Sony Sues Geohot and fail0verflow Team
- Scribbled on January 12th, 2011 by Jordan Lund
- Filed in Hardware Mods, Legal Brief, PlayStation Network, Sony PlayStation 3
We were discussing the state of the Playstation 3 hardware crack on our most recent podcast and Jonah Falcon asked me, “What can Sony do?” My prediction was an RIAA style lawsuit storm against everyone involved. Sure enough, not even 4 hours later – the podcast hasn’t even gone live at the time of this article – Sony files lawsuits against over 100 people, everyone who had the temerity of pointing out how bad the security and encryption system is on the PS3.
You can read their motions here and here.
Sony is claiming irreparable harm and that the defendants in the case “trafficked in circumvention technology, products, services, methods, codes, software tools, devices, including but not limited to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Keys, encryption and/or decryption keys, dePKG firmware decrypter program, Signing Tools, 3.55 Firmware Jailbreak, and/or any other technologies that enable unauthorized access to and/or copying of PS3 Systems and other copyrighted works.”
They are seeking to prevent, specifically, George Hotz from spreading any further information about the hardware hack.
Let’s be real here for just a moment. Yes, the hack does harm Sony. They don’t need piracy cutting in to their already low software sales numbers. Unfortunately for them, the information is already on the Internet and as was said in the movie Serenity, “You can’t stop the signal.” That ship has already sailed and hacks for PS3 games are already being implemented using the leaked code.
Stopping one guy from talking about his hacked firmware on the Internet isn’t going to prevent the other hundreds of thousands of homebrew enthusiasts who are now looking at the code. This lawsuit is purely punitive with no real effect on the damage to Sony’s image or products. The next step is another lawsuit storm against people torrenting disc images and cracking tools, and that’s really the only recourse Sony has at the moment.
January 12th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
I’m surprised in this day and age there isn’t more to protect consoles from piracy. Both from the law and from the actual manufacturers.
Granted hackers are brilliant (even if I think they ruin and screw devs out of hard earned money) but surely security should be paramount in this day and age.
I did see an article where it was claimed that Sony can disable your PS3 remotely but that remains to be seen and rather too little too late.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
[...] Mellon University research professor David Touretzky is opening both barrels on Sony’s lawsuit against George ‘Geohot’ Hotz, and is calling the legal action “breathtakingly [...]
January 15th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
For every ten years of developing anti-piracy measures, it takes one more day to pirate them.