Sony puts hacker in the dog-house

NEWS Sony Electronics has come down hard on a website devoted to its popular robot dog Aibo for publishing code that violates the consumer electronics giant's copyright. Sony has invoked the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force the enthusiast that runs the site to remove the code. A letter to the hacker, written by Sony vice president Victor Matsuda on 24 October and posted on the site aibopet.com, accepts the code still required users to buy Sony software, but dismissed this as a defence for the hacker's actions. The hacker removed all of the controversial code from his site, but protests that none of it contravened the DMCA. This is the latest in a growing number of instances where the DMCA has been used to gag enthusiasts intent on tinkering with electronic copy protection measures and publishing their results.