Geohot Claims He's Never Heard of Sony Computer Entertainment of America

[RicoADF]

Stupid ass. Damn near everyone in gaming knows what the SCEA is. This strikes me of that little bit of legislature that says that ignorance of a law does not make one free of it's consequences when that law is broken.

I didn't , but I'm in Australia and we get SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe). Which I guess would have given him a leg to stand on in Australia on jurisdiction grounds.

Am I the only one annoyed that the lawyer keeps referring to the console as the "PlayStation Computer"?

Yes because all consoles are "Computer Entertainment Systems", they are computer's (just specialized gaming ones)

I'm pretty sure all this info about SCEA and Sony Jurisdiction would be found in the EULA, ya know that thing you have to agree to before you can open a PSN account, Update the Firmware and use the device. If it isn't, then there may be a loop hole to be found yet... or exploited.

Well thats his whole defense, that he never created an account or went online and thus never read or agreed to said EULA.

It?s a pretty important point in terms of figuring out where the jurisdiction of this case should be.

I wonder what the deal is with California, does it have certain twists in the law that would give Sony a better chance than anywhere else?

They probably want to make it cost more for the case (if its in his local area then he can work and stay at home, California would require a hotel etc)

But if he didn't know murder was wrong and kills someone, should he be able to play the ignorance card? He knows hacking is wrong. His excuse doesn't fly.

Hacking devices have been deemed by US law as legal as long as it isn't specifically for illegal purposes (aka piracy). So what he did (hacking to make it possible for people to install their own legal software on the PS3) is technically legal. This ignorance tho is about jurisdiction, and as stated above Sony is trying to win by burning his funds because they know they'd lose in court.

 

[JDKJ]

Fine by me but i was correcting a statement you made, im a console hacker, but i buy my games, so how does hacking not make me an honest gamer? I hack my consoles because i can since i purchased it but since i still buy my games and dlc how am i not honest? My wii can now play dvd's, games i buy from nintendo can now be saved onto a flash drive, my playstation 3 can play ps1 ps2 and ps3 games that i already own as well as using a 1tb hard drive to store music and movies i ripped from my own dvd's and blurays again how is that not an honest gamer?

If you are going to make statements like "I hack my consoles because can since purchased it," you may want to go easy on accusations of ignorance and obtusiveness. You have no recognized legal right to hack the software in a game console solely because you purchased the game console. In fact, you haven't even purchased that software. You use it merely as a licensee. It ain't your property. It remains the property of the licensor.

And if you are making copies of your DVDs, I don't know if that makes you a dishonest gamer but it does make you a copyright infringer.

I can edit any software on my system of my desire as long as its not for comercial gain, and personal use the same goes for copying movies for personal use. I havent done anything illegal and sony cant come into my house and sue me for clocking or editing software for better performance or unlocked or upgraded features. Ofcourse i void the warranty but look up when apple tried to sue a jailbreaker for the same reason and why they failed.

You really shouldn't be calling anyone ignorant. No more than the pot should call a kettle black.

To begin with, "commercial gain" is not a requirement of copyright infringement. You can most certainly infringe someone's copyright notwithstanding that you don't make a red penny in so doing. That's just Copyright Law 101 (a course I suspect you've never taken).

Secondly and similarly, "commercial gain" isn't a requirement of, for example, the DMCA. You can most certainly modify software and run afoul of the DMCA notwithstanding that you don't make a red penny in so doing. Again, that's just Copyright Law 101 (I've already expressed my suspicions that you've never taken this course)

Thirdly and as some unsolicited advice, you should be more reluctant to tell someone to "look up" something unless you're entirely certain that the person to whom you're doing the telling is in fact in need of doing the advised "looking up." If not, you run the risk of coming off as nothing more than a presumptuous twit. I don't need to "look up" the iPhone jailbreak case. If you scroll back in this thread, you'll see where I quote the U.S. Copyright Office's decision in that case and explain its legal implications to the PS3 jailbreak case (implication that are not wholly analogous). Thanks for the advice, but I already have more than a passing familiarity with the facts of that case.

