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Geohot To Turn Over Computers To Neutral Third Party
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."
Why not give the systems over to Sony. Wipe what you want off the systems, encrypt the rest and let them touch them all they want. Once they do he can simply claim "What? That was never on the system when I had it!" Unless I'm wrong, once Sony touches the systems their pretty much no longer good as evidence. There would be no legal logging of what was being done so Geo could simply claim they changed the data. Granted that gives them access to everything on the drive but still, encrypt the crap you want untouched and forget the password.
Would he not just have deleted anything to do with Sony along time ago? Or better yet, worked from removable media.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
At least that reads better than the first motion by SO NY . Seriously the damage is done to the PS3 already there is no way to stuff
the cat back into the bag so I don't know why they bother keeping anything segregated. If they hadn't removed the feature to load another OS then this could have all been unnecessary. How do they expect an honest guy to build a cheap supercomputer these days?
No. The moral of this whole episode is Don't Buy Sony.
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.
Would he not just have deleted anything to do with Sony along time ago? Or better yet, worked from removable media.
This is a civil case, however deleting evidence after being told to hand it over is a criminal offence
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The third party will be a sub-division of Sony, so basically, the computers will end up in Sony's possession anyways.
I told you so in 3... 2... 1...
Exactly. Sony is expecting a win to be "People won't mess with our stuff". The actual result will be "People won't buy our stuff to mess with in the first place".
All Sony can hope for is a pyrrhic victory that will reinforce the boycott that many people (including me) already practice.
I will not stand for more of this from the justice. I am going to pour petrol on my self and alight in protestation. I do not what a geoholt is but I stand for not this.
By Bonney-
Georgi A. Flamme.
;-)
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.
Sony the company that robs it's customers by removing linux support and then sues them for trying to get it back.
if you are getting into this kind of territory, how about you just post a message on your web page that states that between every 1 and 7 days you securely wipe/format your hard drive and then restore from a backup image. the only new content on the drive is small things like updated bookmark files. also state that you use fully encrypted partitions.
explain that any hacking/homebrew stuff you may or may not have created is securely wiped from your drive upon successful compiling/uploading to the internet and that it only remains online now so you never keep local copies.
now any time you are sued and asked to turn over your computer you have already established that the drive will have been wiped regardless of any lawsuit and that it is always encrypted.
note: you don't actually have to wipe your drive every 1 to 7 days, but how would they prove otherwise once it was stated by you publicly before getting sued?
And that's why the next step must be: blow up Sony's offices, kill Sony's personnel. Especially execs and technicians, who are hard to replace. One bomb per day would be nice. Can a huge corporation survive boycotts? Yes, they have so many diversified activities you can't boycott them all. Can it survive legal battles? Yes, it has more money than any of its enemies. Can it survive massive, unrestrained violence? No, a corporation after all is made of people, and they can be killed like anyone else.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
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)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Thanks for summarizing what this case is, or at least linking to something that does. Not all of us pay rapt attention to every single lawsuit out there.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
That has been my position since (as I understand it) they sued Lik Sang out of existence. Lik Sang existed to make money by making geeks happy. I do not give money to people who seem to be actively engaged in stopping me from being happy.
he is a smart guy, I am sure anything important is truecrypted
You can see parts of the filesystem through the Netfront webbrowser on the Mylo 2 unit, yet it's just locked-down in such a way using User access restrictions that prevent you from migrating any kind of application onto the filesystem. Remember that there is no console to use it, yet it it is a Linux kernel just like the previous Sony Mylo 1 that came with Opera (embedded Linux version).
Nobody tried at all to 'jailbreak' any of the Mylos because they were just expensive little dream computers that were twice as expensive and sandboxed as compared to a PSP or even a Zipit Z2. An awesome setup would be a Zipit Z2, because of it's USB host function allows USB Host capacity with any generic Linux distribution whereas it just blows everything else out of the water in terms of capacity to integrate more hardware on it's inexpensive 300MHz/32MBRAM/16MBFLASH($50) budget not including the MiniSD card you'ld build from.
Feel sorry for someone that bought a Mylo 2 because it was a crippleware Nokia N*** without the cell network, but then with a Hughes system Satellite or a Siera Wireless Mobile Hotspot you can kiss the landlovers goodbye.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Not all that is cumbersome qualifies as Legalese.
"...which this court at least currently thinks is less likely than that Sony will"
I hope hotz uses an alias from now on. The trouble that he's in because he wanted his name nailed on history just isn't worth it. His hacks had legitimate uses ,but even the best defense team would still lose against Sony's. The corporation will undoubtedly win against the individual. Sony is sending it's sharks on anyone and everyone involved, till they are bankrupted and penetrated by a 20 foot pole.
Respect to hotz, i wish him the best.
"...trademark rights are exhausted when a trademarked product lawfully enters the market. The trademark holder then normally can no longer act against resale of the trademarked product." - Ius Mentis
Neutral, my a$$.
If hotz is found guilty in the civil suit, how much bread will he have to cough up ?
Wasn't it Nintendo that sued Lik Sang?
For sneezes, for lavatory, for counters?
Always blowing your load through the double layer, or are little speckles getting stuck in the wrinkles of your business end?
`Don't worry, be happy'
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.
...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.
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 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 out of them. They should just, what, suck it up and throw all that shit away, and then go buy whatever h
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The analogy doesn't matter. His motivation doesn't matter either. (I'm actually *for* hacking your own hardware.) The guy could have avoided all this trouble if he'd either kept it to himself or his close circle of friends, or went the anonymous route.
