Microsoft learned a lesson from Sony "Do NOT hunt hackers"

Microsoft has chosen to "nurture" the talents of a 14-year-old boy who attempted to hack into the company online gaming network, Xbox Live, rather than slap the kid with lawsuits. The lawsuit approach to hackers is presumed to have led to Sony online game network being crippled for nearly a month.

Microsoft has clearly learned from Sony lesson, because Xbox Live competes directly with Sony PlayStation Network along with other online networks that sell games and demos like Valve’s Steam network for the PC and Mac computers. Sony lost around $171 million while the network was down for 24 days. The PlayStation Store, a critical service for Sony that lets it sell games and distribute them digitally, still remains offline.

Online hacktivist group Anonymous, which routinely takes up political causes like defending Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, brought Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) online gaming network to its knees with a distributed denial of service attack as part of "OpSony." The group attacked Sony because the company tried to prosecute George Hotz, a 21-year-old hacker who modified his PlayStation 3 to install unauthorized software a process called jailbreaking the device.