The notorious battle between Sony and PS3 hacker George "Geohot" Hotz has ended today, with the two parties settling out of court.
Hotz has agreed to a permanent injunction imposed by Sony's legal team, which is being taken to mean that he's not going to post source codes, hacking tips, or anything else that will help circumvent the PS3's security. Any further agreements remain confidential knowledge of the parties involved.
"Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us," said SCEA general counsel Riley Russell. "Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal."
Hotz also made a statement, seeming similarly glad to be done with the battle: "It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I’m happy to have the litigation behind me."
Whether this will satisfy Anonymous, and whether SCEE will continue its fight with Graf_Chokolo, remains to be seen.
Settlement in George Hotz Case [PS Blog]
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Contest:
11:40 AM on 04.11.2011 | 
Anonymous brings another company to their knees.
Awesome!
I think Sony took this one. Also, Hotz sold other hackers out. Because of Sony "winning" this case, it could mean other companies will pursuit other hackers. So Hotz sold out the hackers and community he wanted to protect. Fail.
Cue the "zomg Anonymous!!1!" comments...
Fuck, I missed a "pearl necklace" joke :(
Shame everyone will ignore that and assume that anonymous actually did anything at all.
Hardly. More like Anon and Geohotz acted like assholes and Sony got bored of their shit.
Yeah! Except, well, this was agreed on in principle over a week ago. So, I guess not.
The Anonymous attack ended up being nothing but low-grade LOIC DDoS anyway, and was handled pretty easily. Who knows if they'll try anything serious in the future, but this settlement sounds more like a win for Sony than for Geohot. That is, unless they put back OtherOS like he had previously demanded.
Anyway, it's good to see both parts reached an agreement.
Also, live by the sword confirmed for full retard.
Well, that would be true if gamers actually cared. Considering the transcripts have been on the net for weeks and few gamers seemed to be outraged at Sony trying very hard to set some very anti consumer precedents, it would seem like gamers really don't care as long as the next CoD has epic multiplayer.
Behaving like an adult?
Check his blog and the post he links to in it. The link is little more than some hardcore whining by the usual internet entitlement whiners.
I'm not saying Sony are angels, but God is he still a douche.
@mrandydixon
I demand that you give us that pearl necklace joke? *snickers*
You're right. He made one mature decision and then buried it in shit. I am somewhat embarrassed I expressed any sort of respect for the guy now. And he links to maddox, which is like linking to realultimatepower to prove you can beat someone up.
Can you link these transcripts?
Sony would have lost this case, without a doubt. Fighting for months so that the world could see just how anti consumer they are, only to lose because their case was weak to begin with, is definitely not in Sony's best interest.
They still owe them that surprise. How about they give everyone complimentary pearl necklaces?
Pearl necklaces for everyone!
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110218181557455
That's the only one I ever bothered to bookmark, it's a pretty good synopsis of the precedent Sony was trying to set in this case.
Cough... I don't wan't to know what kind of deal he has made with Sony.
Betraying other hackers? Hacking MS or Nintendo consoles and sharing the results?
Creating a flawless security system for the NGP/PS4?
Oh and Anon has nothing to do with it. Anon retreated because they had full panties... nothing else.
As previous arguments have stated, if it is his prerogative to modify hardware that he now owns, then I'm guessing Sony isn't much against that. It's the abuse thereof that has hurt the company and sullied Hotz's work. From his statement made in that regard, it is clear that he either believes this, or is incapable to handling the legal fallout from his tinkering.
Again, I'd be very interested in reading the actual terms agreed to here, as opposed to fomenting upon blind speculation with knuckleheads from the gaming community.
I LOL hard
"Well, that would be true if gamers actually cared. Considering the transcripts have been on the net for weeks and few gamers seemed to be outraged at Sony trying very hard to set some very anti consumer precedents, it would seem like gamers really don't care as long as the next CoD has epic multiplayer."
I, for one, do not care so long as the next *insert game here* is awesome. That's what most gamers do, right? We buy a console, then we buy games to play on it.
Oh man, that's a hefty read.
Maybe he should have linked to me instead of troll idiot Maddox.
III. ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED AND ADJUDGED by consent of the Parties that Hotz, whether as an individual or as a principal, officer, director or employee of any business entity, and his agents, servants, employees, distributors, suppliers, representatives and all other persons or entities acting in concert or participation with Hotz who receive notice of
this Judgment, shall be and hereby are permanently enjoined and restrained from:
A. Engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the law;
B. Engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the terms of any SCEA or SCEA AFFILIATES' license agreement or terms of use applicable to that SONY PRODUCT, whether or not Hotz has accepted such agreement or terms of use, including without limitation:
(i) reverse engineering, decompiling, or disassembling any portion of the Sony Product;
(ii) using any tools to bypass, disable, or circumvent any encryption, security, or authentication mechanism in the Sony Product;
(iii) using any hardware or software to cause the Sony Product to accept or use unauthorized, illegal or pirated software or hardware; and
(iv) exploiting any Sony Product to design, develop, update or distribute unauthorized software or hardware for use with the Sony Product. If any term of such SCEA or SCEA Affiliates' license agreement or terms of use applicable to that Sony Product shall be determined by Congress or by a court of law in a final non-appealable decision in an action to which SCEA or an SCEA Affiliate is a party to be illegal and unenforceable, then such term shall not be binding on Hotz.
C. CIRCUMVENTING any of the TPMs or security in any SONY PRODUCT;
D. TRAFFICKING in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that, at the time of Hotz's trafficking, circumvents any of the TPMs or security in any SONY PRODUCT, including but not limited to the
Elliptical Curve Signature Algorithm ("ECDSA") Keys, encryption and/or decryption keys, dePKG firmware decrypter program, Signing Tools, 3.55 Firmware Jailbreak, and/or any other technologies that enable unauthorized access to and/or copying of the PS3 System and/or enable compatibility of unauthorized copies of other copyrighted works with the PS3 System.
E. Distributing or posting any SCEA or SCEA Affiliates' confidential or proprietary information relating to any SONY PRODUCT;
F. Knowingly assisting or inducing others to engage in any of the conduct set forth in A-E above solely directed at any SONY PRODUCT or that otherwise constitutes contributory liability under the law.
That's what's in the pdf from psx-scene. There's some other stuff about locations and jurisdictions, but this seems to be the relevant part per your comment.