoundly obvious, like a straightforward application of machine learning techniques to a particular data set (Bilski). So if you think of an idea by yourself, you can be sued for implementing it.

As a developer, it is recommended that I not read patents, as if it is determined that I read a patent that I then violated, it will be triple damages in a lawsuit. So I have no way to avoid implementing somebody else's patent.

Now Sony's lawsuit isn't about software, or patents. It is about certain special secret integers. It so happens that used with readily available software they blow a wide hole in Sony's horrible security system for the PS3.

But Sony doesn't own those integers. It doesn't own the hardware it sold to people under pretenses that it would always run Linux, and it doesn't have the right to control how people would choose to use their hardware and GPU. Hotz never used PSN software or any of Sony's other products.

You're supposed to pay a lawyer his hourly rate to review everything you create and compare it to every patent issued. Apparently this makes a great deal of sense to the lawyers who are elected to pass laws.

I'm not familiar with the particulars of that case, so it's hard for me to make an informed opinion. However, I don't entirely buy a "secret integers" defense, because that could apply to any software, or any media for that matter. For example, any Microsoft operating system can be viewed as one long string of binary code. So, yes, Microsoft would have legally protected rights to that specific combination of numbers. To suggest "secret integers" can't be owned would be to say everyone owns anything anyone creates, even before it's created.

Now, if this person simply devised some code which could crack another system which did NOT involve that system's original code I would agree there should be no prosecution.

There's a good explanation on YouTube (until they're taken down by the gestapo) which is the Fail0verflow team describing their research. They have a section at the beginning describing the history of console hacking and game piracy, or at least their perspective on it. They take pains to point out that most of their research is not even particularly necessary to pirate games but instead to run user-supplied software on the PS3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFMAP0mTvY

Incidentally, Sony had previously been sued by Certicom for allegedly infringing on patents related to its use of elliptic-curve cryptography.

As for copyright protection, you should reflect on this page:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html

And then this one:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/

To the point with Harry Potter: you can think of a continuum of infringement. If you tear a page out and copy it, you will violate the copyright. If you reuse characters or scenes and use them to create your own work, you are making derived works (JK put her stamp of approval on non-commercial fan fiction by the way). But the farther you get away from the original characters the less you can call it infringement. As the link between the two works becomes more and more abstract and less concrete, the new work is more protected. At some nebulous point it is no longer infringing.

For instance, Harry's story and appearance is superficially similar to an earlier work called The Books of Magic, a comic series by Neil Gaiman. You can read his take on it here:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/fair-use-and-other-thi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic

Essentially he throws up his hands and says "borrowing is a fact of life in genre fiction. Deal with it, I did."

How does this apply to computer code? Well, the farther away you get from the original copyrighted code, the less infringing it is. There are extremely limited protections for derived works that amount to Person B having a copy of Person A's code in front of them and editing it.

What those Touretzky pages from CMU show is that there is no such thing as a continuum from computer code to an uncopyrightable abstraction. It is abstraction, mathematics, numbers all the way down. In fact, it is speech that is protected by the First Amendment and suppressing it is a constitutional issue with narrow exceptions.

So no, you can't use a book model for code. It is not the same thing at all. Executable ideas, math, algorithms, just don't exist in the fiction publishing industry.

Apparently not random enough!

They essentially used this algorithm for their key material: http://xkcd.com/221/

The free market works such that after a product is sold, the seller has no rights it any more. They cannot remotely disable features after the sale. They cannot dictate what you can and can't do with it.

The PS3 hackers didn't "open source" any of Sony's code, that's ridiculous. Their goal is to bypass it and load their own. They reverse engineered it for the purpose of enabling compatibility with other stuff and extending. This has a long tradition in the US.

Perhaps you're old enough to remember when Ma Bell claimed it was illegal for anyone to plug in a home answering machine or for anyone else to make compatible telephones? After 70 years of R&D you had a choice of three kinds of home phones in one of several colors. The only leg that argument had to stand on was that they were a regulated monopoly and as such deserved protection from the free market. The US decided we'd had enough of that approach and told them otherwise.

I don't even have space to list the choices in communications we gained since that that monopoly was broken up. That's how a free market works dude.

I agree 100% (unless such special use terms were part of the sale upfront, see pay tv channels).

They cannot dictate what you can and can't do with it.

Not for personal use, no, and I should insist not. However, if I sell you a book I wrote, while you're quite free to read or burn your copy of it, I don't want you to scan copies and widely distribute it.

The PS3 hackers didn't "open source" any of Sony's code, that's ridiculous. Their goal is to bypass it and load their own. They reverse engineered it for the purpose of enabling compatibility with other stuff and extending. This has a long tradition in the US.

If they only took actions for their own personal use I have absolutely no objection. Quite the contrary, I'd encourage it.

I can't say I remember the telephone incident, but I agree with your sentiments on that entirely.

The problem is that current laws now allow someone else to force me to stop using my own code. Which is really a more dangerous threat as far as I'm concerned.

Well, no, not exactly. Your reply is talking about patents, which I've agreed need reform. However, you're perfectly free to use and sell your own code, as long as it doesn't duplicate some function which enjoys patent protection. (the problem here is over broad or obvious patents, like Amazon's 1-click checkout) But even then you simply have to do away with the infringing portion. For example, there was a recent post on how storenvy.com just raised funding. Well, they might have had 1-click checkout as a web store function. In the worst case they would have to eliminate that and/or find an even more innovative way for ecommerce customers to check out, but it would not likely mean the end of their business.

I'm transitioning my career from commercial software development to data security research/hacking. There's appreciation for innovation there, the business models are new and fluid and the lawyers haven't figured out how to attack them yet.

I'm sorry you feel so constrained. To me that signals the current system is not optimum, but that's probably a lucrative decision either way.

I'm pretty sure breaking into someone's computer system like that is illegal regardless of IP laws, and history appears to show that understanding what you're selling gives a rather large advantage.