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GeoHot Asks For Donations To Fight Sony
mede writes "In an interesting turn of events, Sony might have stumbled into a tough nut to crack. George Hotz (aka GeoHot) famous for his iPhone hacking achievements, is planning on fighting the big corporation on removing his free speech rights at utilizing his fully paid for hardware. Hotz has always claimed being anti-piracy (since iPhone activities) and says he has never pirated any game or even signed PSN agreements. He's asking for donations to fight Sony back and try to achieve something similar to what was previously accomplished by the EFF with regard to cellphones. I've already donated."
My small contribution to a great cause.
My $50 is a small price to pay if it helps him win the case and set a precedent that leaves me free to discuss Sony's cryptographic failures.
Evil people are out to get you.
I am trying to weed out the fucking donation link amongst ~*8 links (and maybe ones i dont see) sprinkled and 'beautifully' embedded in the sentences as part of sentences in the summary and articles.
why are people doing this ? is it 'cool' when you embed the links with their link texts being parts of sentences ? what about usability, user friendliness ?
holy cow.
if someone can link the donation link in an non hipster, uncool, plain way, i will be grateful.
Read radical news here
I'm the one who submitted this story in trying to raise awareness and get you to raise funds from the slashdot community.. You deserve backup from many people to stand a good fight vs. sony..
Be careful, George.. You have a very strong opportunity to make a difference.. No one is saying you shouldn't benefit from it after it's over.. In fact, YOU SHOULD..
But take cautious steps in the middle.. You've appeared one time too many as being too media and attention centric.. Focus right now and enjoy the benefits later.. Listen to older people..
mede
Repeat after me: Not every business plan is viable or continues to be viable as times change.
The PC market does fine without subsidies, let console players pay the full price of their hardware so they stop saying how cheap their hardware is compared to a PC, while typing said message from a PC.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sony, much like Microsoft with the Xbox 360, now ban anyone found to be using a hacked PS3 from the Playstation Network. "O noes mah onlien gaeman is filled wit CHEETARZ" is a short-term problem that won't be around for too much longer. "Holy crap my right to free speech and my right to modify my own possessions have just been torpedoed in the legal system" is a much MUCH longer-term problem that would take a lot of money and time to reverse. For Sony to win this one would set a scary precedent. Imagine a world in which you can only install approved software on your PC; if you try to write your own applications or games and the manufacturer of your computer gets wind of it, your door gets kicked in by the police and everything gets confiscated.
Please kids, try to see the bigger picture before you post your ignorance for all the world to see. It'll save those grownups who feel compelled to do so the time of trying to explain it to you.
Also, $20 donated here. I'd be interested to see the stats in a few months; I hope he posts them.
Nintendo doesn't seem to have any problems...
because inherently you have the right to alter things you own....EXCEPT when that device is suddenly covered under the DMCA, and suddenly it's illegal to do something with your own device. The grounds on which he is being sued on are based on unjust laws. If the DMCA had been passed 100 years ago it would be illegal to work on your car, to renovate your home, or to alter your clothes.
What is your point? That these companies have a business model that is based on not selling their products for a profit? That they want to use the force of law to force that business model to be profitable?
I feel absolutely no remorse for these companies.
Palm trees and 8
You have a problem with him reverse engineering the inner workings of a device he legally purchased and then sharing that information publicly?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
then you aren't seeing the bigger picture. This is about companies being able to sue anyone they want into silence, while that person didn't break the law at all.
What trade secret? Published keys were already "published" by Sony, because a defective security implementation. It is like writting a number in the box and forbidding you to tell it to others. Geohot just told others what was the keys for his console, and the fact that these keys were the same for all consoles is just Sony's fault. In my opinion Sony deserves this and much more, because of fuking their customers (I still hold PS3 firmware 3.15, for using Linux, but not being able to play new games, because the *requirement* of firmware update). By the way, I have no intention of buying anything produced by Sony, including their media brands (e.g. Columbia Pictures).
