South African newspaper Beeld is reporting that an unnamed man has been arrested for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 in Parktown, Johannesburg today. This marks the first time someone has been arrested for such a crime in the country. The raid was conducted by the South African Police Service's Commercial Crime Unit, after receiving criminal complaints from the South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT). Members of the police were assisted by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) Computer Forensics Lab. The police confiscated goods of around R100 000, or $14,000 USD, according to the paper.
Various computers, circumvention software packages, jailbreak USB devices, PS3 consoles and hard-drives were seized during the raid. In addition documentation, fake PS2 games and original PS3 games, believed to be employed as master copies, were also seized.
The unnamed suspect received bail this afternoon. Bail was set at R10 000, and his passport was confiscated. His next court appearance is set for September 29.
Comments
Re: South African Man Arrested for Jailbreaking PS3
I'm not really opposed to busting these big operations whose primary goal is obviously to make it possible to play pirated games and enable them to sell their customer's pirated games. It was reported he had a bunch of pirated games at his residence.
If an individual opens up their PS3 to run homebrew, or even to run pirated games, then such raids would be out of place. But when you are making a business of it then you open yourself up to these types of raids and criminal prosecution.