Geohot puts up legal defense dontaion links

Setan said:
People in this thread keep saying "modify their own hardware" when it wasn't the hardware that was modified. Drilling a hole through or painting the case pink would modify the hardware. Anyone can modify the hardware all they want.

He modified the software, or firmware, which isn't his.
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You bring up another excellent point, which is the insanity of disallowing people to modify copyrighted works. I'd love to see a book publisher go after every college student in history for highlighting and dog-earing books, or suing a teacher for making a textbook out of something they published ("THIS BOOK WAS LICENSED ONLY TO BE READ BY THE END USER, NOT KEPT IN A CLASSROOM AS A TEXTBOOK! WE WROTE THIS, IT'S OURS. YOU WILL HONOR OUR LICENSE OR PAY THE PENALTIES!").

Maybe one day common sense and copyright laws will line up. I'm holding out hope that this case might be the catalyst to that end.
 
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Godmachine said:
A possible product of Geohots release of the Master Key : http://www.wonderhowto.com/wonderme...an-themselves-arbitrarily-ban-others-0125312/







So now hackers might have the ability to ban legit users and wouldn't be funny if everyone woke up tomorrow and all PS3's were banned? :rolleyes: still though even if it doesn't happen anytime soon the prospect that just by angering a hacker on the PS3 might result in a console ban is just crazy.
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Now I understand Sony's panic. If true, If this really works and wide spread banning occurred to people undeserving of it, it would be all but the end of the PS3 for anyone wanting to play online. Sony could open their networks to banned consoles, which would leave it an exploiters paradise, try to keep up with unbanning those wrongfully banned, or close it down as a lost cause.
 
gotta love all the piracy cards.. funny thing is Geohot didn't open the door for piracy, that was opened well before he had released his hack. sure the guy may be a prick. but the fact is he wasn't the one that opened the door for piracy it was a different group that did and sony tried to pile it on him as the root cause for it when in fact he wasn't. in the end its more about sony being butt hurt because their shit got hacked. the xbox 360 was hacked a long ass time ago, do you see Microsoft going around and suing every person they can find for it? no. sony just needs to shut the hell up and go back in the hole they came from and realize their shit wasn't unhackable and move on.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
gotta love all the piracy cards.. funny thing is Geohot didn't open the door for piracy, that was opened well before he had released his hack. sure the guy may be a prick. but the fact is he wasn't the one that opened the door for piracy it was a different group that did and sony tried to pile it on him as the root cause for it when in fact he wasn't. in the end its more about sony being butt hurt because their shit got hacked. the xbox 360 was hacked a long ass time ago, do you see Microsoft going around and suing every person they can find for it? no. sony just needs to shut the hell up and go back in the hole they came from and realize their shit wasn't unhackable and move on.
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There are an enormous amount of people like myself that wanna do things with a console outside of piracy. (about to mod the fuck out of my noisy pos 360) I think Steam(yeah Im that guy) has shown the everybody how to combat piracy and it seems like the Console studios just don't want to listen. The deed is done. I think Sony initially was attempting to stop the spread of the master key and associated kits but it's a waste of time and money. I hope he wins just so it ends this nonsense and publishers are forced to face facts when fighting piracy. Hell if Sony and it's associated game studios left the console completely open and included a devkit and had pay for play game engine devkits The PS3 would be the highly selling system in history.

Owning and controlling an intellectual property without exception is impossible. Make a better product, support it better, and price it accordingly. "But our games cost bizillions to make and years to dev" No they don't. Blackops used an available engine and took inside of 9 months to ship. It made a billion dollars and people pirated the shit of out of it. $60 my ass.

So yeah I hope he wins. I hope the courts require Sony to add a trapdoor in the back of the PS3 I can stick my **** in it. End this crybaby bullshit.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
gotta love all the piracy cards.. funny thing is Geohot didn't open the door for piracy, that was opened well before he had released his hack. sure the guy may be a prick. but the fact is he wasn't the one that opened the door for piracy it was a different group that did and sony tried to pile it on him as the root cause for it when in fact he wasn't. in the end its more about sony being butt hurt because their shit got hacked. the xbox 360 was hacked a long ass time ago, do you see Microsoft going around and suing every person they can find for it? no. sony just needs to shut the hell up and go back in the hole they came from and realize their shit wasn't unhackable and move on.
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I don't see Microsoft having their master key hacked. If so I wonder what they would do?
 
refraxion said:
I don't see Microsoft having their master key hacked. If so I wonder what they would do?
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I'm not even sure that MS has a 'master key', but take a look around just about any torrent site. There are keygens avalible for just about every MS product ever made.

