forums.ps2dev.org

Hi,
I don't use it for HDLOADER. I am not crack. I just use to explore my friend's program , he don't want share code.

Thank you very much.

Sjeep used to be my friend too... long before he went buck wild with stuff like hdloader :). Although since 95% of hdloader is built using software sitting in ps2dev CVS there's really not much to explore :P.

Just keep in mind the forum rules when you post to ask for our assistance, thank you.

Its amazing how many "To Mrbrown" messages popup. How come
Mrbrown gets all of the attention ? :)

But as always I cannot resist adding my two cents into any discussion,
especially if its one of controversy.

Lets get one thing straight about why hdloader is bad, and anything
having anything to do with it won't be much appreciated around here.

I thought long and hard about this, because hdloader would have been
very useful to me in a very legitimate way. Isn't that the reason why
many such programs as hdloader are justified ? In my case, I might
be doing much overseas travel, and it is SO nice to be able to carry
my PS2 game collection (bought and paid for legit) with me, with less
transportation hassle.

Of course, this is the rarer circumstance where it would be useful.
For most people, they don't have to keep swapping game DVDs is
the cool legit use for hdloader. Although one must wonder that a
game that is seriously played for hours at a time, one minute to
swap another DVD can't be bad. It might be a problem for those
with serious ADD who swap games every 5 minutes, but those
people have other problems.

Hdloader is bad, and very different from the tools available on this
site, because it violates many principles:

1. It boots PS2 games without requiring one to be in physical
posession of that game.
2. Worse, it was introduced to profit on the concept of making
#1 vastly easy to do for the consumer masses.

I took a short jaunt into #hdloader on Efnet irc, and read some of
the web bulletin boards, and its amazing how many people complained
that their rush out to blockbuster was empty-handed because others
had already rushed to copy games.

This is why hdloader is evil, and why the base tools used to develop
hdloader are not necessarily so. Even the Sony released Linux kit
can be used eventually to develop nefarious tools, but Sony depended
on a trust that people wouldn't misuse it, and put certain limitations
on it to make it harder for the less determined.

The same applies here at PS2DEV. There is no doubt the tools here
can be misused by *determined* developers, but they are released
on the premise that they won't be building blocks for such. And that
is the key difference: the tools released on PS2DEV do not allow
immediate and widespread copyright violations to occur.

Hdloader, which was built from these building blocks, capitalizes on
and enables copyright violations, because the true cases where it
could be legitimately useful can only apply to a small part of its
audience, and that fact *had* to have been known by its developers.

So, an abuse of the PS2DEV trust was breached. It is through no
fault of the tools or community efforts at this site, because the desire
to experiment with respect for copyrights is quite strong here. It is just
that in any situation, one cannot stop determined individuals, even
those who started out sincere but were pulled down by base
opportunity, from taking something good and putting additional
energy into making something bad.

It is a pity that the extra effort to make hdloader, built upon the
backs of the good, could not also have been applied more beneficially.

This is a lesson to remember.

Gorim

How come mrbrown gets all the attention from warezers? :P

Seriously, here are my thoughts on hdloader:

The best thing about hdloader is that it drastically decreases a game's load times. This is actually their first selling point. So the majority of, let's call them "honest", people will buy hdloader because load times virtually disappear in all games compatible with it.

And obviously the worst thing about hdloader is what you describe, the fact that it allows users to play games from HDD *without* requiring the original game disc. This is their second selling point, and this is where hdloader becomes as you put it evil software. Thinking about it now, if hdloader had required that you had to insert the original disc before playing the game, I know personally I wouldn't regard it with such disdain.

I know a lot of people will disagree about requiring that disc. There are some who'd like to archive their games and put them away forever. Some think it'd be too inconvienent to have to swap out the hdloader disc everytime they wanted to play a different game.

