GeoHot and Sony Settle PS3 Jailbreak Case

[JDKJ]

He doesn't have to give the money back, he said he'd donate the remains to some group... so hopefully he follows through with that.

Anyway, kind of shitty that it's over. I would have liked to find out what the legal system thinks of Sony more or less claiming ownership of all their sold PS3s.

No, what he said he was going to do was donate to the EFF any surplus left over after his successful defense of Sony claims against him. He not only failed to successfully defend those claims, he failed to even mount a real defense. He should return every cent he's collected and pay his attorneys out of his own pocket.

 

[Dorkmaster Flek]

I fail to see how this resolves anything for Sony. Hotz won't hack the PS3 anymore, but all his code is out in the wild already. They didn't "protect" anything. The only hope they could have had was to make an example out of Hotz, but they don't get to even do that.

 

[beema]

dang, I was hoping he'd go out in a hail of gunfire shouting "FREEDOOOOOOOOOM!"

 

[Radeonx]

Smart move, Georgie Boy. 'Cause you were most certainly on your way to getting about 12 inches of Sony penis up your rectum.

And if you don't immediately return the money that was donated your Legal Defense Fund, I just might class-action your ass for fraud, false pretenses, theft, and any other claims I might be able to cook up against you.

You do realize he has paid his lawyers up till now right? And he said he would donate whatever is left over when he accepted the donations.

As long as the money is used to pay his lawyers up till now, and the rest is donated like he claimed up front, there is no fraud. And he sure as hell shouldn't pay it ALL back, it's not like the lawyers worked for free up till now.

Honestly, this seems like somewhat of a victory for GeoHotz, think about it, the root key got out, and he didn't go to jail or owe Sony millions of dollars, sounds like a victory to me at least.

Wrong. If tell you I want you money because I'm going to use it to wage a legal battle that will benefit you also by setting a legal precedent when I prevail before the Court and then I bail out on my promised legal battle long before the point of ever prevailing, then, my friend, that is most certainly fraud and obtaining property under false pretenses.

Can you please to me how saying that you are going to donate whatever excess money you have to charity and then doing so is fraud?

 

[bushwhacker2k]

"Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us," said Sony's General Counsel Riley Russell. "Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers.

Not to hate on "the man" or anything, but I'm pretty sure that sentence would be more accurate with the words "and our consumers".

I'm pretty sure nobody saw him beating Sony in court anyways, but I'm a little sad nothing ever came of

Yay! This means that Sony can continue to treat hardware purchased by their customers as company property! A great day for us all.

this statement ^ : \

Smart move, Georgie Boy. 'Cause you were most certainly on your way to getting about 12 inches of Sony penis up your rectum.

And if you don't immediately return the money that was donated to your Legal Defense Fund, I just might class-action your ass for fraud, false pretenses, theft, and any other claims I might be able to cook up against you.

Hero, my ass. You's a punky-ass *****. You had a choice: git down or lay down, And your sorry ass just laid down.

Not to spark an argument, but please settle down, you're not going to prove anything to anyone here by raging at what was obviously going to happen in the first place (which is, not getting a refund from someone you donated to).

Honestly if anyone donated money to him in the first place then I'd be surprised anyone would expect to get it back.

 

[BabySinclair]

So Sony plays it safe, probably a good move.

 

[The.Bard]

Goddammit...that's so fucking boring. I was really hoping that SOMEONE would get screwed in this case...

I agree. This is like "There Will Be Blood" ending with a pleasant round of "Kumbaya" around the campfire.

Lawsuits take the fun out of everything. Can't we go back to coliseum fights to solve our judicial differences??

 

[esperandote]

This is a great loss for all but at least not as big as it could have been of one of the parts.

Is this jailbreak code available anywhere else?

I wonder if anyone else will continue Hotz's work (and if Hotz will secretly help him).

 

[JDKJ]

I want you money because I'm going to use it to wage a legal battle that will benefit you also by setting a legal precedent when I prevail before the Court and then I bail out on my promised legal battle long before the point of ever prevailing, then, my friend, that is most certainly fraud and obtaining property under false pretenses.

Can you please to me how saying that you are going to donate whatever excess money you have to charity and then doing so is fraud?

Smart move, Georgie Boy. 'Cause you were most certainly on your way to getting about 12 inches of Sony penis up your rectum.

And if you don't immediately return the money that was donated your Legal Defense Fund, I just might class-action your ass for fraud, false pretenses, theft, and any other claims I might be able to cook up against you.

You do realize he has paid his lawyers up till now right? And he said he would donate whatever is left over when he accepted the donations.

As long as the money is used to pay his lawyers up till now, and the rest is donated like he claimed up front, there is no fraud. And he sure as hell shouldn't pay it ALL back, it's not like the lawyers worked for free up till now.

Honestly, this seems like somewhat of a victory for GeoHotz, think about it, the root key got out, and he didn't go to jail or owe Sony millions of dollars, sounds like a victory to me at least.