As for the 360, nobody had to. The DVD firmware was, and still is, enough ;) Also see the original Xbox. modders were even still able to go on live.
 
ryken said:
no it's not. it's going to be a quick case... 17 USC 1201 reads:
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Makes me wonder why Sony needs five lawyers if a single [H] member can decide the case before it has even been heard....

Other than that, law isn't just a matter of what is on the books. Different judges follow different schools of thought when it comes to law. Have a look at many U.S. Supreme Court decisions. A panel of 9 judges, all brilliant jurists, were presented with a case, they all got the same information yet some of them come to completely opposite conclusions than their peers.

Just because you think that the law applies in a certain way doesn't make it so. At the end of the day the party who can make the most compelling argument that follows will win. In this case this may very well be Geohot.

ryken said:
Why you shouldn't donate

1. Geohot is a prick
2. Geohot is not going to win
3. This case won't settle any new issues, and won't create new precedent, so there isn't much to gain
4. Geohot is asking for your money to defend a suit he knows he can't win, and also can't afford, and is preying on a "us v. the man" mentality to get money out of your pocket for a lost cause.
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Logic isn't your forte, is it?
1. Don't donate to uphold a principle because you don't like the guy in the spotlight? Makes perfect sense, albeit only to you.
2. Thanks, some random guy on the Internet knows what will happen to a case that is most likely headed for the Supreme Court.
3. See #2. Just because you say so doesn't make it so.
4. Now you are not only the Legal Eagle but you are also an expert on what Geohot is thinking. At least you now admit that there is a cause and it's not just about the man even though you concluded that it is lost already.

Well, it's a free country, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but do realize that even studying law doesn't afford you any kind of confidence in how this will play out.
 
Thing is, what you just said is also opinion.. So everything said in this thread is all moot anyways.
 
piscian18 said:
I think Steam(yeah Im that guy) has shown the everybody how to combat piracy and it seems like the Console studios just don't want to listen.
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Do you mean they won't listen to the wise advice to sell other developers' products for pennies on the dollar? That's the main thing Steam does to combat piracy.

If you are talking about their DRM schema or understanding games as services, Valve (not Steam) has both progressed and failed in both endeavors depending on their product. It should be noted, however, that their products are pirated at least as much as anyone else's.
 
thecrafter said:
In that case, I suppose that once you buy a gun or a knife, it should give you the right to freely kill people. I mean you paid money for the gun, why the hell can't you use it however you want to??
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And the winner of worst analogy of the month goes to......
 
Lets see, if you don't want to get sued, you won't hack the PS3. Simple.

But the worst part is people acting like this guy is some freedom fighter. He isn't.
 
I'm a cheap ass, but donating a bit on principle and hope for a positive precedent to be set.
 
I don't understand how geohot has all these haters? His tools like blackra1n and limera1n set the precedent for iPhone jailbreaking legality, how is the PS3 any different? He wanted kernel access to his PS3 the same way he wanted root access to his iPhone. Sure, with jailbreaking comes piracy but it's not any different for any other device! Jailbreak your iPhone? Download any app you want for free using Installous and the crack store. Does this mean that jailbreaking is evil and is only used for piracy? No. iPhone 3G's cameras can't record video out of the box. Only after jailbreaking my iPhone 3G that I got on launch (which locked me into a 2 year contract with AT&T) could I use use my iPhone's camera as a video camera. Was the iPhone 3G advertised as a video-recording capable device? No. But can it be? Yes. Was my AMD Phenom II X555 processor advertised as a quad core CPU? Can it be? Yes.
 
I'm not experienced with what he did for the iPhone. I jailbroke my 1st gen one though and I don't remember geohot having anything to do with it.

I agree with him doing this and think it should be legal. Personally I think he's a douche and acts like he's the genius savior, when in this situation at least he failed, fail0verflow succeeded, and then he added on to their work. So while I'll totally support his cause I think his ego's a little overinflated.
 
DarkStar02 said:
I don't understand how geohot has all these haters? His tools like blackra1n and limera1n set the precedent for iPhone jailbreaking legality, how is the PS3 any different? He wanted kernel access to his PS3 the same way he wanted root access to his iPhone.
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It isn't any different at all.