Anyway, the reason way requiring the original disc is so important is that it keeps the PS2's builtin authentication system intact. We all know that the PS2 does hardware verification to authenticate the disc before booting it. As soon as you remove that verification step, not only are you breaking the law in any number of countries, you enable the "Blockbuster" situation. Even commercial games that boot off of the HDD (FFXI is the only one I know of) have to be verified from the original disc before installation, and they are verified for authenticity everytime they are run.

If hdloader was conceived to not facilitate piracy, it should've required that the original disc were authenticated before booting the HDD image. Instead of the pirating tool it is now, it would've been a legitimate (and accepted) archiving and game-enhancing solution it claims to be.

As far as ps2dev's software use in the nefarious hdloader, I think it's a horrible betrayal of our trust as a community and the authors of the (mis)used software. If Sjeep is in fact the author of hdloader, then he knows the stance we take on game piracy and that our tools and libraries weren't written to be used in this manner. Yes, the AFL and X11 licenses put no limitations on the use of those libraries. So from a legal standpoint, he hasn't violated any licenses in the software he's used.

But because he knows what our stance on piracy is, he knowingly violated the implied social or ethical contract that those libraries ship with. Note that I said implied.

From now on, for anything that I am able to contribute to ps2dev or homebrew, I'll be shipping an additional license, seperate from the AFL or whatever I use on that software. This license will simply state:

Users of this software must acknowledge and abide by the following: This software was not written to facilitate the violation of copyrights in other software. If you use this software in whole or in part in a system that violates software copyrights, then you will lose all legal rights to use the software under the AFL and this license. The author of this software reserves the right to revoke the license of anyone he deems is using the software to violate copyrights or otherwise violate copyright law in applicable countries.

Now I just made that text up while writing this, but I'll be looking into the real legal text that enforces this idea. Any software I contribute will require that users abide by this and whatever other license is attached to the software. It takes the "implied" intended usage out of what we develop, and it holds users responsible for what they do with the software. Presumably, if we had something like this in place several months ago, we'd be able to take legal action against hdloader today.

If other folks think this is a good idea, we should work together to make it happen. I think if we are serious about slowing down game piracy we need to take the fight to the modchip companies and hdloader companies that disregard their moral oblications to the software.

mrbrown wrote: From now on, for anything that I am able to contribute to ps2dev or homebrew, I'll be shipping an additional license, seperate from the AFL or whatever I use on that software. This license will simply state:

Users of this software must acknowledge and abide by the following: This software was not written to facilitate the violation of copyrights in other software. If you use this software in whole or in part in a system that violates software copyrights, then you will lose all legal rights to use the software under the AFL and this license. The author of this software reserves the right to revoke the license of anyone he deems is using the software to violate copyrights or otherwise violate copyright law in applicable countries.

Now I just made that text up while writing this, but I'll be looking into the real legal text that enforces this idea. Any software I contribute will require that users abide by this and whatever other license is attached to the software. It takes the "implied" intended usage out of what we develop, and it holds users responsible for what they do with the software. Presumably, if we had something like this in place several months ago, we'd be able to take legal action against hdloader today.

If other folks think this is a good idea, we should work together to make it happen. I think if we are serious about slowing down game piracy we need to take the fight to the modchip companies and hdloader companies that disregard their moral oblications to the software.

If it's ready by the time I release something, it'll be used by anything I release :)

Im all for such a clause imbedded with the AFL license, but we would need someone with license knowledge to look it over.

If you use this software in whole or in part in a system that violates software copyrights, then you will lose all legal rights to use the software under the AFL and this license.

That will never work. Too many things can innocently violate copyright. You have a couple different MP3 players at ps2dev - they violate patent laws. Where are your standards there? Even a free player like an ogg player could be used to play copyrighted songs. How about a picture viewer? Maybe the person uses it to view copyrighted images they downloaded from the net.

