Sony has settled with PS3 hacker George Hotz, aka Geohot.
The plight of 21-year-old George Hotz caused many PlayStation fans to decry Sony and its decision to sue Hotz for hacking the PS3 and posting details of his exploits online. The suit has been a messy, complicated one and it looked as though the two parties were gearing up for a lengthy legal battle. However, it seems the electronics giant and the New Jersey youth have quietly settled out of court.
Speaking via the official PlayStation blog, Patrick Seybold, Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media at Sony revealed that Geohot and Sony reached a settlement on March 31.
Though full details of the settlement were not disclosed, Seybold did mention that as part of the settlement, Hotz consented to a permanent injunction.
Both parties expressed satisfaction that litigation had been quickly resolved.
"Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us," said Riley Russell, General Counsel for SCEA. "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."
For his part, Hotz says he never intended to make piracy easier.
“It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier,” said Hotz, “I’m happy to have the litigation behind me.”
that's the picture wikipedia has.
I'll give Hotz credit for not backing down as far as he did, I don't know the terms of the settlement and his own odds of winning, but I still think he and others bullied by media giants need to have the spine to take matters to court and fight for it. These guys only offer settlements when it's what's in their interest. Never give them what they want, or they will just keep doing it.
It should be the other way around: Sony steps off, not the owner.
That's only a violation of the DMCA, which is a piece of crap to begin with. In fact, the purpose of the DMCA was to prevent corporations from stealing the technology of other companies via means that up until then were completely legal and common place. Instead, the DMCA is mostly used to bully individuals who aren't really harming the major corporations in any meaningful way (for instance, even though George Hotz posted the encryption details, it's still illegal to sell a PS3 emulator or your own PS3 games using that encryption). Like most legislation passed in the last few decades, the DMCA is just about limiting the rights of citizens in favor of major, and in this case, foreign, corporations.
Yes, or an epic settlement of cash.
A job would be the better scenario though.