Apr 4, 2011 12:40 GMT  ·  By

The Anonymous collective has launched a campaign directed at Sony for harassing reputed PS3 hackers George Hotz, aka geohot, and Alexander Egorenkov, also known as Graf_Chokolo.

Anonymous, known for its use of unconventional and sometimes illegal methods of protest, as well as its strong views on freedom of information, believes the company abused the judicial system to censor information about the inner workings of its product.

"Congratulations, Sony. You have now received the undivided attention of Anonymous. Your recent legal action against our fellow hackers, GeoHot and Graf_Chokolo, has not only alarmed us, it has been deemed wholly unforgivable," the hacktivist group writes in the manifesto announcing OpSony (Operation Sony).

Anonymous also believes that Sony's actions to request access logs from YouTube, geohot's hosting provider and other services, in order to obtain the IP addresses of people who viewed information about PS3 hacks, violated the privacy of thousands.

"You have victimized your own customers merely for possessing and sharing information, and continue to target every person who seeks this information. [...] This is the information they were willing to teach to the world for free," the group adds.

Sony filed a complaint against geohot and a large number of other hackers earlier this year for reverse-engineering the private key used to sign every piece of software that runs on the PS3.

The so-called hack, which exploited a flaw in Sony's implementation of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), gave users the power to sign and install any homemade and custom software on their gaming consoles.

Sony alleges that this action is a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provisions that prohibit the circumvention of copyright protection mechanisms. This kind of action, known as jailbreaking, has been exempted from the DMCA for mobile phones by the U.S. Copyright Office in 2010.

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Anonymous launches campaign against Sony
OpSony manifesto
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