UPDATE: PS3 Hacker GeoHot Claims He's on Vacation

[Snooder]

Can't pay the fine, don't do the crime.

By being a rebel he has to accept certain conditions.

Begging for money and then frivolously wasting your own money is in very bad taste.

It doesn't matter how expensive legal fees are. Is it my responsibility to pay your speeding ticket? If you beg me for help and I give you money, and you go out and buy a paint job, are you being a good steward of your money/respecting what's been given you?

NO you aren't.

Edit:

The point is, the guy claims he needs financial help.

He receives help from kind hearted people.

We then learn he can afford 4 PS3s and a trip to south america.

*Note I did not personally donate anything

He's a deceptive thief and he deserves to lose this lawsuit, it is criminally obvious his intentions with the rootkey are for piracy.

Ok, so by that logic, if he's living in a house right now (probably not, but bear with me) he should sell it and use all that money on legal fees? Or if he has a car, he should sell that too? Maybe the money he was planning to spend on tuition and living expenses next year should go to his defense of a suit that he didn't plan on or initiate?

It's not like he went out and bought a new car or a new house or something. He went a vacation that he already paid and planned for, on spring break, like most other people do. Even the pleading by the SCEA lawyers didn't put the spin on it that the media did. What the pleading said, if you actually read it, was:

"When SCEA echoed TIG's request that the components of the hard drives be deliverd immediately, Hotz's counsel responded that Hotz was in South America"

That's it, no "fleeing the country", no "he's trying to evade justice", just "he's out of town this weekend."

Regardless of your personal feelings about the merits of the entire case, the issue at hand, whether he should be able to take a week's vacation during a civil suit, is pretty obvious. Yes he should. People do it all the time, and unless someone writes a misleading and highly slanted article about it that spreads around the media, it's not an issue.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

>implying that Geohot didn't book and pay for the vacation back in November
>implying that airlines and vacation companies will refund your money in any case short of the apocalypse

FFS people, look at the timeline here.

 

[Snooder]

I don't think you quite understand just how expensive legal fees can get.

Standard rate these days for an average lawyer is 200-300 an hour. The top shelf guys are charging $1000 an hour, but that tends to be for specialized IP and tax stuff. Even if Geohot is only paying $200 an hour, with all the motions and filings back and forth, he's probably looking at $50,000 and attorney fees and court costs. The cost of a $500 ticket and maybe a $200 hotel that he already paid for months before has nothing to do with the current and prospective costs of his legal defense.

I know legal fees are expensive, thats why instead of buying souvenir shirts and drinks in some bar in South America, he should be using that money to pay help pay for his own legal fees with his traveling money, instead of having his supporters pay for his responsibility, essentially using his supporters to completely pay for his legal troubles and not forking over any of his own dough.

But that's the whole point of taking donations. So that instead of going broke and having to file bankruptcy someone else foots the bill.

Keep in mind, he's the defendant. Sony sued him. If we accept the position that what he did was legal, then why should he have to pay any of his own money just to defend that? The reason people are donating money to his legal defense fund isn't just because they like him, or because they think he needs the money, it's because someone has to fight the suit so that we establish a legal precedent for the rights of consumers to modify their own, legally bought, hardware. And if Geohot loses the suit because he couldn't afford a lawyer, then that goal of protecting consumers becomes even harder.

 

[Shadesong]

Snip

You, I need to buy you a drink; and welcome to The Escapist.

 

[Snooder]

Ok, so by that logic, if he's living in a house right now (probably not, but bear with me) he should sell it and use all that money on legal fees? Or if he has a car, he should sell that too? Maybe the money he was planning to spend on tuition and living expenses next year should go to his defense of a suit that he didn't plan on or initiate?

Yes, he absolutely should, he knew the implications of pissing of a major corporation with a team of lawyers in their pay roll. Using your supporters to pay for you legal fees while you are out having fun is very effed up. If he's willing to beg for money, then he should put some of his own in the pot.

Ok. Think about what you just wrote.

If I decide to switch from Comcast to AT&T, or god help me, create a new competing internet company, I'll be pissing off a major corporation with a team of lawyers on their payroll. Doesn't matter that I'm perfectly in the right to do whatever I plan to do, they're going to sue because it threatens their bottom line. However, unless I'm a similarly large corporation, I can't defend that suit on my own. Even if I win, I'll be tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole. This means I won't bother trying to do anything because the costs of defending the inevitable suit are greater than I can personally bear.

Do you see how that scenario is a bad one? Do you see how forcing individuals to ruin themselves to defend possibly bad suits from corporations makes the country as a whole worse?

 

[Subzerowings]

He left his home and family to escape legal proscecution?
I would actually agree with him if the punishment included imprisonment, though I'm not aware about the specifics of this case.
In the end, he did what he thought was right and I think that is commendable.
I will not be the judge of morality.

People generally do what they think is right, that doesn't make them moral giants. If I was a professional thief I'd think it was all fair and dandy to steal. RIGHT, even. That doesn't make doing it commendable.

What is commendable is, like morality, subjective. This is why you can't proclaim that something is commendable or not, only that you think it is or not. That is what I believe.

 

[gundamrx101]

Rather than make an update I'll just post this right here. No matter what he says he's still a s*** disturber. Everything would have been fine if he didn't post the rootkey. Don't give me any of that 'It's on the hardware' bullcrap.