 

[JDKJ]

Can we get another non Seth Green photo of this guy? He looks so stupid I can't take it seriously if he was battle Sony over putting a PS3 agreement of stealing your first born child.


But as it goes the licensing agreements still need to go, they are a wee bit to invasive. And I always doubted the control they try and exert past stealing free games and cheating.


Think the point is, if you call it a Sony playstation, have no label of SCEA blatantly on the box he's saying they can't even communicate their claim of manufacture.

It's silly, but the point is unless you read 50 pages of agreement written in a lawyer language normal people wouldn't understand your not required to agree to it. Which I would say works, if the common man or woman with a normal education can't understand all that babble then the company is hiding something and chances are their agreement is crossing the bounds.

Have you ever read the PS3's EULA? Based on your erroneous assertions, I suspect that you haven't. It isn't written in legalese that only a lawyer can understand. It's actually written in plain English that anyone with at least a high school education should be perfectly capable of understanding. And it's nowhere near 50 pages in length. It's more like 5 pages, if that. See http://www.scei.co.jp/ps3-eula/ps3_eula_en.html.

I fear you suffer from the same failure that so many disgruntled PS3 owners also apparently suffer: failing to read the PS3's EULA in the first place.

Ohh a bad troll. Your so cool,

Sarcasm is an art. Some would say -- and the evidence would seem to suggest -- that it is a lost art. Or, at least, an art at which not all of us can be proficient.

 

[rickynumber24]

Ladies and gentlemen, your freedom fighter! Putting down the hated EULA by using legal loopholes and claiming ignorance rather then addressing the inherent problem. Truly this is the man who you want fighting your moral battles!

Sorry, sorry but as this case drags out this guy is just looking more and more silly and the idea that he's going to get out without even addressing the issue everyone wanted to see addressed is so ironic. Of course I would think they can sift through forum posts, blogs and such to find some reference to SCEA somewhere. Then again maybe of of his games has a title movie that says "Sony computer entertainment of America" too. That'd be hard to explain.

Unfortunately, the problem is, it's almost certainly harder to fight the EULA, because people have actually lost the argument that an end-user license agreement is unenforceable before, even though EULAs are stupid, than it is to claim "I never read the EULA so you can't enforce it on me!" ... especially if it does turn out that they can't prove he was supposed to have read it. I'm with you that EULAs, at least the way they're written these days, need to be taken out back and shot, though.

Apparently, the judge basically gave Sony a blank check to search for proof that his computers ever accessed PSN or had the SDK on them. (Although, it turns out that the SDK is a red herring: SCEA isn't actually a subsidiary of Sony Japan, and it is merely licensed to sell Sony Japan's stuff in the US.) Of course, if something does turn up, it's going to look very, very bad for Mr. Hotz.

One last thing... Because it annoys me, I feel the need to point out that your persistence in assuming that, if he got a PS3, it was to play games on it is baseless. People have gotten them almost purely to use as a DVD player before, just because they're apparently competitive with other Blu-Ray players, and it's an incredibly cool piece of hardware. Until someone proves otherwise, I'm going to assume that he never ran a single game on it, and he probably didn't play any video discs that couldn't be decoded by DeCSS, either. (He probably did use his iPhone as a phone, though...)

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

I hadn't heard about the SCEA until just now. I'm not as involved with PS3 as he is, but it is plausible.

 

[KalosCast]

Someone should inform Geohot and his lawyer that contract law doesn't work that way.

 

[The Apothecarry]

Bullshit. Just bullshit. Next he'll be saying he's never heard of Microsoft.

 

[Olrod]

So... are the American Sony and the Japanese Sony the same company, or do they just have the same name?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Stupid ass. Damn near everyone in gaming knows what the SCEA is.

If everyone else knows what SCEA is, could you enlighten me? I can tell you some of the things they aren't, but beyond suing people for legal activities, I have no clue as to what else they do. They certainly don't sell PS3s, they don't write the firmware/OS software, they aren't a subsidiary of Sony, they don't market the PS3... need I go on?

