The story of Sony suing Geohot for jailbreaking the PS3 got plenty of attention, and eventually ended in a settlement (with many people believing the press attention finally got to Sony). However, getting much less press attention is the fact that Sony continues to sue others who help people modify the Sony PS3. Sony has sued a guy in the UK for allegedly selling modchips, though the guy thinks it has more to do with the fact that he published a report highlighting technical problems with the PS3. After all, the lawsuit came just a day after a Sony exec wrote a memo complaining about the report. That seems like a pure case of a SLAPP suit, but the UK doesn't seem to have anti-SLAPP laws. For shame.

Meanwhile, a few folks have sent over news of Alexander Egorenkov, a German guy, also known as graf_chokolo, who published a guide to Sony's DRM system. Sony not only filed suit against him, but also had the police raid his home and seize his computers and electronics. Egorenkov claims he doesn't have the money for a legal fight and will likely end up in jail. All for what? For publishing info on Sony's PS3 so that buyers could make full use of the hardware they had purchased. Egorenkov recently commented on his own blog that even though he's probably going to jail, he's not going to be silenced, and plans to "continue" his work on such equipment after he gets out of prison.

In the meantime, what the hell is Sony thinking? Why is the company being so incredibly aggressive against anyone who wants to modify their (legally bought) hardware? Beyond the ridiculousness of the whole campaign, and the fact that it's pissing off tons of folks who might otherwise be fans of Sony equipment, doesn't Sony have better things to do these days? Its stock is falling. Its businesses aren't doing well. It can't seem to secure its own servers. And all it's doing is spending its time suing people for modding the PS3? Really?

Copyright rulings in Australia have been a real mixed bag lately, haven't they? There was the wonderful iiNet ruling that said ISPs weren't liable for actions of their users, and the ruling on telephone books saying you can't copyright facts. But then there was the Kookaburra ruling that found infringement in an 80s song of a popular children's folks song. And, to balance things out, now there's another bad ruling, that seems to go against the very principles explained in the iiNet rulings.

Slashdot points us to the news that an Australian court has ruled in favor of Nintendo, against the distributor of mod chips that can be used in Nintendo DS devices. Nintendo has been busy suing such distributors around the globe, though so far without much success. In places like Spain and France, courts were smart enough to realize that just distributing these chips -- which can be used for legal purposes as well as infringing purposes -- should not be considered infringement itself. It's the basic question of secondary liability, and figuring out if a third party should take the blame for actions of end users. In the iiNet case, the court realized that doing so would result in misplaced blame. In this case, the court didn't seem to care.

It's really too bad, because the court is basically saying that users don't have the right to modify a product they legally purchased and own. And, on top of that, a company selling a product that has perfectly legal uses can be held liable for the fact that some users also do unauthorized things with it. That's a troubling precedent by any measure.