With the clause above, you will NEVER make another USEFUL piece of software again as ALL useful software can be used for nefarious purposes. I can use a hammer properly to build items around the house, or I can use it to bash in skulls. The libraries here are the same. If you institute the clause above, I can GUARANTEE that someone else will just fork the ps2dev code base and continue it elsewhere under a different license.

Grow up and accept the fact that anything worth doing can be used negatively. It's no reflection on you, just the person making the improper software. Don't kill PS2DEV simply because you don't care for a few warez people.

AFAIR, MP3 decoders don't have to be licensed for personal, non-commercial use. Even using your example with OGG playback, the encoder doesn't bypass any authentication to encode that audio track, whether or not it was ripped from disc or recorded from a microphone. It takes audio format A and translates it into audio format B. The OGG encoder was not written with the sole purpose to rip copyrighted audio tracks and circumvent a security protocol in order to play them back. Hdloader was written to do this.

I'm sure you've read about the DMCA. The DMCA states that the tools used to circumvent security measures in programs are illegal. Guess what's happening in hdloader? And guess who's tools are being used to do it? While the US is the only country that currently has a DMCA law in place, but hdloader is being sold in the US, and I live in the US. The broad, ambigious scope of the DMCA worries me in situations like this, where software I've written is being used to violate it.

Even if this new license is not enforceable (it may very well not be) it gives us some legal protection in case the hammer does come down on ps2dev. It clearly states our position when it comes to copyright violation. Those are good enough for me reasons to implement it.

J.F. wrote: That will never work. Too many things can innocently violate copyright. You have a couple different MP3 players at ps2dev - they violate patent laws. Where are your standards there?

uhm "our" standards, not all things released under "ps2dev" have the same license to
begin with, me and mrbrown had the idea of adding a "non-warez" clause to what we release. This is not something that will be enforced on other projects.

With the clause above, you will NEVER make another USEFUL piece of software again as ALL useful software can be used for nefarious purposes. I can use a hammer properly to build items around the house, or I can use it to bash in skulls.

You can also provide a disclaimer that will save your back when someone sues you for using your samurai-steel-hammer deluxe edition v2.0.

I can GUARANTEE that someone else will just fork the ps2dev code base and continue it elsewhere under a different license.

If someone wants to fork the codebase that is fine, all the luck.

Grow up and accept the fact that anything worth doing can be used negatively. It's no reflection on you, just the person making the improper software. Don't kill PS2DEV simply because you don't care for a few warez people.

Grow up, now that statement must have been taken from argumentation techniques vol1, must read it again.

The intent is certainly not to kill PS2DEV, most of the people who do comit to ps2dev cvs
is discussing this issue and the general consensus seems to be that such a clause is plausible. And before you go on ranting about legal matters, rest assured someone who do know what he is talking about will look over it before we apply it.

mrbrown wrote:AFAIR, MP3 decoders don't have to be licensed for personal, non-commercial use.

Yes, they do. That's why not a single free Linux distro has MP3 playing. You have to go to a third party repository outside the US to get the MP3 decoders.

Even using your example with OGG playback, the encoder doesn't bypass any authentication to encode that audio track, whether or not it was ripped from disc or recorded from a microphone. It takes audio format A and translates it into audio format B. The OGG encoder was not written with the sole purpose to rip copyrighted audio tracks and circumvent a security protocol in order to play them back. Hdloader was written to do this.

Yes, but your clause just says "a system that violates software copyrights," not in what way or to what extent. If someone makes illegal ogg rips, the player is a system that is violating copyrights by playing infringing music. Actually, in this case, that doesn't violate your clause as I notice now it says SOFTWARE copyrights and an illegal ogg file would not fall into that category. :D

I'm sure you've read about the DMCA. The DMCA states that the tools used to circumvent security measures in programs are illegal. Guess what's happening in hdloader? And guess who's tools are being used to do it? While the US is the only country that currently has a DMCA law in place, but hdloader is being sold in the US, and I live in the US. The broad, ambigious scope of the DMCA worries me in situations like this, where software I've written is being used to violate it.