They're the company that publishes most 2nd Party Sony company games (Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio). They also DO market for the PS3 and are a Subsidiary of Sony. How could a company called Sony Computer Entertainment of America not be a Sony subsidiary? Research before you post.

 

[ekkaman]

Ignorance doesn't shield you from the law.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

He's not right. He's less wrong than Sony, however. So there you have it.

He might be less 'wrong' than Sony morally, from your perspective.
In terms of actual legality - despite the fact that both cases are pretty shaky - Sony have quite the upper hand.

???
How so?

+1

Sony is fucked. How exactly are they going to prove something intangible like prior knowledge of a company's existence?

Sony doesn't have to prove that he knew of the SCEA was a company. That's a very poor attempt at a loophole by his lawyers. That's not how the law works. All Sony has to prove is that he knew he was breaking the law. Not knowing that a company exists is not going to get a court case thrown out. I can tell you that from currently being a law student. What next? "Sorry, I didn't know Wal-Mart was a company when I torched the place."

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I think people who have no fucking clue on how the law and application of the law works should avoid posting. It's not about oppinions and what you think, it's about facts, evidence and well, what you can prove. Plus in this case, it's only the preliminaries to determine where to hold the trial... THIS ISN'T A TRIAL YET!

So far every person calling Geohot a liar missed the point by a lightyear, and those saying he deserves to lose don't understand that if he does lose the case, It'll make a precedent where manufacturers will be able to sue their consumers!

Would you imagine being sued for modifying your car? Well you should have read the lease/sale contract! Oh but you just wanted the airbag and seatbelts back, those that they removed on a recall update? Though shit, you're going down the slammer!

Really shows that the average age of the users are well under 16 years old.

my two cents.

Funny how you bash people for not knowing the law, meanwhile completely missing the point on why this guy is being sued. I like the car analogy but this ain't about modding. This is about a guy who hacked security and posted what he stole online. It's now an issue of, "I can't mod my car." It's and issue of, "I can't hack the OnStar on said car to access the company's information and distribute it as my own." Major difference in what's going on. Don't tell people they have no business posting because they don't know the law when you don't even know what the hell he's being sued for.

 

[JDKJ]

Ladies and gentlemen, your freedom fighter! Putting down the hated EULA by using legal loopholes and claiming ignorance rather then addressing the inherent problem. Truly this is the man who you want fighting your moral battles!

Sorry, sorry but as this case drags out this guy is just looking more and more silly and the idea that he's going to get out without even addressing the issue everyone wanted to see addressed is so ironic. Of course I would think they can sift through forum posts, blogs and such to find some reference to SCEA somewhere. Then again maybe of of his games has a title movie that says "Sony computer entertainment of America" too. That'd be hard to explain.

Unfortunately, the problem is, it's almost certainly harder to fight the EULA, because people have actually lost the argument that an end-user license agreement is unenforceable before, even though EULAs are stupid, than it is to claim "I never read the EULA so you can't enforce it on me!" ... especially if it does turn out that they can't prove he was supposed to have read it. I'm with you that EULAs, at least the way they're written these days, need to be taken out back and shot, though.

Apparently, the judge basically gave Sony a blank check to search for proof that his computers ever accessed PSN or had the SDK on them. (Although, it turns out that the SDK is a red herring: SCEA isn't actually a subsidiary of Sony Japan, and it is merely licensed to sell Sony Japan's stuff in the US.) Of course, if something does turn up, it's going to look very, very bad for Mr. Hotz.

One last thing... Because it annoys me, I feel the need to point out that your persistence in assuming that, if he got a PS3, it was to play games on it is baseless. People have gotten them almost purely to use as a DVD player before, just because they're apparently competitive with other Blu-Ray players, and it's an incredibly cool piece of hardware. Until someone proves otherwise, I'm going to assume that he never ran a single game on it, and he probably didn't play any video discs that couldn't be decoded by DeCSS, either. (He probably did use his iPhone as a phone, though...)

"SCEA isn't actually a subsidiary of Sony Japan, and it is merely licensed to sell Sony Japan's stuff in the US."

