GeoHot and Sony Settle PS3 Jailbreak Case

[JDKJ]

As I've said before in this thread, it may not be the most clear-cut case, but I think it's colorable and certainly enough to withstand a motion for failure to state a claim. And Hotz, obvious shit-bag that he is, ain't likely to be seen sympathetically by any jury. I'm not saying I'd actually sue him, but I'd be willing to risk the filing fees, if I had to. I don't think it's a straight-up loser. But reasonable mind can differ. And probably will.

I definitely agree with you there; the legal game being as it is today, there are very few straight-up losers.

Of course, the picture on the original article tends to disagree...

Not only have you tickled my funny bone with that one, but it does tend to prove my point: if you're gonna sue someone, then try to sue the straight-up loser.

And let's keep in mind that once I can get my foot in the courthouse door and survive initial motions to dismiss, I'll be entitled to discovery. It's not entirely impossible that discovery could reveal a "smoking gun" such as a more clear statement from Hotz evidencing his fraudulent intent. But if Ego Hot stays true to form, he'll probably tamper with or destroy the evidence.

 

[JDKJ]

He's donating the money to charity. Sort of a giant "FUCK YOU" to Sony. Not only did you guys have to give up, but guess what? Everyone will remember that you opposed the man that donated alot of cash to charity after getting it instead of keeping it.

The EFF is not a "charity." It may be a "non-profit" but it ain't a "charity."

 

[gundamrx101]

Sooo lemme get this straight, he decides to fight back against Sony and then wants to settle with them? As far as I know only those who are getting sued can make a settlement offer. Huh, some fighter for consumer rights. Well, at least it's over. For now anyway

 

[The Rockerfly]

To accurately sum up my feelings towards this case I will have to quote a great man

"Where's the boom? I was expecting a boom"

-Richard Nixon

 

[BrownGaijin]

While some may pass judgement on his decision to settle, I don't think I have enough knowledge to do the same, nor have I been in the situation that he is in (i.e. under the threat of being sued by a multinational corporation). It could have been a lot worse that's for sure. He could have been taken to court without the legal aid, and then where would we all end up?

The battle may have ended in a draw, but it still looks like anyone's game.

 

[Emergent]

No because hammers have other useful purposes, hacking is just used for illegal activities

There are quite a few universities and research centers using mass ps3 linux boxes for massive distributed processing. Hotz restored that functionality to the devices. How do we define useful, anyway? Does it have to be useful for everyone, or just some people? If the latter, how many people must find something beneficial before we say a thing is "useful"? Is a single number, above which a thing is useful, some kind of percentage of the population, or what?

 

[Macrobstar]

No because hammers have other useful purposes, hacking is just used for illegal activities

There are quite a few universities and research centers using mass ps3 linux boxes for massive distributed processing. Hotz restored that functionality to the devices. How do we define useful, anyway? Does it have to be useful for everyone, or just some people? If the latter, how many people must find something beneficial before we say a thing is "useful"? Is a single number, above which a thing is useful, some kind of percentage of the population, or what?

Well think of it like this, we can trust hotz to just use linux, but what about all the people he released the root key to?

 

[Emergent]

Well think of it like this, we can trust hotz to just use linux, but what about all the people he released the root key to?

What about them? There's literally nothing they can do with that root key more dangerous than what they could do with a screwdriver, table knife, hammer, or even a good sturdy rock. It takes a truly warped sense of priority to think that a society that can handle allowing it's free citizens to arm themselves with firearms and walk around with them in public is somehow threatened by the damage that could be caused if some stupid passcode to a bullshit electronic entertainment system gets released on the internet.

That a thing could in theory be used to hurt someone else (physically, financially, whatever) is literally, absolutely, no reason whatsoever to restrict it from the populace. This is a legal point that is so well established (for hundreds of years now!) that I can't believe I see it pop up at all on these forums or anywhere else. When discussing everything from knives to sharp sticks to machine guns, the legal precedent is that you punish those who abuse the technology or item, not those who manufacturer or design or release it, because any other system would stifle the creativity, innovation, and the free will of everyone involved, and in fact hurts the market far, far more than the minor harm caused by a few bad apples who abuse a good thing.

 

[Macrobstar]

Well think of it like this, we can trust hotz to just use linux, but what about all the people he released the root key to?

