Legal battles are part of the busniess solutions to problems of competition and perceived unfair threats to business operations. Clearly Sony's legal gurus think they have more to work with here than the other console and phone hacks that haven't been successfully prosecuted, otherwise they surely wouldn't bother because they haven't a leg to stand on as there's so much precedent supporting the rights of consumers to open up access to run software not intended by the hardware manufacturer on said hardware.
Also fixing and patching the exploit, if at all possible, generally only delays future hacks. A successful prosecution would be a warning to future hackers that they may think what they are doing is above board, but they may be liable. Of course that won't stop hacking, but would you sit back, do nothing, and say, "well we can't stop them, and we can't win, so we'll do nothing at all, not even pursue the moral victory of getting a couple of them prosecuted"?
Edit: As for nationalities, Sony has arms in every market and can bring about proceedings as needed; no need for extradition.
To briefly reply your post, I agree with what
RobertR1 said. I don't understand why so few companies seem to deal correctly with these weighty subjects - it really bugs me.
As a consumer, I bought a piece of hardware and I should be freely allowed to do what I want with it. Sony provides a service (PSN) which requires my hardware to be in compliance with their standards. If they detect that I'm out of complaince, then they are free to ban me from the service. I absolutely agree with that. However, there have no grounds to tell me what I can and can't do with the hardware I purchased. It's not a lease, it's a purchase. They will lose hard if they take the stance that "you bought the hardware and we dictate exactly how you use it."
If you buy a piece of hardware you can do whatever you want with it. There's nothing the law can do against that simple principle.
I mean that if I want to throw my PS3, 360 or Wii console on the floor, thus breaking it, there's nothing stopping me from doing so. If they don't want me to harm the console then Sony would have to make it unbreakable.
If I buy a PS3, 360 or Wii and I want to hack it then Sony and so on better make the console impossible to hack, because if not I am going to hack it pretty badly.
Two weeks after I bought my first PC, which costed 3.000€ back in 1995.
I opened it with a screwdriver just to see its components. I couldn't help curiosity. I left the screwdriver inside without realizing and when I tried to switch it on I fried some components. Of course none of the manufacturers of the components would be so keen on giving me new components because it was my mistake, and my choice, to rummage about in the innards of my PC.
The point is that the law can't do much about it if there's a flaw in a product -X360 DVD drive firmware, Wii security system, etc-. If the law wanted to punish me for raking through my PC and send me to some rehabilitation centre for lack of self control then they would also give me new components for free and rehabilitate me. It's the same with hacking. It makes no sense to me punishing someone because they hacked a hackeable system.
So now Sony's lawyers get to run around like maniacs who have been shit on way too many times lately and are fed up with it for some weeks and chase down hackers for special permission numbers that they only might get.