Wow. That statement is impressive in the extent to which is 100% utterly and completely wrong. You haven't left yourself an inch of room in which to be more wrong.

"Based in Foster City, California, SCEA serves as headquarters for all North American operations and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America Inc." Source: http://us.playstation.com/corporate/about/

"Sony Corporation of America, based in New York, NY, is the U.S. subsidiary of Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan." Source: http://www.sony.com/SCA/index.shtml

Call me crazy if you want, but the last time I checked, a wholly-owned subsidiary (let's call it Corporation A) of a wholly-owned subsidiary (let's call it Corporation B) owned by a parent corporation (let's call it Corporation C) makes the subsidiary Corporation A the wholly-owned subsidiary of the parent Corporation C.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Fine by me but i was correcting a statement you made, im a console hacker, but i buy my games, so how does hacking not make me an honest gamer? I hack my consoles because i can since i purchased it but since i still buy my games and dlc how am i not honest? My wii can now play dvd's, games i buy from nintendo can now be saved onto a flash drive, my playstation 3 can play ps1 ps2 and ps3 games that i already own as well as using a 1tb hard drive to store music and movies i ripped from my own dvd's and blurays again how is that not an honest gamer?

If you are going to make statements like "I hack my consoles because can since purchased it," you may want to go easy on accusations of ignorance and obtusiveness. You have no recognized legal right to hack the software in a game console solely because you purchased the game console. In fact, you haven't even purchased that software. You use it merely as a licensee. It ain't your property. It remains the property of the licensor.

And if you are making copies of your DVDs, I don't know if that makes you a dishonest gamer but it does make you a copyright infringer.

I can edit any software on my system of my desire as long as its not for comercial gain, and personal use the same goes for copying movies for personal use. I havent done anything illegal and sony cant come into my house and sue me for clocking or editing software for better performance or unlocked or upgraded features. Ofcourse i void the warranty but look up when apple tried to sue a jailbreaker for the same reason and why they failed.

You really shouldn't be calling anyone ignorant. No more than the pot should call a kettle black.

To begin with, "commercial gain" is not a requirement of copyright infringement. You can most certainly infringe someone's copyright notwithstanding that you don't make a red penny in so doing. That's just Copyright Law 101 (a course I suspect you've never taken).

Secondly and similarly, "commercial gain" isn't a requirement of, for example, the DMCA. You can most certainly modify software and run afoul of the DMCA notwithstanding that you don't make a red penny in so doing. Again, that's just Copyright Law 101 (I've already expressed my suspicions that you've never taken this course)

Thirdly and as some unsolicited advice, you should be more reluctant to tell someone to "look up" something unless you're entirely certain that the person to whom you're doing the telling is in fact in need of doing the advised "looking up." If not, you run the risk of coming off as nothing more than a presumptuous twit. I don't need to "look up" the iPhone jailbreak case. If you scroll back in this thread, you'll see where I quote the U.S. Copyright Office's decision in that case and explain its legal implications to the PS3 jailbreak case (implication that are not wholly analogous). Thanks for the advice, but I already have more than a passing familiarity with the facts of that case.

Sir, you are one of 5 people who seems to know what the hell is going on with this case. For that I salute you. It's sad to see people who are half right bash others with their half truths.

 

[CronoT]

It aint true but how are they gonna prove it..lie detectors..lawls those aren't 100% so they can never 100% prove it.

Since Lie Detectors are not 100% accurate, and must be interpreted by the person administering it, ie, it cannot be objectively measured on its own merits, they aren't allowed in as evidence in courts of law in the US. US Gov't agencies use them, but that's their own internal thing. Also, a civil employer cannot compel you to take, fire you for refusing to take, or fire you over the outcome of a Lie Detector session in the US. Of course, there are about a million ways to get around that, so there you go.

