Sony Goes After Geohot and Other Hackers with Lawsuit
It was bound to happen. Over the past few weeks you’ve probably read the reports regarding the PlayStation 3′s massive security breach, which has lead to full-scale jailbreaks, homebrew and emulation. Sony said they were looking into it, and the first hammer has fallen.
When you mess with the big dogs, you’re bound to get bitten. Sound words to live by, but George Hotz, aka Geohot, and fail0verflow tried to push the envelope as far as they could. Sony hinted that they would take action, but other than that no one really knew what they meant. Whether they could somehow stop these exploits through network updates (which the hackers claim is impossible) or through some sort of “backdoor” within the PlayStation 3, we’ll have to see. But for now, the full side of the law is weighing down on those who opened up the console. Sony Computer Entertainment America is currently seeking a temporary restraining order against all involved in circumventing the PS3′s “technological protection measures.”
The documents accuse Hotz and company of violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse act after knowingly cracking the PS3 open to piracy. Also in the suit, Hotz is accused of taking financial benefit through “unlawful conduct” through his public PayPal account. We can’t say if he was really soliciting for money or if it was legitimate donation, but Sony seems to have their own opinions.
This seems to fall in the gray area between what Sony’s jurisdiction allows and the consumer’s ability to work with their own product. All we know at PlayStation LifeStyle, is that we don’t support how these hackers seem to be going at it, with piracy being an inevitable outcome.
You can check out the two documents for the lawsuit here and here, courtesy of Kotaku.
16 Responses to “Sony Goes After Geohot and Other Hackers with Lawsuit”
I’m sure Hotz and company will be fine, they’re not stupid. Plus, iPhone Jailbreaking is legal, so this should be OK. Then again, after reading over these legal documents, Sony has a pretty solid case.
not stupid?? geohot put his ip on the new youtube video
LOL!
that’s what you get by making yourself so public when you do something this stupid…claim it was only for honesty activities all you want, but if it opens the door for piracy it shouldn’t be done and you should face the consequences.
Lol is that really geohot? Yup, looks like the kind of douche who uses phrases like “epic fail”
Yep, that’d be him. Although I gotta say, that looks like a healthier, “meatier” version as opposed to the somewhat frail GeoHot we often see on the web and in the news.
Maybe he’ll go to the slammer and someone will hack his security via back door entry insuring another epic fail!
lololol
Not to take sides here but what did they honestly except when they hacked the product of a corporation like Sony? Unfortunely like Shadow_Runner mentioned this won’t change anything, when Julian Assange went to prison it didn’t stop Wikileaks.
the annoying thing is with people like these guys around Sony’s going to concentrate on this dumb piracy war rather then making the PS3 better.
Juliian Assange is not in prison and he wasn’t arrested because of his Wikileaks site. So the analogy doesn’t apply.
I know he wasn’t, it was rape charges and what I meant is if you remember a lot of hackers went out of their way to hack into sites like Mastercards and Paypal and threaten those companies by saying they’d publish the full list of names.
I still believe the idea around he’s arrest (espcially when they put up he’s bail) was in a bleak attempt to shut down Wikileaks, the main people involved believing if this one guy running the site was in jail then Wikileaks would stop.
Of course it didn’t work and Wikileaks was still running. But back on topic correct me if I’m wrong here but you seem to get the impression I like the idea of Sony not being able to stop this by this lawsuit. I’d rather it did to be honest.
I know it’ll get a lot of people like Shadow_Runner up by saying that but it’s mostly becasue I’d rather Sony concentrate on what they can do next to improve their products and what moves they can make in the games industry rather then having to constantly watch their back for pirates and hackers.
hello …
let’s put him into a real jail & let see if he can jail break
…
sorry! …LOL!
cheers!
That’s hardly fair! At least give him Linux
nah ….
he would find a way to find holes in the jail bars, then instead of using it to get him out he’ll first send a morse code message to all jail mates so they can break out & say oh i didn’t do it for those nasty criminals to escape, i just did it to show how intelligent & beautiful i am & to make music out of the bars …. oooh … so beautiful muuuuuuuuzzzzik!
cheers to you, but no cheers to him! .. here have some coffee too …
Fuck ya! Throw the little shit head in jail, I’d make a prison rape joke now but you fellas beat me to the punchline.
I just had to post it… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPcql4FuCK0