What about them? There's literally nothing they can do with that root key more dangerous than what they could do with a screwdriver, table knife, hammer, or even a good sturdy rock. It takes a truly warped sense of priority to think that a society that can handle allowing it's free citizens to arm themselves with firearms and walk around with them in public is somehow threatened by the damage that could be caused if some stupid passcode to a bullshit electronic entertainment system gets released on the internet.

That a thing could in theory be used to hurt someone else (physically, financially, whatever) is literally, absolutely, no reason whatsoever to restrict it from the populace. This is a legal point that is so well established (for hundreds of years now!) that I can't believe I see it pop up at all on these forums or anywhere else. When discussing everything from knives to sharp sticks to machine guns, the legal precedent is that you punish those who abuse the technology or item, not those who manufacturer or design or release it, because any other system would stifle the creativity, innovation, and the free will of everyone involved, and in fact hurts the market far, far more than the minor harm caused by a few bad apples who abuse a good thing.

No! the gun restriction analigy does not work, if you give someone a gun and they kill someone there will be emotional and moral ramifications, what exactly is stopping people from pirating? There are no moral ramifications so more people will do it because there is no deterrant, thats why sony needed to step in and stop them themselves

 

[Emergent]

No! the gun restriction analigy does not work, if you give someone a gun and they kill someone there will be emotional and moral ramifications, what exactly is stopping people from pirating? There are no moral ramifications so more people will do it because there is no deterrant, thats why sony needed to step in and stop them themselves

I can't tell if you're pulling my chain or not, lol. I would like to add that if there are really no moral ramifications, why is this even a problem?

 

[Macrobstar]

No! the gun restriction analigy does not work, if you give someone a gun and they kill someone there will be emotional and moral ramifications, what exactly is stopping people from pirating? There are no moral ramifications so more people will do it because there is no deterrant, thats why sony needed to step in and stop them themselves

I can't tell if you're pulling my chain or not, lol. I would like to add that if there are really no moral ramifications, why is this even a problem?

Why would I be pulling your chain? People who compare not allowing people to mod ps3s just in case of piracy to not allowing guns in case people murder someone are stupid, killing someone has ramifications, piracy does not
Its a problem because its taking something that isn't yours and supposedly losing businesses money, but unlike murder people won't feel guilty about pirating and will very rarely go to prison, so sony needs to step in and take its own precautions

 

[Emergent]

People who compare not allowing people to mod ps3s just in case of piracy to not allowing guns in case people murder someone are stupid, killing someone has ramifications, piracy does not
Its a problem because its taking something that isn't yours and supposedly losing businesses money, but unlike murder people won't feel guilty about pirating and will very rarely go to prison, so sony needs to step in and take its own precautions

Okay, I think I understand you now. What I meant by asking if you were pulling my chain or not is that, well, if no one's really getting hurt and there are no ramifications, well, uhm, why is piracy a problem? I don't mean it sarcastically, but as a genuine concern. This is about as close to a victimless crime as anyone can imagine (if it indeed is a crime), even you yourself felt the need to put "supposedly" before stating that even Sony was losing anything. There's no hard data that sales are hurt by piracy at all, and what little data there actually is (on music, not games) clearly indicates that unlicensed digital distribution of software actually seems to drive new sales.

Also, let's always please remember that Hotz is not a pirate. He doesn't pirate games, and the root key he released is not some kind of magic piracy button (in theory, by taking that key and going through many, many hours of research and extensive hardware modification you could then pirate a game, and in theory, some guys in Europe have done it, but at no point can you take what Hotz released, type or input it into a ps3, and play an unlicensed game with it). Sony hasn't ever even proven that anyone, anywhere, has used the root key to do anything illegal as yet. It is all pure speculation. That one "may" use Geo's released data to hurt Sony is some vague way they never really bothered to define is something that Sony expects everyone to just take their word for.

 

[Sikratua]

People who compare not allowing people to mod ps3s just in case of piracy to not allowing guns in case people murder someone are stupid, killing someone has ramifications, piracy does not
Its a problem because its taking something that isn't yours and supposedly losing businesses money, but unlike murder people won't feel guilty about pirating and will very rarely go to prison, so sony needs to step in and take its own precautions

Okay, I think I understand you now. What I meant by asking if you were pulling my chain or not is that, well, if no one's really getting hurt and there are no ramifications, well, uhm, why is piracy a problem? I don't mean it sarcastically, but as a genuine concern. This is about as close to a victimless crime as anyone can imagine (if it indeed is a crime), even you yourself felt the need to put "supposedly" before stating that even Sony was losing anything. There's no hard data that sales are hurt by piracy at all, and what little data there actually is (on music, not games) clearly indicates that unlicensed digital distribution of software actually seems to drive new sales.

