Australian ban on PS3 hack extended to September 3

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A temporary ban on the sale of the PS Jailbreak device, a USB stick that overrides PlayStation 3 security and allows game discs to be copied, has been extended until Friday, September 3 when a Federal Court hearing will take place.

PS Jailbreak overrides the PlayStation 3's notoriously tight security setup and lets users rip games from their retail discs, installing them directly on the console's hard drive.

Though this allows for faster loading times, it also opens the machine up to the threat of widespread piracy, depriving game developers of a financial return on their work, in the same way that the PS Jailbreak manufacturers are threatened by the expected emergence of copycat gizmos, should the crack remain unpatched by Sony.

Sony had previously been granted an injunction preventing the import or sale of the USB modchip prior to a court hearing arranged for August 31, though that date has now been rescheduled for later in the week.

In contrast to Sony's handheld PSP, which has been subject to a running battle between hackers and Sony's software updates and hardware revisions, the PlayStation 3 has remained largely untouched by hackers in the four years since its November 2006 debut.

In January, a rare security hole was discovered that made use of the PlayStation 3's ability to run Windows alternative operating system Linux. In response, Sony removed the entire OtherOS capability two months later via a mandatory online update issued to all PS3s with it still in place.