Yes, hdloader is clearly violating the DMCA, but it stops there. If it encompassed anything used in making the tool as well as the tool, it would propagate responsibility all the way down to the OS and the underlying hardware. Microsoft wouldn't care for that as 99% of hacking tools are Windows proggies.

Even if this new license is not enforceable (it may very well not be) it gives us some legal protection in case the hammer does come down on ps2dev. It clearly states our position when it comes to copyright violation. Those are good enough for me reasons to implement it.

If someone came after you, this would protect as much as a sticker on a gun saying "use of this gun in robbery is prohibited." :wink:

I don't see any need to worry. Not a single DMCA case has come out against the development system used to make the tool which got sued. Did the MPAA go after FSF for GNUC for compiling libdvdcss? Nope. Did the MPAA go after Microsoft for making the compiler that made DVD321? (Not sure if thats the exact name... it's that DVD transcoder) Again, no they didn't. There's no way you can bring a development package maker to court over software made with that package, unless the deCSS was part of the development package for example. That is why you shouldn't make MP3 decoding part of a sound library in PS2SDK. You can make everything needed to make an MP3 decoder, but not the decoder itself and be safe.

Well lemme say this and I'm pretty much done with this thread of debate :). The DMCA is largely a scare tactic. The case against Skylarov (sp?) scared a lot of folks including me. Living in a country with such a scary law, I'd rather be safe than sorry. A lot of times I think it's by the grace of God that I haven't been contacted about some of the wilder things I've published. Now that I'm working for a company licensed by Sony, I have to be even more careful (the verdict is still out on whether or not I can even participate here), even on software that I wrote a year before working there.

About the clause, what I wrote in the original post was just an example. The plan is to shop it around to OSS advocates and see if it holds any weight or if there is a better way to include the clause or word the text. Because the AFL license text is copyrighted, I wouldn't be able to just change it to include that clause anyway. Whatever form the license, or clause, or whatever takes, the main goal is to make people blazingly aware about what we don't want them to do with our software. I think part of growing up is taking a stand for your beliefs and speaking out against those you know are wrong. We are ultimately responsible for our software, ethically, since we're the ones who wrote it. What I mean by that is that no, we can't control what other people do with it, but we can turn the fire up under them and make them sweat when they screw us like this. I'd like to be able to hold users responsible - to a certain extent - also.

Cheers.

Personally, I don't take the advice of some random person on a forum about legality. Argue all you want and it won't make a difference: You are wrong by default.

That said, we're not all Americans and we're not all bound by the DMCA. We're trying to balance the various laws around the world and have to take a lowest common denominator approach. Also, this type of development is a grey area (legally) and to corporations we're all lumped in together - warezer or homebrew coder. If we can at least make some visible effort to try to stay on the good side it will be noticed when the shit hits the fan. If we can give Sony a hook to nab the warezers by attaching a better license they'll probably leave us alone. Maybe. :)

But all it basically means to people like you, J.F., is that you can download and use it all you want... unless you're doing naughty things.

Sure, it may not be perfect yet... but that's why it is being discussed before being applied.

Well, I already voiced my objections. I'm sure you'll come up with something fine. And no, I don't think I'm doing anything naughty. :) If I do something like that here, I hope someone points it out to me... don't want to cause you any trouble in a legal sense because this is about the best source of free and open programming for the PS2.

mrbrown wrote: A lot of times I think it's by the grace of God that I haven't been contacted about some of the wilder things I've published. Now that I'm working for a company licensed by Sony, I have to be even more careful (the verdict is still out on whether or not I can even participate here), even on software that I wrote a year before working there.

