Sony Uses DMCA To Shut Down Aibo Hack Site

Therlin writes: "Victor Matsuda, Vice President of Sony's Entertain Robot America (makers of AIBO), sent a letter to Aibopet.com citing the Digital Mellennium Copyright Act. You can read the letter here. Aibopet is the website of an AIBO owner who enjoys researching AIBO. He also provides free software programs to improve and add features to the robots." I bet Sony won't increase their Aibo sales this way -- don't they like fanatical customers?

They are not totally wrong

[SevenTowers]

In fact I think it is well within Sony's rights to express concern over the dangerous software this man is writing. Imagine all those little robots going mad and attacking cats and babies... How much money would they lose then?

Not fair

[tomstdenis]

While I disagree with Sony's use of the DMCA to shut down fan websites, I have to say this to the group

GET A LIFE, GO OUT AND BUY A REAL FRIGGIN DOG!

Re:They are not totally wrong

[PhReaKyDMoNKeY]

Quite a bit, I'd imagine, but the resulting TV mvie would net them millions due to the intrinsic humor value in the image of cute little robot dogs gone mad. I know I'd pay good money to see that. What I'd be a little more worried about is a tech-savvy terrorist/anarchist/generally insane person rigging one of those bad boys to blow and running him into a crowd/building/whatever. A suicide bomber without the loss in manpower sounds like a good deal to me.

DCMA

[rbright]

The DCMA makes me embarassed to be a citizen of the UAS.

Re:This guy sort of brought it on himself

[flacco]

I wonder why Sony is doing this since the less warrenties they have to honor the more money they make.

Wrong. Sony wants to sell the "Aibo Licks His Balls" expansion pack, not have some deviant terrorist hacker commie give it away for free.

Y-M-C-A

[yerricde]

This song is not based on "YCMA".

Young man,
there's no need to feel down
Because your plane
back home can't get off the ground
I said young man,
Get comfy in your new town
There's no need to be unhappy.

Young man,
There's no place you can go
I said young man,
Until you cough up some dough
You will stay here
until you've served all your time
For your insignificant crime.

It's fun to stay in the U S of A,
Because of that old grand D M C A
For cracking DVD's,
Or an e-book or three,
You'll get jailed for eterniteeeee...

It's fun to stay in the U S of A
Because of that old grand D M C A
For proving to the world
That our encryption's a toy
You'll get jailed with all the boyyyyyyys...

--

Reasons why Sony killed the Aibo Lover

[t_allardyce]

+ He programed Aibo to copy dance moves from some crapy boy-band, which sony own thus violating copyrights. Also, Aibo did it so well, that their jobs where at risk

+ He was getting to close to discovering that after dark and when knowone is looking, Aibo finds the nearest phone line, sticks it's ..cough.. plugs itself in and uploads video, audio, and GPS data to Sony HQ.

+ The encryption method they use is actually the same system that will be adopted for the SSSCA, and Sony were just future proofing.

+ He managed to disable the "Aibo kill owner" command that activates when Aibo detects someone pirating Sony material and tries to kill them using a hidden array of deadly weapons.