As it turns out, you can modify a car so that it is not street legal, and you can then send information on how you did that to other people. This is a free speech issue: Geohot did not break into Sony offices or commit any sort of industrial espionage in order to compute the signing key; his only apparent violation of the law was to post a copy of what he had computed on the web. When posting something you computed becomes illegal, then there is a serious free speech problem.
Palm trees and 8
What's wrong with Hotz's activities? Are you saying he should not be allowed to do whatever he wants with the hardware he owns? He purchased his PS3 fair and square, from a retail vendor. He never signed any contract with Sony (nor even agreed to any EULA or ToS or similar bullshit).
Sony is the villain in this picture, they distributed a malicious update that DISABLED the perfectly functional OtherOS feature in existing fat PS3 consoles. They advertised those PS3s for years as being able to support OtherOS *and* being able to connect to the PlayStation network. Then they took these actions which force each PS3 owner to choose either one or the other, rather than keep both like they were originally advertised. That's bait-and-switch. As the owner of a fat PS3, Hotz was totally justified in hacking the hardware to reenable functionality of his console that was maliciously disabled by Sony. Anything he learned during that process (including crypto keys, etc.) can be shared freely because he never agreed to an NDA with Sony.
All these companies that think its OK to sell a piece of hardware and then use the legal system to prevent the OWNERS of that hardware from doing whatever the fuck they want with it, need a fucking reality check. And if you feel bad for them losing money because Hotz has given everyone back the ability to run whatever software they want on their Sony-subsidized computing devices, well maybe Sony should not have based their business model on holding their customers hostage.
So when exactly did geohot ever sign any agreement to keep their crypto key secret?
he's not their employee.
he has no privileged access.
If I analyse coca cola in a lab and figure out their secret formula I don't have to keep my findings secret because I've never signed up to any agreement with coca cola.
It's not my responsibility to keep their secrets secret.
See RC4/ARCFOUR. RC4 was a trade secret of RSA. Nobody else could implement it because nobody knew how. However, it got leaked online. How the leaker got it is unknown. Maybe they reverse engineered it, maybe someone in the company leaked it, maybe there was hacking, who knows? However at that point, others got a hold of it and messed with it and sure enough, it made streams that were like RC4. So other implementations (ARCFOUR) were made.
At that point, the trade secret was no longer a secret so they didn't have control over it. Too bad, that's life.
See the US more or less gives you two choices when you have a special process or technology:
1) Patent it. In this case you are granted a limited time exclusive right to your technology, in exchange for all the details being public. During the limited time you can decide what is done with it, and take people to court if they violate your patent. However once it is up, people are going to be able to implement it since you had to publish the details to get your patent.
2) Keep it a secret. This is just as it implies, you don't tell anyone how it is done or how it works, so only you can do it. As long as you keep it a secret, it remains yours and that can be forever. However, if the secret gets out, well then too bad, isn't a secret anymore and others can have at it.
So while individuals can be punished for leaking trade secrets, if they are under NDA, or for stealing them via industrial espionage, someone who is just using the secret is in the clear because it isn't a secret. If they wanted something the courts enforce control over that's a patent.
To be clear, I am not critizing what he did tinkering with any of his consoles. What I am criticizing is martyring himself on the internet. He is not a fool or foolish to believe that Sony wouldn't be forced to act.
Its not a popular stance on /. but I don't care for the action of either here. Sony and other console vendors have draconian DRM. Hotz can do what ever he wants to his consoles in his house but the moment he went to the internet with this another issue because it forces Sony's hand. Just like the guy who tinkered with his care enough to not make it street legal and the cops want to arrest and the state wants to take away his license complaining he needs money to fight THE MAN is a giant whatever from me. And again I have to reiterate this isn't a free speech issue either but a dispute between two parties in contract. Both can rot in court for all I care and I don't want nor should I even bother to care to get involved.
If you want to see a people fight the good fight for free speech, look no further than recent events in the new where people are protesting on the streets of middle eastern countries. Hotz vs Sony isn't even on the same scale.