Geohot Lawsuit Settled

By Lawrence Sonntag | 11 April 2011 | 9 Comments

geohot-pausing-for-the-cameras

The legal slugfest between Sony Computer Entertainment of America and George “Geohot” Hotz has officially concluded, as announced by the two in a joint statement this morning. As stated on the PlayStation Blog, Geohot has agreed to a permanent injunction as part of the settlement, which means he can never discuss or publish security circumvention techniques for Sony products in the future. According to leaked settlement documents, every violation pinned to Geohot will carry a $10,000 fee, to a maximum of $250,000.

“It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I’m happy to have the litigation behind me,” Hotz said.

Hotz’ statements on his personal blog were not so diplomatic.

“As of 4/11/11, I am joining the SONY boycott. I will never purchase another SONY product. I encourage you to do the same. And if you bought something SONY recently, return it,” Hotz posted, referring to the in-store boycott being organized by hacking collective Anonymous.

In that same post, Geohot promises that “there is much more to come on this blog,” but as he is prohibited from talking about anything substantive (or else suffer a huge fee), it’s hard to imagine what that will be.

Hotz recently became a figurehead for consumer rights after being sued by Sony for publishing a method to restore user-installed operating systems to the PlayStation 3. Because of this, many donated money to Hotz, thinking the money would be used for a legal battle to set a precedent for user’s rights. However, in settling, he’s avoided a legal battle and the associated moral argument. This has caused unrest among many of his contributors.

“George Hotz accepted donations on the implied premise that he was gonna take the fight to Sony in court. Many hoped this would set a legal precedent for the right to modify your own property,” reddit user Xatom posted. “Fucker caved.”

This is not the only instance of misdirection in the consumer rights advocate camp of late. The recent DDOS attacks by Anonymous on Sony also disabled the PlayStation Network for legitimate users. This caused several users ambivalent to the debate to view Anonymous as the enemy, prompting internal disagreement and a video that somewhat apologized for the move.

[via reddit, PSX-SCENE, PlayStation Blog, Geohot Got Sued]

9 Comments

Posted by Cole on 11 April 11 at 7:54pm

Finally over and Hotz won nothing, perfect! Hopefully we don’t hear anything like this again for a while!
Posted by mr.??? on 11 April 11 at 9:01pm

I think tha fine he got wuz 2 much but the whole shutn down of psn also 2 much if only thay found some real middle ground
Posted by imyourfather101 on 12 April 11 at 7:44am

i enjoy my ps3, i want shadow of colossus, portal 2, uncharted 3 and twisted metal, all of which are gonna be amazing and played best on the ps3. Stupid anon and Geohot can boycott if they want, I aint giving up my stuff for their stupid cause.
Posted by Mike on 12 April 11 at 12:34pm

I’m glad this is over, because it means Sony can maintain their product the way they intend to maintain it. I’m also glad that Geohot will no longer buy another Sony product to use it for hacking and publish the hack online. This makes the anonymous look like stupid punks and no doubt that Sony will be looking for them, as they have performed an illegal action against Sony and the Playstation Network.
Posted by Nahura on 12 April 11 at 2:24pm

thats why i play xbox 360 because the PS3 its NOT safe at all
Posted by krazy?no!enlightned on 12 April 11 at 11:17pm

yeaaaaahhhhhh……… im pretty sure that the xbox is hackable too which makes your argument for playing xbox instead completely invalid…
Posted by Armu on 13 April 11 at 8:59pm

Sure, the Xbox is hackable, but it isn’t like it’s wide open like PS3 now.
Posted by Kyazutheinsane on 14 April 11 at 8:15pm

“I’m glad this is over, because it means Sony can maintain their product the way they intend to maintain it. I”
Well, if you have a problem with people owning what they buy, I GUESS this makes sense(?)
Posted by PSN Outage Possibly Caused by Massive Security Compromise | Machinima.com Inside Gaming News on 25 April 11 at 5:08pm

[...] Sony’s platforms have been associated with the specter of piracy. That’s partially why Sony went after Geohot so hard – they wanted to send a message to developers that they’re not taking this lying [...]