IANAL and anyone who construes anything I might say as legal opinion
or advice is crazier than I am. However, I do think the historical attitudes
and conduct are important considerations. This site has a history of strong
support for above-board homebrew development, and things you have
personally written, by themselves, require much effort to use as building
blocks for nefarious purposes. The DMCA is stupid in many ways, but
it was designed to catch people who build the products that are used to
directly violate copyrights, whether or not there are other legitimate uses
for those products. So, Skylarov was nabbed, whether or not it was
deserved, and that case has far more similarities to HDLOADER than to
PS2-ID. PS2-ID is really not much other than something comparable
to the Linux RTE, just more accessible to the general homebrew scene.

The people who wrote HDLOADER have far more to be scared
about, and I wouldn't be surprised that the "Eye of Saur^H^H^Hony's Legal department" is heading in their direction, deservedly so. If
I were them, I would....get my own lawyer right now, if one isn't already
retained. Not that it would do much good I think.

Gorim

J.F. wrote:

mrbrown wrote:AFAIR, MP3 decoders don't have to be licensed for personal, non-commercial use.

Yes, they do. That's why not a single free Linux distro has MP3 playing. You have to go to a third party repository outside the US to get the MP3 decoders.

*cough* My distro does *cough*
As do many others.

Hint: Red hat isn't the only distro out there.

I think some people are missing the point of adding a clause like this to the license. We're not trying to give ourselves a big sword to go around taking our warezers with. And yes, most of them are going to use our code whether they are following the license or not. But, if Sony decides to come out swinging, we have a very clear stance and have attempted to demonstrate that not only are we not a part of those nefareous groups, but we don't even want them touching our code and are handing Sony more weapons to use against them.

Drakonite wrote: *cough* My distro does *cough*
As do many others.

:roll: Okay, let me qualify that. Not a single US distro comes with MP3 decoding. European distros MAY have it. Lucky bast--ds. :)

It's the same as with encrypted DVD playing. US distros have programs that will play DVDs, but if they are encrypted, you need a library from a repository outside the US to play them.

The only exception to this (that I am aware of) is Lindows, because the purchase price you pay includes the license fees to play MP3 and encrypted DVDs.

J.F. wrote:

Drakonite wrote: *cough* My distro does *cough*
As do many others.

:roll: Okay, let me qualify that. Not a single US distro comes with MP3 decoding. European distros MAY have it. Lucky bast--ds. :)

It's the same as with encrypted DVD playing. US distros have programs that will play DVDs, but if they are encrypted, you need a library from a repository outside the US to play them.

The only exception to this (that I am aware of) is Lindows, because the purchase price you pay includes the license fees to play MP3 and encrypted DVDs.

Again... You are wrong. Redhat is actually the only distro I know of that doesn't come with an mp3 decoder. And btw to everyone else...
Yes, they DID change the licensing fees a while back that required all decoders to pay a licensing fee, and yes they supposedly removed the exemption for free software. I have yet to hear anything more on the matter though, and they don't seem to be complaining about the free software (although I don't watch closely so maybe they are... quietly)

Personally I think that with their underhanded business tactics they get what ever they get.

J.F. wrote:

Drakonite wrote: *cough* My distro does *cough*
As do many others.

:roll: Okay, let me qualify that. Not a single US distro comes with MP3 decoding. European distros MAY have it. Lucky bast--ds. :)

I believe Drakonite has it right... MP3's are license for free non-commercial
playback. If one obtains a free redhat distribution, no license fee
has to be paid. If one buys a boxed set (RH doesn't sell anymore I
think) then the license fee is covered in the commercial cost.

BTW, Drakonite is a Yank, not a EUank :)

J.F. wrote: It's the same as with encrypted DVD playing. US distros have programs that will play DVDs, but if they are encrypted, you need a library from a repository outside the US to play them.

This is because DVD playback is licensed IP. In theory it should be
illegal in many european countries as well, but enforcement of such
things are not as strong as in the US.

J.F. wrote: The only exception to this (that I am aware of) is Lindows, because the purchase price you pay includes the license fees to play MP3 and encrypted DVDs.

Playback of DVD's requires a license fee. Since Lindows is sold
commercially it is covered along with MP3.