What it boils down to is that consumers should have basic rights, and when you purchase something, you should have the right to do anything to it you please. Paint it pink, hit it with a golf club, verify if it does indeed blend, hack it, spank it. Its yours, bought and paid for.

Now, if Sony wants to implement something to disable your online game play or invalidate your warranty for modifying it, by all means.
 
That's pretty much how I think about it too.

I can't really think of a reasonable excuse for Sony to be able to take those rights away. Clearly if people use it to pirate, it can harm Sony, but those are really two completely different legal issues that are only related because one can make the other possible. I feel like Sony's biggest problem here is that they built the PS3 to be too reliant on being locked down.

Anyways, if someone would like to give a reasonable argument to counter what Ducman said, I'd love to hear it. There's been a lot of people yelling that you just shouldn't use the PS3 in ways other than how Sony intended such as the "Lets see, if you don't want to get sued, you won't hack the PS3. Simple" a few posts up, but I can't remember a good reasonable justification.
 
thecrafter said:
In that case, I suppose that once you buy a gun or a knife, it should give you the right to freely kill people. I mean you paid money for the gun, why the hell can't you use it however you want to??
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That is the worst analogy I've ever heard.

More importantly, why are you so against what this guy is doing?
 
I dunno what to think of this in the long run really. Sure, he discovered the master key through whatever means he used, and if he really just wanted to mod "his PS3" quietly on his own none of this likely would've happened. What does he do instead? Release the master key and custom CFW to the public, with the end result of, well, many more PS3s than just his own.
 
Trombe said:
What does he do instead? Release the master key and custom CFW to the public, with the end result of, well, many more PS3s than just his own.
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Nothing wrong with that.

This case should settle whether or not knowledge that endangers nobody can be "forbidden" by law. Hopefully, there isn't any non-dangerous knowledge that people can go to jail for spreading.

I feel that it would be unfortunate to prefer a corporate bottom line to the freedom of real people gathering knowledge.
 
fattypants said:
Nothing wrong with that.

This case should settle whether or not knowledge that endangers nobody can be "forbidden" by law. Hopefully, there isn't any non-dangerous knowledge that people can go to jail for spreading.

I feel that it would be unfortunate to prefer a corporate bottom line to the freedom of real people gathering knowledge.
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Releasing proprietary code that is property of the company is not wrong? I understand the defense arguments and all but Sony owns there own code. While you may own the physical hardware that you buy , you don't own the code inside it. You even agree to this when you sign in each time.

Stealing code is the same as stealing full fledged software. Its fine if you guys don't wanna support a big (and sometimes shitty) corportation like Sony but do none of you see the legality of doing such a thing?

If you spent millions developing your own code and keys to it and then someone comes and steals it .. well what the fuck would you do? Would you get on a forum and whine about it or would you call the proper authorities to act quickly on those that stole it?

Everyone is all ready to jump in favor of Geohot for being a "rebel" and opposing a corportation for modifing part of a feature only a tiny fraction of the user base used , none of you ran Linux on your PS3's and likely don't or haven't even though about using Linux. The only in favor comments you can come up with is that Sony is evil or bullshitt or some other kind of opposing rhetoric to the actually conversation.

If it wasn't a big corportation like Sony would those opposed be in favor of the victim or would you go on to say "Its his fault" or "he didn't spend enough time securing it so he got what he deserved" ?

Most of you are acting sanctimonious towards a guy who commited theft and released it for free onto the internet where it is simply spreading into groups of interested hackers that probably don't have the best intentions in mind with what to do with said code/key.

There is a bottom line , piracy is theft .. no matter how you sell it to yourself in order to feel grounded about doing it , if you steal something its just plain theft.

If you take out the big "evil" corportion .. you are basically supporting a clever thief that is mocking his viticm and from a personal view point I think thats fucked up.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Godmachine said:
There is a bottom line , piracy is theft .. no matter how you sell it to yourself in order to feel grounded about doing it , if you steal something its just plain theft.
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images

Well call the cops. I just robbed the Louvre, depriving them of valuable tourism money.

And I was like you, once. I thought that it was fine for a corporation to just take what's theirs by law.

