Geohot To Turn Over Computers To Neutral Third Party 117
intellitech writes "This will make a lot of you feel better. Groklaw is reporting that both parties have come up with a stipulation in Sony Computer Entertainment American v. Hotz regarding what Hotz must do about handing over his computers. The new Preliminary Injunction (PDF) now says that he is to turn his materials over to a 'neutral' third party, not to SCEA's lawyers, and after the neutral party combs through them, it all is returned to Hotz. All but whatever they 'segregate' out of them. He won't get that back until the end of the litigation, should he prevail, which this court at least currently thinks is less likely than that Sony will. There will be a hearing on Hotz's motion to dismiss on April 8, 2011."
Re:Wouldnt he have deleted everything already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wouldnt he have deleted everything already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sony needs to hire Geohot, maybe to fix Mylo 2. (Score:4, Insightful)
You bet. The "copyright" controls inside these devices are not really for copyright protection purposes. You can always make a bit-for-bit-perfect copy of optical media if you have the right hardware, and the real pirates have the right hardware. Therefore, by definition, any DRM scheme not involving handing out a one-time-use account key to the first owner of a game is, by definition, completely ineffectual as a copyright protection scheme.
No, the principal purpose of those keys is to prevent third parties from developing for their platform without paying them royalties. To that end, if game developers believed Sony had no way of re-securing their platform, and if this belief led them to release titles without paying Sony, then Sony would stand to lose a lot of money.
Re:Wouldnt he have deleted everything already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhh, as far as the 3.55 stuff, geohot merely released a FW update that enabled the "install PKG from USB" feature in XMB and some signing tools. Both of those have very valid uses other than piracy, and neither enable piracy in and of themselves. That's like saying that releasing a hex editor or decompiler is illegal because you could use it to crack PC games.
Actually, geohot went so far as to warn people *not* to try making the changes that are necessary for backup managers to function because he had seen that 3.55 FW had some memory protection tricks in place that could brick your PS3 if you tried to patch the LV2 syscalls needed for backup managers (and thus easy piracy) all willy-nilly. I believe exactly what he said was something like "OMG OMG OMG OMG DO NOT PATCH LV2 OR YOU WILL BRICK YOUR CONSOLE" (I know I'm quoting the OMGs, at least -- the wording of the rest might be a little off).
So, FW patch that let's you install signed software from USB + signing tool to me does not = piracy, but rather any capability to run homebrew. Given the fact that he's never enabled any of the stuff necessary to make piracy simple, and outright states tat he's against piracy at every turn, I'm not sure how you get to your conclusion.
kmeaw, hermes, and KaKoRoTo however are the ones you should be looking at.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a minute here... surely there's a question of whether or not there ARE any "Circumvention Devices", that being a term defined by 17 USC 1201. By requiring Hotz to turn over "Circumvention Devices" the judge is requiring him to either
a) Concede the point here and now OR
b) Risk contempt of court charges for not turning them over.
I didn't realize purchasing a preliminary injunction was so cheap.
I see the "Honorable" Susan Illston is still giving us a demonstration of what "due process" looks like nowadays; first issue a broad ex parte injunction, THEN hold a hearing, then ratify the original injunction with only minor changes, requiring the defendant to cede the case to comply. No opinion was published, so apparently we're not going to get to see her "reasoning" in this case.
Re:Hope They Hurry (Score:4, Insightful)
...it didn't provide access to all the superjuicy bits - even if they weren't exactly needed for homebrew..
What, like actual hardware accelerated graphics? IIRC, it just provided a framebuffer. Try uninstalling your video drivers and then playing any game.
you really ought to just get a dev license and start making some serious money.
Not everyone's in it for the money, and then you're subject to Sony's rules about what is and isn't allowed on the console. Do you think they'd ever allow something like XBMC?
before long, SONY realized their hacking was getting awfully close to not just unlocking some additional functionality, but also to unlocking piracy.
Interestingly, if you look at the timeline, piracy was about the first thing to fall. It was never the motive, otherwise you'd think these guys would stop.
So they removed OtherOS.
And thus, the first serious effort to hack the PS3. Before they removed OtherOS, it was this invincible platform, people were much more focused at hacking other systems since the PS3 already let them do something, at least.
Keep in mind, the people who made the first attempt are not the same people who ran projects like this. [umassd.edu]
You also say this casually, as if it's an OK thing for Sony to do, as if it's theirs to remove anymore. If I'd bought a PS3, I'd expect OtherOS to be a feature I bought it with. No matter that Sony had a pissing contest with some hackers, what they're doing here is trying to take back a feature I fucking bought. It's not terribly different from breaking into my car and stealing the stereo back because they've heard some people do evil things with stereos.
...I can do that on a generic PC, laptop, tablet.. you know.. the -real- hacker-friendly hardware.. why bother hacking the PS3 at all if NOT for the piracy?
For the things you can't do [umassd.edu] on a PC, laptop, tablet, etc. Never mind that, again, it was sold open. How would you feel if Dell took back your ability to run other OSes on your laptop, and locked you to Windows ME?
See if another console developer ever tries to be hackerfriendly again.
I would hope that other developer would take a look at the timeline. The PS3 certainly wasn't harder to hack than any other console. It's now been ripped open harder and deeper than any other console -- Sony is suing because that's what they know how to do, because they know very well that they can't put the cat back in the bag, that they can't just release a patch and call it done. And of course, as a nasty side effect for Sony, piracy is now possible.
But this didn't happen for years. They bought themselves years and years by being even marginally open. If they'd given more access to the hardware, there'd likely be even less incentive to hack it. It's not likely that they'd have kept it closed forever, but it's pretty clear that the only reason the PS3 remained uncracked for so long while other platforms were routinely pwned was OtherOS.
Everybody whining about the homebrew.. get a fucking PC and have at it
Why should I have to? I mean, I have a PC. You're talking about getting another one, trying to make it small, quiet, and cool, while adding enough power to play games, then getting a controller and trying to find PC games that play well from the couch with a controller, then setting up something like MythTV and buying a remote...
Never mind the people who already bought a PS3 for that purpose, back when it was actually reasonable to do. Or the people building clusters [umassd.edu] out of them. They should just, what, suck it up and throw all that shit away, and then go buy whatever h