James Delahunty
28 Jun 2011 0:57
Unpopular Sony Chief Executive asserts connection between anti-piracy measures, and hacks targeting the company.
Howard Stringer told a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday that the company was targeted by hackers because it tried to protect its content against piracy. "We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames," Stringer said.
In April, the PlayStation Network (PSN) service was breached and details of up to 77 million user accounts were leaked. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Stringer finds motive in Sony's protection of its own corporate assets.
"These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don't want us to protect them, they want everything to be free," he said.
You have to wonder if Stringer includes the removal of the OtherOS feature from the PS3 under the umbrella of "protecting corporate assets", because of everything Sony has done in past years, that is clearly the move that riled up more tech-savvy PS3 users than any other.
Stringer also sidestepped a question from a shareholder about the possibility of him standing down so that the company could get a fresh start.