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."
Sony needs to hire Geohot, maybe to fix Mylo 2. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, is extending the use of hardware worse for Sony?
For example, I own a Sony Mylo 2, payed U$300 for it: a platform that wasn't a lost-sale approach like PSP and PlayStation, but actually had it's profit mark upon first sale. This platform (Mylo 2) runs a closed-source Linux that Sony didn't have permition to use, has ceased from being updated despite having a higher profit margin than other Sony products, has a 600MHz CPU+64MB Ram with just under 1GB of solid-state that perseveres for all applications, and despite running Linux it has been useless to this day while others have bought Sony's true lost-cause known as PSP. Sony lost money on PSP because the jailbreaking allowed use of any ROM or Homebrew, and no money was made on sale of commercial ware from Sony, while actual competitive products like the Mylo 2 get absolutely ignored.
Why does Sony get away with so-much as stealing Linux onto a Mylo 2 that they refuse to open-up, and they prosecute anyone that ports applications to it without their devloper kit, yet with PSP they continually re-patch from anyone jailbreaking it for playing Homebrew and ROM's that none payed for?
Mylo 2 is perhaps a platform with much more potential than any PDA Phone until Open Pandora arrived, yet Sony just continually stifles it's progress.
Re:Wouldnt he have deleted everything already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, everyone seems to be missing the fact the DMCA violations require the intent to violate copyright, not just the ability to do so. If he was hacking with any intent other than stealing games it's perfectly legitimate, even under the DMCA.
Re:Hope They Hurry (Score:4, Interesting)
Who has heard about this and can still meaningfully declare to stop buying from Sony? Nobody, that's who. Everybody "in the know" already boycotts Sony, so Sony doesn't have to give a rat's ass about anything anymore: Their customers don't care.
My family doesn't buy sony, because as the family techie, I tell them it's not worth trying to deal with them and I get them a system that has the capabilities they want and doesn't depend on brand.
So my boycotting is essentially 40-50 people boycotting. (Hey, I've got a big extended family)
I wish almost all cases were like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I wish all civil and almost all criminal cases operated on this principle.
Any subpoenaed evidence or any evidence caught in a police raid that wasn't obviously relevant should be turned over to a neutral 3rd party for sifting, with only evidence relevant to the case turned over to the police or plaintiff.
I would make two exceptions:
1) Evidence of a future crime, but only for the purposes of stopping that crime. For prosecution purposes, the evidence would be treated as "tainted" and could not be used to prosecute unless it was admissible under some other rule like "inevitable discovery."
2) Evidence of a past un-related crime or non-criminal civil offense where an identifiable victim needs victim-services or restitution, but with a similar stipulation as #1. The victim would be allowed to pursue civil actions and restraining orders using this evidence. One a lawsuit happens, a lot of information enters the public record and for particularly offensive acts, the information gets into newspapers. The criminal may be spared prison and an additional criminal record but he'll still have his reputation impacted.
Yes, this will lead to injustices but my interpretation of "unreasonable search and seizure" means if the police think you are guilty of crime A, and but for the search related to crime A they would never have found out about crime B, then the criminal courts should be treated the same for crime B as if the search related to crime A never happened. BUT it's even more unjust to deny a victim the necessary services once you, the police or a neutral third party, know they are a victim.
Re:Sony needs to hire Geohot, maybe to fix Mylo 2. (Score:4, Interesting)
At least for DVDs, there is no part of a disk that a burner can't write to. You just have to have a burner designed for authoring and somewhat more expensive authoring media that doesn't pre-burn the CSS area. When it comes to DVDs, they're about three or four grand apiece, last I checked, but they are readily available.
Alternatively, I suspect you can find hacked firmware for DVD+R burners to do it since that part of the media is actually burnable on DVD+R. If it doesn't exist by now, I'd be surprised.
And you can actually buy DVD-R media without the lead-in pre-burned, or at least somebody can. The DVD Forum approved that about four years ago for use in special kiosks that burn movies on demand. Again, you'd need custom firmware and the modified (non-pre-burned) DVD-R media, but if you're a company in China manufacturing fake DVDs, I doubt that you'd have hard time finding somebody to supply such things.
This is, of course, assuming that you felt the need to use burners at all. In reality, you don't need to be able to burn a copy of the disc if you're doing mass piracy. All you need is a replication house that doesn't look too closely (for a fee). The stampers start with a bit-for-bit image of the data to be burned. AFAIK, in principle, there's no reason this couldn't come from a commercial DVD.
For Blu-Ray discs, I have no idea. I haven't had any reason to author one yet.