That's not where the fraud occurs. The fraud occurs in stating that you will accept my money and use it to accomplish Object X and then deliberately failing to accomplish Object X. Plain and simple. The promise to donate a surplus to the EFF was the surplus left over after Object X was accomplished. But Objective X was never accomplished. Therefore, there's no surplus.

 

[ShadowKatt]

***** move, Hotz. Thanks a lot for caving to the corperation when you had the support of millions behind you. Real good Fuck You to all those people that donated to your legal funds and to everyone involved with Anonymous since you just invalidated everything they did as well.

Hope you're proud.

 

[Dastardly]

Wrong. If tell you I want you money because I'm going to use it to wage a legal battle that will benefit you also by setting a legal precedent when I prevail before the Court and then I bail out on my promised legal battle long before the point of ever prevailing, then, my friend, that is most certainly fraud and obtaining property under false pretenses.

That's like suing a football team because you bet money on one of their games and they lost.

His lawyers fought, and it became apparent that a settlement was the only way not to lose. So they settled, rather than lose. If he'd gone "heroically" into battle and lost, your money would be just as "wasted."

If you donated money to the cause, that's all you did. You donated money to increase his chances of getting the help he needed to win. You didn't purchase a guaranteed win, and he didn't accept donations on the condition of "no surrender." In some ways, it's like demanding your money back because the foundation you donated to hasn't cured cancer yet, or the foundation had to disband before cancer was cured.

 

[jono793]

My feelings are that Sony realised that was a fight just wasn?t worth it. If they did win, there was no chance of recovering their costs, let alone any damages. If they lost, it would have spelled the end of console gaming as we know it.

On that last point, Geohot famously got a judgement in favour of jailbreaking the iPhone, on the grounds that apple?s licensing practises were restrictive, and thus couldn?t be protected by the DMCA. Now, Sony and Microsoft get a cut of the profits from every copy of game sold on their platform, in the form of a license fee. If a judge were to rule that such business practises could not be protected, that would have opened the floodgates for unlicensed development, and would have killed stone dead any incentive for companies to invest in new consoles.

 

[JDKJ]

Wrong. If tell you I want you money because I'm going to use it to wage a legal battle that will benefit you also by setting a legal precedent when I prevail before the Court and then I bail out on my promised legal battle long before the point of ever prevailing, then, my friend, that is most certainly fraud and obtaining property under false pretenses.

That's like suing a football team because you bet money on one of their games and they lost.

His lawyers fought, and it became apparent that a settlement was the only way not to lose. So they settled, rather than lose. If he'd gone "heroically" into battle and lost, your money would be just as "wasted."

If you donated money to the cause, that's all you did. You donated money to increase his chances of getting the help he needed to win. You didn't purchase a guaranteed win, and he didn't accept donations on the condition of "no surrender." In some ways, it's like demanding your money back because the foundation you donated to hasn't cured cancer yet, or the foundation had to disband before cancer was cured.

Oh, yes you did purchase a guaranteed win. That's the guarantee that Hotz made when he solicited the money.

 

[GiantRaven]

Thank god for that. It would have been bad if either side had won.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I think I may be the only one thinking that he'll never be able to insure any of his electrical goods after this ordeal.

I was kind of hoping that this would end in hackers and pirates alike charging at men in suits and judges with their wigs. It's a shame really, that would be the best ending possible for this sort of thing.

 

[V TheSystem V]

This is a great loss for all but at least not as big as it could have been of one of the parts.

Is this jailbreak code available anywhere else?

I wonder if anyone else will continue Hotz's work (and if Hotz will secretly help him).

If it's the same one that Kevin Butler's Twitter put up, you could probably find it somewhere.

 

[Hungry Donner]

So you'll be retiring that picture, right?

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

In my mind, this was the outcome Sony was always hoping to reach. Out-of-court settlements usually go much better in relatively untested legal ground like this, and this decreases the chances of Sony somehow losing the case on a technicality.

Agreed, Sony would have never gotten much money from GeoHot and this way they get everything they wanted from the case without the liability of a trial. It's probably the best outcome GeoHot could hope for as well, getting this thrown out in the short term would have simply extended his problems and in the end I don't think he could have won.

 

[Radeonx]

That's not where the fraud occurs. The fraud occurs in stating that you will accept my money and use it to accomplish Object X and then deliberately failing to accomplish Object X. Plain and simple. The promise to donate a surplus to the EFF was the surplus left over after Object X was accomplished. But Objective X was never accomplished. Therefore, there's no surplus.

So because he lost...it is fraud? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. He accepted donations to pay for his legal team, which he did. He is going to use the left over money to donate to charity, like he said he would. You can try to sue him for fraud if you want, but that is the most nit-pickingly assholish fraud claim that I've ever seen in my life.

 

[Irridium]

So... will there still be investigations into how much bullshit EULA's are? Or is that just going to be ignored now?

God dammit. I really wanted them to be looked at due to this case, and changed to be more consumer friendly. Just... god dammit.