After so many retarded articles over Geohot & Anonymous.
Finally, all this BS can end.

Sony just made someone their b!tch.

after all the crying everyone around here was making doing all the "sony is gonna own him" etc etc
they just settle and hes not allowed to post a code that's already all over the internet?
meh it was obvious he would get off from this

i lol at everyone who was going on about this case BUT also yawn at how anti climactic this was
i was at least expecting something to happen at the end

@ ImHereNow:

no, you fool, this means that hotz conceded that he had no case and settled before he got put through the ringer.

Lol sooo many ppl were calling for his head here at n4g.

Huge victory for hotz. Huge. Well done

***$ony had NO CASE better to go out on a settlement then being the loser***

Actually, it proved otherwise. GeoHot wouldn't have settled if there wasn't a case to be had.

People have to recognize here that GeoHot caved in on the ideals he said he was out to defend, meaning his right to do what he wants with what he purchased. Taking that away from him is a bigger win than most people understand.

From reading the press release, it seems to me that hotz isn't supportive of what anonymous are doing and opted to reached a settlement with Sony.

Great for both sides. But wtf at the psxscene forums, they're pretty mad at Geohot for settling. I thought they would be happy to hear the news though.

http://psx-scene.com/forums...

@dante

Cheers for that link. It provided me with some lol moments! They are seriously pissed at hotz lmao!

@EYEamNumber1 - Actually this is a permanent injunction, meaning he has to cease all activities against Sony in the future too. He could still do it anonymously (which he should have done in the first place the idiot!), but if it ever get's traced back to him, he's in the sh*t.

@Dante112

thanks for that link man, reading all the crying in that site is totally hilarious ROFLMAO! XD

O-T

Sony win on this one, the guy can't touch any Sony product and release all the codes or whatever thing that can affect the security of saying product, if he does it, he'll pay 10k to 250k cash!

*Gamers want GAMES, not hacker "rights"
*Illegally distributing others' IPs isn't "freedom of speech"
*Geohotz is a hack; he's just as happy stealing credit by rushing out a "concept CFW" with stolen code as he is actually hacking something.

I guess GeoSteals realized he wasn't doing anyone any favors, including himself. E-penis wasn't worth millions in debt, no one wanted his "help" in hurting the game industry for the "right" to distribute others' copy-protected intellectual properties, and the effects would only be negative.

Well i for one am glad its settled peacefully.

I think Sony never wanted to ruin this kids or other hackers life. Sony just wanted to protect their investment which is what this settlement will do.

Despite all the garbage Hotz and Anno said about Sony being the evil corp out to destroy everyone's freedom. This settlement clearly shows how mature Sony is and what their intentions were all along which is to plug the hole that is Hotz.

Sony was never the evil corp that was out to set a precedence to get a win for the corporate big boys to stomp over the little mans freedom. I always said that that was hogwash.

Oooh, injunction against buying future Sony products, that has to sting.

On the bright side, the Homebrew community just got Showtime Media Player running stable 1080p on the PS3, and Region-free Blu-ray is on the horizon. Thanks, geohot!

Are you kidding? This thing was over in a flash, blink-and-you-missed-it... These types of cases usually drag on for years.

Better to settle now than spend five times that much in court costs. Like someone said above, Sony made someone their bitch. You know Hotz is thinking he beat Sony, but truth is, Sony just didn't feel he was worth fighting him in court over, lolol.

This whole thing shows Sony's mismanagement. First off Sony huge support for home brew to get popularity to the PS3 when it came out was a misstep. PS4 you can bet they won’t do that again. The other issue is instead of hiring GeoHotz and asking him for help on cleaning up the security flaws, they attack him in a lawsuit. Anonymous got one of their main demands drop the GeoHotz lawsuit…. Plus they made Sony’s staff look stupid.

Nawh, far more people than these few hackers you hear bout want OtherOS..

Same enquiry. I read the article but it didn't properly explain what the terms of the settlement are.

My guess is that geohot will stop his work on the PS3 but not get sued.

But this doesn't solve whether jailbreaking a PS3 is legal or not.

Jailbreaking the PS3 is still illegal. That has never changed. It could change in the future but right now the PS3 and other game consoles are not excepted under the DMCA in the same manner as devices such as the Iphone are allowed to be jailbroken.

@ eamon:

jailbreaking the PS3 was never legal.

Actually I sort of wish (at Hotz expense though, so I don't blame him) it went all the way.

I view this as a freedom of speech and consumer rights being stepped over. This doesn't just apply to Sony, but MS and even Nintendo all have the right to remove features at will, restrict your usage and this has never been contested in a court of law.

Ideally, I would also like the law to allow for programs to allow modification of software at will as long as it isn't to allow the software to do illegal purposes.

This is really the only way to get around the fact that for almost all human time in business we are allowed to change our product and discuss how we changed it. Nobody stopped me from publishing information on how I modified my car (within legal means), my house, my wrench.... yet I modify my console and all hell breaks loose!

you are allowed to modify your PS3's hardware all you want. this case was never about the PS3's hardware, it was about the *software*.

your analogies all reference different types of *hardware* modifications.