Then as I studied government, I realized that the law isn't always right or moral. Just because the law says it's wrong doesn't mean it's wrong (and vice versa), and just because the law says someone owns a string of letters and numbers doesn't necessarily mean that we should throw real people in prison for distributing them.

I think we're going to look back one day and realize something: throwing people in prison for distributing knowledge just so a few elites can maintain a 1950s-era business model is just plain immoral. We're lucky these laws didn't exist when people were making breakthroughs in math and science; Newton, Eratosthenes, and Galileo would have been buried under the same knowledge litigation we deal with today.

Not to compare Hotz to those mental giants, but forbidding knowledge which endangers zero lives is just wrong.
 
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Godmachine said:
Releasing proprietary code that is property of the company is not wrong? I understand the defense arguments and all but Sony owns there own code. While you may own the physical hardware that you buy , you don't own the code inside it. You even agree to this when you sign in each time.

Stealing code is the same as stealing full fledged software. Its fine if you guys don't wanna support a big (and sometimes shitty) corportation like Sony but do none of you see the legality of doing such a thing?

If you spent millions developing your own code and keys to it and then someone comes and steals it .. well what the fuck would you do? Would you get on a forum and whine about it or would you call the proper authorities to act quickly on those that stole it?

Everyone is all ready to jump in favor of Geohot for being a "rebel" and opposing a corportation for modifing part of a feature only a tiny fraction of the user base used , none of you ran Linux on your PS3's and likely don't or haven't even though about using Linux. The only in favor comments you can come up with is that Sony is evil or bullshitt or some other kind of opposing rhetoric to the actually conversation.

If it wasn't a big corportation like Sony would those opposed be in favor of the victim or would you go on to say "Its his fault" or "he didn't spend enough time securing it so he got what he deserved" ?

Most of you are acting sanctimonious towards a guy who commited theft and released it for free onto the internet where it is simply spreading into groups of interested hackers that probably don't have the best intentions in mind with what to do with said code/key.

If you take out the big "evil" corportion .. you are basically supporting a clever thief that is mocking his viticm.

Just my 2 cents.
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Oh well then the following are illegal then.
All jailbreaking software for iphones and ipod touches
all 3rd party hacked drivers to fix issues and improve performance of the hardware you use
Services like cricket and tracphone who offer to unlock verizon sprint and altell phones for use with their service.
all 3rd party firmware running on routers and other appliances
Any mod for a game that does not support modding.
ROMS for smartphones (im not talking about emulators and roms from gameconsoles long past that run on them) Im talking about custom compiles of winmo and symbian and android(though this is semi open source)
most if not all of the above use the manufactures proprietary code or keys.

You arn't allowed to nitpick what of the above you will ignore. Either the code and keys is illegal without manufacture licensing or none of it is.

In the end all modding does is violate the eula and rids you of the ability to get sub standard support from some telemarketer in india. And charged for defects in a device that should be covered by a manufacture warranty and fixed on their dime. (sony ylod and microsoft rrod)
 
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Lunas said:
Oh well then the following are illegal then.
All jailbreaking software for iphones and ipod touches - Actually through the DMCA you are now allowed a legal grey area so this isn't really illegal but also not legalall 3rd party hacked drivers to fix issues and improve performance of the hardware you use - Not really the same as stealing a master key that unlocks all the software on the platform that requires a digital signature thus allowing deeper coding changes and piracy greater ease but ..ok
Services like cricket and tracphone who offer to unlock verizon sprint and altell phones for use with their service. - When I went to Verizon and asked about this (I was getting rid of my Droid) they old me they don't mind this , so again a legal "grey" area.all 3rd party firmware running on routers and other appliances - Legal grey area again , company's don't seem to mind it yet comparing this to a theft on the scale of a master key and embeded code isn't really the same thing.Any mod for a game that does not support modding. - Game companies routinely shut down mods for various reasons , this isn't uncommon and there are dozens of examples of "cease and desist" letters online.
ROMS for smartphones - If you own the game that you download in physical form this is another legal grey area.most if not all of the above use the manufactures proprietary code or keys. Not all and if they were stolen in the way this example was you would probably have some pissed off companies as well. More big "evil" corporations. You arn't allowed to nitpick what of the above you will ignore. Either the code and keys is illegal without manufacture licensing or none of it is.

