The basic idea behind all of this has been around for several years now. Video game consoles basically became specialized computers that only played certain games produced by the maker of that console. It is in the best interest of the video game console makers (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) to control what will and won't run on their console.

The "Private Cryptography Key" is something that essentially gives access to override the lockouts that would keep you from playing...say, a pirated or bootlegged copy of a game. Clearly, the big console makers would be against this, but it is something that is very difficult to protect against as they are letting their hardware and software out into the public by the millions. The key is unique to either a number of consoles made in the same batch or to a single console in particular. It allows "programmer" level access to the console. I highly recommend not messing with this stuff as it could damage your console...and the companies will rarely replace/ repair a console that was damaged while trying to hack their system (especially since they consider it illegal...)

To be fair, there are some people out there who want to "break" (hack, override) their consoles just so they can run something they want that isn't offered by the console maker, like Linux. Some people use their video game consoles as computers once they bypass the code that is supposed to prevent such use of the console. Others use features like these to program or work on their own programming projects.

For the most part, this will have no impact on you unless you are interested in playing pirated game copies (can't help you there) or wish to do things with your console that have little to do with gaming. One side-effect of people hacking the code is that it "encourages" Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo to make "firmware updates" that supposedly fix those exploits every so often. They can be a pain to install, occasionally need to be patched repeatedly to debug problems caused by the update, etc. It's a cycle that will probably never end.

It means that they can sign games to work on the ps3 as if it was sony making them. Bad news for Sony. I kind of feel sorry for them. Expect a ps4 coming soon. I wonder how they will market it. The economy is bad right know, What will sony do?