Gorim

gorim wrote: I believe Drakonite has it right... MP3's are license for free non-commercial
playback.

You might want to re-read what I wrote...

Yellowdog Linux also doesn't come with MP3. Let's qualify again... commercial US distributors like Red Hat and Terra Soft (distributors of YDL) don't include MP3. People who have to deal with the RIAA and MPAA directly are a bit more gun-shy about it.

J.F. wrote:Yellowdog Linux also doesn't come with MP3. Let's qualify again... commercial US distributors like Red Hat and Terra Soft (distributors of YDL) don't include MP3. People who have to deal with the RIAA and MPAA directly are a bit more gun-shy about it.

According to the website for Yellowdog Linux, it comes with libmad 0.14.2b-5... which is a high quality mp3 decoding library.

Game. Set. Match.

So it does... didn't notice that because it doesn't have the more normal MP3 decoders. That still leaves Red Hat and Fedora. They specifically state that they don't include the MP3 due to licensing issues.

Still, this kinda makes your point invalid now... doesn't it?

J.F. wrote:So it does... didn't notice that because it doesn't have the more normal MP3 decoders. That still leaves Red Hat and Fedora. They specifically state that they don't include the MP3 due to licensing issues.

"more normal MP3 decoders" ???
libmad is the defactor standard mp3 decoding library. Every distro that has MP3 software has libmad. Or are you talking about XMMS? Yeah, yellowdog has XMMS too.

So your entire point hinges on only two distros.. The commercial distro aimed completely at office use, Redhat, which I routinely tell people NOT to use for desktops, and its bastard child Fedora.

ooPo wrote:Still, this kinda makes your point invalid now... doesn't it?

Drakonite wrote:

J.F. wrote:So it does... didn't notice that because it doesn't have the more normal MP3 decoders. That still leaves Red Hat and Fedora. They specifically state that they don't include the MP3 due to licensing issues.

"more normal MP3 decoders" ???
libmad is the defactor standard mp3 decoding library. Every distro that has MP3 software has libmad. Or are you talking about XMMS? Yeah, yellowdog has XMMS too.

But not xmms-mp3. Fedora/Red Hat also include xmms, but without xmms-mp3, it does not play mp3s. There are all kinds of decoders other than libmad.

So your entire point hinges on only two distros.. The commercial distro aimed completely at office use, Redhat, which I routinely tell people NOT to use for desktops, and its bastard child Fedora.

ooPo wrote:Still, this kinda makes your point invalid now... doesn't it?

If even only one distro doesn't carry it for legal reasons, it fully justifies my comments on the fact the mp3's are legally encumbered and people liable for patent license fees if they decide to come after you. In fact, even if they ALL carried mp3, that still doesn't negate the fact that mp3 decoders are illegal unless you pay the license fee. Are they going to come after us small fry? Most likely not. Red Hat thought it a big enough concern to not just drop it, but convinced the KDE people to remove support from the KDE multimedia package. This ticked off a lot of people.

Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. I use MP3 decoders in Linux along with libdvdcss and decoders like xvid. Just don't kid yourself that it's perfectly legal simply because everyone (almost) is doing it.

...and someone seems to have forgotten what the original topic of this conversation was.

But fear not! Some learning may yet occur!

I'm sure that even J.F. can now see that the world of legal issues is a strange and convoluted one that causes many people to do many things 'just in case'. That is exactly what we're proposing here - to do this just in case we have a legal problem dropped on us.

Can you see the point now?

The point was that the change in the ps2dev license as originally stated would prevent the use of ps2dev libraries in such things as MP3 players or JPEG viewers as they are legally encumbered requiring licenses. Then someone got us off on a tangent trying to say that MP3 decoders don't need a license.

I have no problem with extra license clauses, you just need to be careful about how they are worded. It has since been stated that issues like that will be worked out.

You know what? This conversation has gone nowhere. Its locked now.