And all it does is violate the eula and rids you of the ability to get sub standard support and warranty coverage for the manufacture to fix your broken device on their dime.
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And despite all of that it doesn't make it ok to do what Geohot did. If he didn't release the code online while flamboyantly mocking Sony at the same time he probably wouldn't be the legal circumstance hes in. He chose to do so and not for "noble" reasons entirely... you don't make mock rap youtube videos for a legal case you weren't planning on being involved in previously. He understood the outcome of what he did and the legality of it.

Its just my opinion of the matter , I'm not trying to discount other opinions in the thread but I'm feeling we could go back and forth for ages and not really come to any kind of agreement.

It is however a very interesting case I'll be following closely and who knows how the court will handle it truly. Regardless of the outcome this will have far reaching implications for subject matter involved for sometime to come.
 
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Humm it appears the Temporary restraining order they were issued was allowed to expire so his little rap video could show the code fully legally...
 
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The shooting people w/ a gun to hacking a PS3 analogy was actually perfectly accurate. I would just like to point out that PS3's don't kill people, hackers do.... so hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husbands cuz they be reverse engineerin' er'body up in hea'. :rolleyes:
Trombe said:
I dunno what to think of this in the long run really. Sure, he discovered the master key through whatever means he used, and if he really just wanted to mod "his PS3" quietly on his own none of this likely would've happened. What does he do instead? Release the master key and custom CFW to the public, with the end result of, well, many more PS3s than just his own.
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We have a first amendment right to read or write pretty much whatever we want, which is why you can find instructions on how to create bombs online or in libraries (with the condition the author doesn't condone or encourage certain use w/ falls under anti-terrorism law). And you imagine this is somehow worse than THAT? Cmon now...
 
Ducman69 said:
The shooting people w/ a gun to hacking a PS3 analogy was actually perfectly accurate. I would just like to point out that PS3's don't kill people, hackers do.... so hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husbands cuz they be reverse engineerin' er'body up in hea'. :rolleyes:

We have a first amendment right to read or write pretty much whatever we want, which is why you can find instructions on how to create bombs online or in libraries (with the condition the author doesn't condone or encourage certain use w/ falls under anti-terrorism law). And you imagine this is somehow worse than THAT? Cmon now...
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On the other hand you'd be in trouble if you created instructions on how to build a bomb design that is the intellectual property of say Raytheon or something.
 
Latest development.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/22/sony_playstation_lawsuit_gutted

A federal judge has dismissed all but one of the claims leveled against Sony for dropping Linux support from its PlayStation 3 game console, but gave the plaintiffs permission to refile an amended complaint that fixes the deficiencies.

A complaint seeking class-action status on behalf of all PS3 owners was filed in April and claimed that the disabling of the so-called OtherOS violated a raft of civil laws, including those for breach of warranty, unfair competition and computer fraud. Sony had touted the feature, which allowed users to run Linux and other software on their consoles, in interviews and presentations, but later dropped it after a well-known hacker figured out how to exploit OtherOS to jailbreak the PS3.
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guy opend a can of whoopass on himself and I am not wasting a dime to help defend him.........he effectively has made it more difficult for legitimate users of the system as we will have to bear the cost of Sony defending it's intellectual property.......
 
Setan said:
People in this thread keep saying "modify their own hardware" when it wasn't the hardware that was modified. Drilling a hole through or painting the case pink would modify the hardware. Anyone can modify the hardware all they want.

He modified the software, or firmware, which isn't his.
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what he said........
 
Screw this pompous little twat. He knew what he was getting himself into, now
he want's the community to bail him out???

I hope they make an example out of this tool...
 
BladeVenom said:
Sony elected to be scum of the earth douchebags, by disabling their customers Linux computers. The evil thugs running Sony should be charged for their crimes.

I hope everything turns out badly for Sony.
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No, Sony did what they were legally allowed to do. Also, who used the linux? i mean really, it was slow and useless as heck.
 
The best part is his "together, we can change the system" bullcrap. More like "dudes, I am ROYALLY boned unless you can cough up to pay for my higher-level lawyers! I'm too pretty for jail! FREEEEEDOOOMMMM!!"
 
DarkStar02 said:
"He modified the software, or firmware, which isn't his?"

Is that not what he did for the iPhones too? I didn't see him get sued by Apple for that..
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apple is not running a service network like PSN or XBL. Also Jailbreaking the device did not involve craking the DRM or making the master key public......that that loser cracked the PS3 he circumvented the DRM..............
 
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