Also, let's always please remember that Hotz is not a pirate. He doesn't pirate games, and the root key he released is not some kind of magic piracy button (in theory, by taking that key and going through many, many hours of research and extensive hardware modification you could then pirate a game, and in theory, some guys in Europe have done it, but at no point can you take what Hotz released, type or input it into a ps3, and play an unlicensed game with it). Sony hasn't ever even proven that anyone, anywhere, has used the root key to do anything illegal as yet. It is all pure speculation. That one "may" use Geo's released data to hurt Sony is some vague way they never really bothered to define is something that Sony expects everyone to just take their word for.

Firstly, Macrobstar said "moral ramification." People generally don't know when someone grabs a torrent off of Pirate Bay, and gets themselves Deathstars' new CD on a download. People generally do know when their little sister goes missing for a couple days, and is found with a few new holes in her torso. On a strict technical level, neither is more or less illegal than the other. Of course, there's the matter of severity of punishment, but they're both illegal.

And, while I'm looking over this post, I'd like to point one very minor thing out. The only evidence that people are going on when they say that George Hotz isn't a pirate is the word of George Hotz. That said, people, including Hotz, have used Hotz's code to use unlicensed operating systems on the PS3. Whether those OSs were legally obtained or not, they were never authorized to work in conjunction with the main operating system of the Playstation 3. So, placing that onto a PS3 IS piracy, by, what I admit to be, an extremely technical definition of the term.

The difference between music and video games, in this case is actually pretty basic. Price. If I were to torrent the latest Cruxshadows cd, and put it on my iPod, I would be able to play that for a friend. Knowing my friend's taste in music, that would likely convince him to stop by Best Buy or FYE on his way home, and pick it up, since he makes enough that a single CD can be considered an impulse buy, and not really do any damage to his finances.

On the other hand, if I were to do the same with Crysis 2, and my friend decided that he loved the game, there would be a bit more difficult decision to make, since the cost of that game could be prohibitive. So, frankly, this isn't an apples to apples comparison, and using one set of statistics, which, to be blunt, can't be proven or disproven, to attempt to judge the value of doing something very much unrelated to the first set of data points, is absurd.

"That one "may" use Geo's released data to hurt Sony is some vague way they never really bothered to define is something that Sony expects everyone to just take their word for." I'll end by pointing out that I'm FAR more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the claims of a company that is, to be frank, in the right here than I am to the claims of the hackers that violated that company's rights, and have already committed the acts they claim to not endorse.

 

[Emergent]

-snip-

From stating that Hotz must prove a negative in order to be cleared of a libelous charge of piracy to outright stating a belief that "Sony is in the right" as if it were some sort of determined fact, you've clearly already charged, tried, and sentenced the man in your own head. I most certainly disagree on just about every point you raise, and while I appreciate your opinion there isn't much left to say when you've so clearly made up your mind - and without any evidence having to be presented in court, either.

 

[Sikratua]

-snip-

From stating that Hotz must prove a negative in order to be cleared of a libelous charge of piracy to outright stating a belief that "Sony is in the right" as if it were some sort of determined fact, you've clearly already charged, tried, and sentenced the man in your own head. I most certainly disagree on just about every point you raise, and while I appreciate your opinion there isn't much left to say when you've so clearly made up your mind - and without any evidence having to be presented in court, either.

Nintendo v. Tengen

It is a violation of copyright law to reverse engineer the root key from an OS, with the intent of circumventing said root key. The precident is in the books. George Hotz openly stated that he hacked the PS3 root key. He openly declared that he used said root key to circumvent protections in the PS3 OS. The law on the matter is VERY black and white. Sony is in the right, and George Hotz is in the wrong. And, before I hear it again, the iPhone doesn't mean anything to this topic.

Morally, however, Hotz is a bit more in the grey area. That is, of course, if you believe that Hotz only began hacking the PS3 to put OtherOS back on the original PS3's. However, if you look at hte boxes in his videos on the subject, you'll see that those are boxes for the PS3 Slim, which never had OtherOS, to begin with. The only reason that I'm willing to place Hotz in the "grey area" is because, to the best of my knowledge, he never actually charged money to people for his hack.

All I need to decide who is in the right and who is in the wrong is a knowledge of applicable law, and Hotz's own words. Figuring this out.... It's really not that difficult. You should try it sometime.