One guy acting strangely is a nut. A bunch of people doing the same thing is called a church. - Shawn Mahaney
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Sony caught violating GPL
MAKER of exploding batteries, Sony has been illegally dipping its toe into Open Sauce code libraries to build a PS2 game.
Open sourcer, Alexander Strange was snuffling around the European release of the game ICO when he noticed new files SRCFILE.TXT and TRFILE.TXT and had a look at them.
In amongst the tangled code were bits of the GPL library libarc for compressed data handling.
Sony, which is a big champion of protecting creative rights, has failed to credit the code's author or mention libarc or the GPL.
Strange said that there was not a lot of code there, just two files from libarc and they add up to about 1500 lines put together. But a GPL violation is still a GPL violation and Sony is pretty nasty when someone violates its copyrights.
He said that Shadow of the Colossus, the sequel to ICO, doesn't seem to use any other code.
Strange has tried to get hold of libarc's creator Masanao Izumo but he has not been able to contact him.
On some of the boards there is talk that if Sony are caught breaking the GLP it might have to open sauce the whole game.
More here. µ
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Sony did indeed publish the software then they are liable, and it is the responsibility of any publisher in any media to make sure that the IP is kosher. I can't go in a court of law and say I didn't read the copyright notice on a record I published on the torrents now can I?
"gee your honour, I didn't know that U2 copyrights their work"
Let me guess some software hack needed a piece of code and found it somewhere and with bosses and deadlines didn't bother to do the right thing, knowingly or not (may not have wanted to tell his boss).

It's a bit harsh to blame Evil Sony for the misdeeds of one team just trying to get their code on schedule. Blame the game dev, not the company as a whole, unless you can tell me with a straight face that anyone above the Dev manager knew...
Wasn't sony founded by 'borrowing' stuff from US inventors? 
In fact aren't most all big companies founded on a shifty foundations like that.

In a somewhat related question: If tv/movie companies don't want to pay writers for internet releases because it's "promotional material" then how can they sue the public for releasing things on the internet?
If the code is compiled in an obfuscated way with binaries only present or hidden beneath several layers of copy protection it would be difficult to ever know a violation had taken place except by a whistleblower.

Anyway isn't it about time these violations used the same language as the commercial vendors? Why not call it "piracy" or "theft"?
My apologies, we are apparently talking about two different libarc's, the Izumo version in question claiming to be licensed under GPL. So I stand corrected. But given the availability of open-but-non-GPL versions of libarc, as well as the apparent authorship by Mark Adler of the libz inflate routine in Izumo's libarc, of which Mr. Adler also provides non-GPL free-with-attribution license, I doubt there is as much here as meets the eye. Correcting the attribution problem should probably be all the remedy required. Thanks!
Here is the libarc license from libarc.sourceforge.net:

License
Copyright © 2004 Basis Technology Corp.
All Rights Reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* Neither the name of Basis Technology Corporation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Does not mention GPL. At all. Does require attribution, which GPL does not. Does allow full commercial use and redistribution. Are we talking about the same product?
Somebody needs to check the Blue Ray copy protection code for Open Source snippets. They might just have invalidated the copyright on every disk they ship.
Shadow of the Colossus is not a sequel. It's merely made by the same developers and has a similar sense of beauty and art.
Sony are such a bunch of utter hypocrites. They'll go as far as trashing innocent punters' computers to protect their IP and will then just piss all over the IP rights of somebody else if it suits them. Plus the quality of their products has taken such an enormous slide in the last few years. I spent the best part of 300 quid on a Sony DVD recorder, and it navigates DVD menus at an utterly pathetic speed and makes a massive fuss and 3 second pause at layer transition. Why can cheapo electronics makers manage to make DVD players that can transition seamlessly across layers and Sony can't get a 300 quid player to do the same thing? 

I have no intention of ever buying another Sony product until they sort their act out, and probably not even then.
This is where GPL falls over. Companies are supposed to do the right thing and disclose when GPL is being used and provide mods back to the community, but let's be realistic how many companies (big and small and why am I not surprised Sony's doing this?!) are out there taking all this code and not providing back a single line to the community.

How many of those cheap little network appliances, MP3 players, etc out there are using Linux? Are they REALLY doing the right thing? Seriously doubt it.

How many open sauce developers out there are having their code used without a dime of compensation or credit?
"On some of the boards there is talk that if Sony are caught breaking the GLP it might have to open sauce the whole game."

Ico is a good game but I don't think it goes with open sauce.

/gets coat and leaves quickly!
It is only wrong to copy when it is their code or their IP, but then it is alright to copy others and not even acknowledge.

Nice double standards, nothing less from Sony...
"On some of the boards there is talk that if Sony are caught breaking the GLP it might have to open sauce the whole game."

That's ridiculous and not true. If you don't respect the GPL you simply may not distribute the GPLed work. So at worst Sony might not be allowed to distribute the game, and perhaps pay damages for the games that are all ready distributed, or something along that line. But there's nothing forcing Sony to release the whole game under the GPL too.

What might be true is that if Sony wants to keep using that GPLed software part, it needs to release the whole under the GPL. That's the whole point of GPL actually, that it's fine to distribute the software for free as long as the whole is released under the GPL and follows its conditions (like making the source code available). But there's nothing forcing them to use the GPLed software or to release their own code under the GPL if they don't want to.