"your analogies all reference different types of *hardware* modifications."

That was the point I was trying to make. Your hardware these days is essentially useless without the software. If it is, then the freedom of use of your products have now been essentially limited. Why should one hold software to a different standard then hardware?

The mere act of installing your own software these days, might get you in trouble unless you have specialized equipment that doesn't use the manufacturers software to load yours.

I'm saying, it shouldn't be like that and is a major issue. In the future, you might find your wrench has a chip with software so you can't use it any way you want! You car (probably already does) have chips to control certain fuel injections and hey they might just want to disable it for whatever reason....

Is that really a future we all want?

GeoHot: "Hey, hackers, donate some money to help me in this legal case."

*Hackers donated thousands and thousands of dollars to GeoHot*

GeoHot: "Now that I have all these money, time to settle so I don't have to pay anything."

*GeoHot settled and use hackers' money to buy himself a brand new car. He LOL-ed at hackers. *

"Jailbreaking the PS3 is still illegal"

Not in Spain.

Some good day, the same will be true for the Land of the Free.

To be honest, it only means geohot won't be able to gain credit for any hacks that happen in the future.

He may hack other Sony products but post them anonymously.

No, not really. Sony would have LOVED to have got the full result over Hotz. It would have served as a massive threat to future hackers-they wouldn't give two shits about what Hotz could actually pay in reality.

Fact is Sony either didn't have quite enough to get exactly what they wanted or Hotz offered them something pretty juicy in another direction(ratting out others or whatever)and forced their hand. Hotz, I believe, would also have loved to have won the case(other hackers have stood firm with seemingly similar cases and won so why not hotz with all the support he had, mm?)but, for whatever reason, knew he couldn't.

Thing is Sony only have themselves and the shareholders to answer to-Hotz, meanwhile, set himself up as the martyr in all this and settling with the "bad" guys is more embarrassing for him than for Sony I'd suggest.

Overall, though, anyone suggesting a massive victory for either side is barking mental or, more likely, suffering from wishful thinking. The most likely answer, but it's only my opinion, is that hotz offered them something, dunno what, Sony weighed it up against the cost and risk and publicity of court and decided not to make the lawyers any richer or wind up people like anon more than needed.

It definitely doesn't send out the scary message Sony would have wanted to future would be hackers BUT it sure as hell doesn't make Hotz' high moral stance look convincing either. All we can tell is Hotz got away without being bankrupt and have to guess what Sony got, and they'll have to have gotten something, in return. So much for standing up for a belief though, eh Geo? If you wanna be a martyr you really HAVE to go the whole nine yards-even moreso when you've had "your" people funding your side of the sodding case. I doubt many donated in the hope Geo would settle to save his own hide without making any point about hackers freedom to do what they wished.

To all the ppl defending HOTZ:

http://psx-scene.com/forums...

Read the Stipulation.pdf and enjoy how hotz got his a$$ handed to him by sony.

The settlement goes something like this:

Sony:"Hotz hand over your balls"
Hotz:"there you go"

You dont believe me? read the pdf...LOL

basically the injunction states that he cantnot do anything to gain access to any sony product he cannot assit others in it or distribute it even if somone posted a link on his blog to the latest firmware update that could be seen as distributing it

the fines are 10k per infreaction non ditributing

and 250k per distribution and you can bet sony will be keeping an eye on him and the scene

@shwiggity

in reality,Sony wasted a lot of time all they did was get this dude mainstream attention.and the PS3 is still open with all kind of hacks.

@shwiggity

you know when GeoHot jailbroke the iPhone, he didn't get fined or lose out, he got an internship at Google.

This guy hacked the "unhackable" console, the Titanic of the console world.
If he doesn't get a job out of this somewhere I would be very surprised

Sony wouldn't have agreed to settle if they weren't getting what they wanted. Hotz obviously gave em what they wanted or told em what they wanted to hear and in return, his grandkids won't be stuck paying his legal bills.

Retribution, Doggington? Pretty sure the death penalty or a 7 figure restitution were never realistic options, lol! Always knew it'd end like this. Most cases do.

^
Only reason why it was hackable was because code where released. Not like he went in a did it himself.

He was aided by the stolen codes which doesn't make one so great as many would think they'd be.

Edit: @ tdrules

people that do the bitch slapping do not take perma. injunction's.

So that right there shows who got bitch slapped.

"PS3 is still open with all kind of hacks." - yeah...like CFW 3.60 to play latest games and and access PSN...oh wait...THAT doesn't exist!

PS3 hacks are overrated! if it was not because of the stolen USB, none would have been able to do even a simple "hello world" let alone fully hack the PS3! the key was also stolen with the help of the USB!

and for those who said that Sony loses need to think again! permanent injunction is the sign of "winning" to you guys? guess who got the injunction? it's GeoDouche, not SONY! means that he can't even touch any Sony product till he dies or at least he can't brag and take credits about any hack against SONY's product ever again like he always do! he's a bitch to SONY now with a string attached and if he tries anything clever, he's down for $10k - $250k! woohoo...winning!...NOT!