Because they were pretty is perfectly plausible to me. I know I'D do that. ;D

I saw a Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition Nintendo Power special in a store about a year ago. It has some really nice posters in it, so I was thinking of buying two; one for the posters, and one to keep mint. That was, until I found out they cost $10 each. So, I can easily see this being done.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Text

I will agree that it could make a good blue-ray player but as a DVD player it would be pretty expensive. There are cheap DVD player that cost a while lot less then a PS3. Blue-ray player though, yeah there up there so you could use it as a good blue-ray player. I think this whole thing would be far more interesting if he never intended to ever play a game on it actually. Although I'm not sure what kind of root key shenanigans he can get up to with a Blue-Ray/DVD player/multimedia center.

EDIT: whoops, messed up my tags, sorry dude or dudette.

 

[Loviathan]

He's not right. He's less wrong than Sony, however. So there you have it.

He might be less 'wrong' than Sony morally, from your perspective.
In terms of actual legality - despite the fact that both cases are pretty shaky - Sony have quite the upper hand.

???
How so?

+1

Sony is fucked. How exactly are they going to prove something intangible like prior knowledge of a company's existence?

Sony doesn't have to prove that he knew of the SCEA was a company. That's a very poor attempt at a loophole by his lawyers. That's not how the law works. All Sony has to prove is that he knew he was breaking the law. Not knowing that a company exists is not going to get a court case thrown out. I can tell you that from currently being a law student. What next? "Sorry, I didn't know Wal-Mart was a company when I torched the place."

Doesn't Sony's case rely on him breaching the ELUA(a form of contract)? If they cannot prove that he knew of the existance of SCEA then there is no way he could be found to have had a 'meeting of the minds'(Required for a contract in the US) with them. If no contract exists then no remedies will be available under contract, therefore, Sony will have to file for damages under torts. This would be alot harder for them to prove.

 

[Drake_Dercon]

Just goes to show... something. I hope Sony learns its lesson and prints the PRECISE company name in very big letters on the front of everything. That'll make everyone happy.

 

[JDKJ]

He's not right. He's less wrong than Sony, however. So there you have it.

He might be less 'wrong' than Sony morally, from your perspective.
In terms of actual legality - despite the fact that both cases are pretty shaky - Sony have quite the upper hand.

???
How so?

+1

Sony is fucked. How exactly are they going to prove something intangible like prior knowledge of a company's existence?

Sony doesn't have to prove that he knew of the SCEA was a company. That's a very poor attempt at a loophole by his lawyers. That's not how the law works. All Sony has to prove is that he knew he was breaking the law. Not knowing that a company exists is not going to get a court case thrown out. I can tell you that from currently being a law student. What next? "Sorry, I didn't know Wal-Mart was a company when I torched the place."

Doesn't Sony's case rely on him breaching the ELUA(a form of contract)? If they cannot prove that he knew of the existance of SCEA then there is no way he could be found to have had a 'meeting of the minds'(Required for a contract in the US) with them. If no contract exists then no remedies will be available under contract, therefore, Sony will have to file for damages under torts. This would be alot harder for them to prove.

A claim based on SCEA's EULA and TOS is but one of numerous claims that SCEA's complaint against Hotz raises. They've also raised violation of the DMCA, the tort of conversion (conduct inconsistent with the property rights of another), etc., etc., etc.

But all that doesn't matter at this point in the litigation. The substantive issues raised by SCEA's claims aren't even being addressed at this point. At this point, the issue is one of personal jurisdiction (i.e., whether SCEA can properly sue Hotz in a California court). The whole "I've never heard of a SCEA and have no idea what it is" is Hotz' defense to the exercise of a California court's jurisdiction over him. This is because for personal jurisdiction to exist, SCEA must establish that Hotz' alleged conduct was purposefully aimed at the State of California and that SCEA has suffered injury in the State of California from the alleged conduct. Hotz is saying, in effect, that he could not have purposefully caused SCEA an injury in the State of California because at the time of the alleged conduct he'd never heard of SCEA (a dumb-ass defense if ever there was one, in my opinion).

 

[qeinar]

ahh, legal loopholes, they're so much fun, but seriously. How can you be a hacker and not know who exactly is trying to fight against your hacking

Well it's quite obvious he does, but it's hard to prove something like that, unless they find a picture of him looking at some paper where he is informed of them, but then he could claim that he did infact not read it. : P