Why the fuck not? It's software that's on his shit. We should be allowed to mess with our shit to our heart's content because it's OUR shit.

As for his 'TEH FURDIM' attitude. He's not in it for the freedom. No shut it. You know how to cover the fact you illiegally obtained a product and then illiegally distributed it? For freedom. It's amazing how you can make anything a 'freedom' fight.

Yeah it amazing that when someone tries to tell you that you can't do certain things with your property people will try to claim that violates freedom. Or not.

Expect freedom isn't the issue at all. He pulled it into this argument and like 'revolutionists' everyone ate it up. The truth behind this case is to see if he broke the User Agreement AND then distributed software no one except Sony has a claim to.

Did you purchase the firmware? Does Sony charge us update fees when they introduce a new firmware update? No. Why? Because we didn't purchase the firmware. Yes we have the hardware, even Sony would admit to that. We don't own the software. That's the real issue that's at the center of it. That's why this whole 'freedom' thing is out of proportion. He stole a piece of code and distributed it.

 

[James Raynor]

The point is, the guy claims he needs financial help.

He receives help from kind hearted people.

We then learn he can afford 4 PS3s and a trip to south america.

*Note I did not personally donate anything

He's a deceptive thief and he deserves to lose this lawsuit, it is criminally obvious his intentions with the rootkey are for piracy.

My father charges 200$ an HOUR for his legal work, and that's considered to be under paid. Consider how long this has been gonig on for and it can burn a rather large hole in your pocket. I mean the money it costs to get a PS3 will MAYBE get a lawyer to work for you for a couple of hours, if that. If he's employing really top of the line employees to give himself a shot at winning the prices skyrocket too.

 

[esperandote]

Who would EVER take a picture of themselves that.. douchéy?

I think it's a screen of the rap video he made.

 

[Snooder]

Expect freedom isn't the issue at all. He pulled it into this argument and like 'revolutionists' everyone ate it up. The truth behind this case is to see if he broke the User Agreement AND then distributed software no one except Sony has a claim to.

Did you purchase the firmware? Does Sony charge us update fees when they introduce a new firmware update? No. Why? Because we didn't purchase the firmware. Yes we have the hardware, even Sony would admit to that. We don't own the software. That's the real issue that's at the center of it. That's why this whole 'freedom' thing is out of proportion. He stole a piece of code and distributed it.

Except that he didn't steal Sony's firmware. Nobody is claiming that he copied the official firmware and sold it under a different name. What he did was to create his own firmware. Which is an entirely separate thing. It's the difference between selling bootleg copies of OSX (clearly illegal) and selling a linux distro that can run on Apple computers (clearly legal).

And I think I speak for many others when I say that idea of "we don't own the software", especially when applied to locked down hardware where the software and hardware are firmly integrated, is more than a little disturbing. For example, I know many people who install custom firmware for their cheap linksys routers to give them more functionality. Or people who install Apache on an old desktop computer with a raid controller to use as a home media server. If those are legal, then why can't I alter my own, legally bought and paid for PS3, to browse the web or install different video codecs or play computer games from my tv? That is freedom. And that's always been at the heart of this.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Post based on updated article:

Not surprised at all to learn Sony lied about him fleeing the country to try and get away from the case, and that them (hopefully) getting their asses kicked for this "you don't own your purchased console" bullshit is still a priority.
Now to wait for his lawyers to prove that it's not his PSN account either (as Sony has yet to prove WHO created it, just WHERE it was created).

You're gravely misinformed. It's not an issue of "you don't own your purchased console." It's an issue of this guy put up a key the breaches the security of the firmware. You don't own the firmware. Get that through your head. If the customer owned the firmware, then the customer would also have to own the PSN Store and be in charge of all the servers used for online gaming. That's clearly not the case. Also Sony didn't lie. They said he was in S.America. Never said anything about him fleeing. That's in the title of the article, not Sony's words. Your veiws on this situation are very, very flawed.

 

[esperandote]

Maybe a stupid question but is "You will no make public the PS3 root key" in the EULA?

 

[esperandote]

Who would EVER take a picture of themselves that.. douchéy?

I think it's a screen of the rap video he made.

pics video or it didn't happen :L

Sure, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107733-Sued-PS3-Hacker-GeoHot-Responds-With-Rap

Edit: yup, it's 0:37

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

The point is, the guy claims he needs financial help.

He receives help from kind hearted people.

We then learn he can afford 4 PS3s and a trip to south america.

Selling all of which would get him, mhh, a competent lawyer for about 3 hours or so.
So the idea that he needs financial help is obviously silly.

My father charges 200$ an HOUR for his legal work, and that's considered to be under paid. Consider how long this has been gonig on for and it can burn a rather large hole in your pocket. I mean the money it costs to get a PS3 will MAYBE get a lawyer to work for you for a couple of hours, if that. If he's employing really top of the line employees to give himself a shot at winning the prices skyrocket too.

I think the problem is that most people on the Escapist are students or some such, who tend to have not the best grasp on dimensions when it comes to money.
The idea that 4 PS3 and a Springbreak trip are ANYWHERE CLOSE to the monetary demands of competent lawyer working for you, for an extended period of time, is unbelievably silly to anyone who ever had to actually hire a lawyer.

 

[Arehexes]

I really have a hard time believing people when they say "consumer rights" when most of the hacked PS3's will most likely be used to pirate