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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."
No. The moral of this whole episode is Don't Buy Sony.
I believe that would be classified as willful destruction of evidence, which is a criminal act.
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
That's a good way to automatically lose your case and get the steepest possible punishment. Judges hate, hate people who destroy relevant evidence, and even if you securely erase the data itself, forensics teams can often tell that you erased something in the first place (and if he did that, Hotz would have to explain why he didn't have any data relating to this project he spend so much time on). I'm sure it's possible to erase things in such a fashion as to avoid leaving evidence that I ever performed an erasure, but I sure wouldn't want to chance it in his situation, especially when it doesn't look like Sony has an especially strong case.
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Has anyone thought he may not have to delete anything? They need to prove he was attempting to circumvent copyright protection devices. My understanding of the situation is that he was trying to restore the ability to boot to linux on the PS3, a feature that was included on the device when he purchased it. If that's all he really did then there isn't really anything to find on his computers other than contacts and login credentials for various accounts that Sony was certainly interested in.
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.
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.