Advertising (This ad goes away for registered users. You can Login or Register)

Legality of Signed Homebrews

Most of the homebrews discussed in this forum can be downloaded here
SifJar
Posts: 251
Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:19 pm

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by SifJar »

Rydian wrote:
m0skit0 wrote:And second, you bought the console with the keys, so Sony cannot really sue you for finding something inside the machine they sold you and that is your entire propriety.
Incorrect, these keys are NOT in the PSP. They were in the PS3 because the PS3 can send content to the PSP and the PS3 would need to sign it so the PSP knows it's official (at least that's the reason I've been given, simply having them there for no reason doesn't make sense). There's a difference between the "signing" (private) key and the "common" (public) key when it comes to encryption.
PSP doesn't use aesymetric encryption AFAIK (i.e. not public-private key)
Advertising
wololo
Site Admin
Posts: 3621
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:42 am
Location: Japan

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by wololo »

The legality of signed homebrews probably depends on the country you live in.

I can only speak for France. In France, signed homebrews (as long as the homebrew itself is not doing anything illegal, and that the author of the homebrew/game allows you to run it on the PSP) are legal because they are covered by the section regarding interoperability.

Basically, the fact that Sony doesn't give enough information on how to run the software we own on the computers they sell us, allows software developers to do whatever they need to guarantee interoperability. Under this law, the burden of the proof goes to Sony, they have to prove that a signed homebrew compromises the PSP security scheme. Which, of course, for user mode homebrews, is not the case.

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCod ... 0006278920

That being said, I'm not a lawyer, and that's my interpretation of the law. But based on all the false statements I've read in this thread, I would assume that I'm not the only one who's not a lawyer on this board... :mrgreen:
Advertising
If you need US PSN Codes, this technique is what I recommend.

Looking for guest bloggers and news hunters here at wololo.net, PM me!
i_love_redsn0w
Banned
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 1:54 pm

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by i_love_redsn0w »

Wololo wrote:The legality of signed homebrews probably depends on the country you live in.

I can only speak for France. In France, signed homebrews (as long as the homebrew itself is not doing anything illegal, and that the author of the homebrew/game allows you to run it on the PSP) are legal because they are covered by the section regarding interoperability.

Basically, the fact that Sony doesn't give enough information on how to run the software we own on the computers they sell us, allows software developers to do whatever they need to guarantee interoperability. Under this law, the burden of the proof goes to Sony, they have to prove that a signed homebrew compromises the PSP security scheme. Which, of course, for user mode homebrews, is not the case.

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCod ... 0006278920

That being said, I'm not a lawyer, and that's my interpretation of the law. But based on all the false statements I've read in this thread, I would assume that I'm not the only one who's not a lawyer on this board... :mrgreen:
what about in the us
kidz axe
Posts: 353
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2010 3:48 pm
Location: http://kidz-axe.co.cc/forum/
Contact:

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by kidz axe »

i_love_redsn0w wrote: what about in the us
Im sure your lawyer next door or your mom knows?
If not, meet the president and have a debate...
:mrgreen:
:)
Strangelove
Posts: 286
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2010 6:32 pm

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by Strangelove »

As far as I know the DMCA makes breaking any kind of encryption illegal.

So it should be illegal in the US. But then again, I'm not a lawyer...
"If you have specific questions ... don't hesitate to ask as the more generic the question is the more philosophic the answer will be" - PSPWizard
Rydian
Posts: 39
Joined: Sat Dec 25, 2010 1:12 pm

Re: Legality of Signed Homebrews

Post by Rydian »

afrothunder wrote:Um.. aren't they on KIRK itself?
Yes, but I meant where people found them originally. Finding them in the device itself and getting them from a separate product might be seen as different under law, so it's important not to mix that stuff up.
SifJar wrote:PSP doesn't use aesymetric encryption AFAIK (i.e. not public-private key)
You sure? By default the PSP expects encrypted programs, but with CFW you can run decrypted ones. In fact there's an option in the GEN firmware to run unencrypted software from the UMD drive (called "plain modules in UMD/ISO"), I've read this was for testing purposes and that when enabled it would not run official content (as it wouldn't decrypt it), but I don't have any UMDs myself to test right now. It's possible I'm just confusing something else for it though, I might ask FAST later.


But yes, as Wololo states there are laws for interoperability in various countries, and that includes the US, though I'll be damned if I can find the proper section, I'm not sure on the exact wording they used.
Strangelove wrote:As far as I know the DMCA makes breaking any kind of encryption illegal.

So it should be illegal in the US. But then again, I'm not a lawyer...
Unfortunately the DMCA does make breaking encryption illegal (outside of specific cases the Librarian Of Congress is set to outline every so often, the latest being here), however this is not breaking the encryption, we have the "master" keys (as much as I dislike that term), we can sign things the same way as Sony does.

This is an unprecedented event for modern systems (all other hacks bypass the need for signed programs instead), and it is a worst-case scenario for Sony, as they cannot simply stop people from doing it. They have no way to use the law to put a stop to people signing things, so instead they're going a roundabout way to try to make the act (of signing as well as having found the keys) out as one for pure copyright infringement purposes (which isn't going too well).
Locked

Return to “Homebrews”