Instead, he chose to show off and tell the whole world "LOOK WHAT I DID!"
He knew exactly who he was messing with, but decided to go full retard anyway.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
truecrypt?
like in http://www.truecrypt.org/ ?
in that case I'm not so sure about how smart he is...
-- no sig today
If a mother bear knocks over your garbage can, you don't go into the woods alone and steal its cub.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I believe they did at one point for selling GBA flash carts, but it was Sony who ultimately put them out of business.
The moral of the story: if there's a few pirates, remove an advertised feature entirely and hurt its entire user base! Good going, Sony!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Judge: Mr. Hotz, is that true that you cracked the PS3 security scheme?
Hotz: Yassuh!
J: Why did you do that?
H: I purchased a PS3 long time ago, happy with the fact that Sony made a gaming consolle which was able to run Linux. And I love to play with Linux and try some stuff I write myself. So, since the PS3 was so powerful and.. I could run Linux on it, I decided to buy it. Then something happened. Sony removed the feature with a firmware update. Yes, I had to accept the EULA, but without the firmware update I could not play games on-line anymore! And Sony told me that it was for "security purposes". Security purposes my ass, Honour. I'll make a car analogy here.. Let's say you buy a brand new Mercedes, a station wagon. Then you bring it to your mechanic, after a couple of years, for the routine check. And when you take your car back, it is not a station wagon anymore. You can only have one passenger other than yourself. And your mechanic tells you that it was for "your security". What would you say, then?
J: Ahem... What about the Sony lawyers that were sitting there a couple of seconds ago?
M
WOOP WOOP WOOP
Nigger Alert! Nigger Alert!
WOOP WOOP WOOP
This builds a pretty strong case to have a EC2 account
and just keep a "small" linux vm running. Have it cron'd
to kill itself every 12-24 hrs. Kinda like, this tape will
self-destruct.
Then use that vm to access ur ENCRYPTED info on
another cloud.
Even if they did compel u to turn over the account, all
they would have is a dead process. And even if that
process was resurrected, it would just have net access.
And only a sloppy idiot would leave a trace of ur cloud
storage access.
When they take ur boxen... nothing but Chrome installed
on there. Chrome history... Amazon.
-AI
"Head is in the Cloud"
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
I would love to see him countersue for slander, and ask for all of sony's legal department computers so that he could search through their emails. When the judge says no, he'll have a great case for appeal.
What - you mean the way people used to write games before hardware accelerated graphics? Or did I remember something incorrectly, and Monkey Island wasn't actually pixels - but a whole screen full of view-aligned quads with pixel shares for the colors?
No, and why would they - that's not just 'homebrew', it's part of eating into their market. If you want that level of openness, seek it elsewhere.
Similarly, if you're not in it for the money, then why specifically the PS3?
No, they also want to make it so that those who are running pirated games can't be detected so easily. As it is, SONY's banning people with hacked consoles from online play.. clearly there's still bits to hack further.
Building on the earlier efforts I already mentioned.
"to remove anymore"? What?
Anyway - of course it's OK. You're very much more than welcome to use your PS3 in the condition that you purchased it and never update it. This includes the science people who decided that using a PS3 for science-y things was a heck of a lot cheaper than regular computers.. nevermind the fact that it's cheaper because SONY sells the damn things at a loss, to be made up for by game purchases - how many games were purchased for these clusters?
Yeah, SONY's own fault for selling them at a loss - I know.
Hey, scientists' own fault for hooking the damn things up to the PS3 network and letting them update! Duh.
"But Anonymous Coward," you say, " - what if I wanted my OtherOS -and- the online gameplay!? That's what I bought it for!
That's great - so in a few years when your games are no longer supported on the PS3 network anyway, are you going to raise hell then, too? Or are you going to go with the "well, I suppose they couldn't have supported it for-evar for the 0.5% of people still playing them" reasoning?
Are you seriously suggesting there's things the PS3 can do that a PC cannot? Or are you simply suggesting that it may be more efficient at some of those things?
But regardless - for those clustering projects, see above.. don't fucking let them update!
Depends.. would that come from an update that I have the option of not using? As far as I know, Dell doesn't control the entire internet, so I'm guessing they can't ban me from it until I'd run such an update. Nice try, though.
Of course it wasn't *eyeroll* But I guess next time they won't use a fixed variable.. let's see if that throws a spanner in the works.
If only they had given access to the hardware acceleration!
If only they had given access to the hypervisor!
If only this..
If only that..
And bit by bit, you're just worki
If he had worked only with, say, an external drive (to save his temporary work) and checked everything back into some free, online SVN (e.g. Google Code), could he have theoretically avoided having to give up all the hardware they are asking for? Are they simply asking for all hardware whatsoever? Or just the ones that contain the related files? If it's the latter, then all he would have to turn in is his external HDD, and attach a link to Google Code.
Oddly enough (well, not really odd) my comment seems to be the only one that doesn't scream "RAR! RAR! RAR! GOOO hackers! BURN SONY TO THE GROUND! YEAH! WOO!".. if only it were, it'd get a +5 in no time.
Perfectly right! Curiously, for a tech-minded website populated by supposedly rational people interested in tech, an amazing number of moderators and posters seem to be outright Sony-haters here.
I don't have any moderator points, but...Kudos to your post!