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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.
I know a few Nigerian Princes that provide a more tech-savvy payment method.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
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
Mailing cash around is orders of magnitude more work than sending money over the internet, and far less secure. Expecting people to do that for you is a recipe for disaster.
I see this leading to unsubsidized consoles, while that would be good for the hacking/homebrew community i doubt the platforms would be anywhere near as ubiquitous if they charged the full cost + profit for the consoles.
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
Isn't this kid's hack the reason every PS3 game is now rife with cheats?
No thanks, I'm rooting for Sony on this one.
I'm sure they'll return the favor...
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
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.
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
the court(Judicial Branch of government) banned him from talking about the entire subject in public.
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.
The thing with trade secrets is that you're only bound by the NDA if you actually signed it.
If the company gives you the trade secret, without making you sign an NDA, but puts it inside a box, it's their fault if you open the box and get the trade secret, not yours.
Funny, when last I checked, if you reverse engineer Coca Cola and discover their secret formula, you are allowed to disseminate that information. What makes a crypto key any different? Geohot did not break into any Sony offices to compute the key.
Palm trees and 8
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
WTF is trade secrets? The man found out some interesting information and posted it. No harm done.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
I heard Sony loses money for every PS3 sold, so I went ahead and brought one to help out the cause.
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.
I built a Linux based gaming Console for $230. Your point is invalid.
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.
And in order to get that price, you sign a contract. The only thing you sign when buying a PS3 is the receipt for your credit card purchase, which is most certainly not a contract with Sony. When you enter a legally binding contract with Sony upon purchasing a PS3 requiring you to buy at least four games, they have a right to complain. Until that time comes - which it won't - they can enjoy a nice steaming mug of STFU.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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.
Computers can give you a reasonable idea since they are unsubsidized.
Horse hockey! Haven't you ever had to clean extra "value added" crap off a computer? I certainly have; that shit subsidizes PCs all the time. No PC manufacturer I am aware of operates without this stuff. If they did it'd be great to be able to compare their pricing with, say, Dell's.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
And I threw in the most relevant link of them all, viz., the link to fucking donate.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
01189998819991197253
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I've done thousands of international transactions and I can tell you that you are just plain wrong. In fact I've always gotten much lower exchange rates through my bank when I withdraw money overseas, I don't even bother exchanging money anymore.
I don't have a lot, but I know what's right and what isn't.
This is messed up
No he just made it really easy for people to ruin games like MW2. Read about the lobby hack before blindly defending him.
Hotz was trying to jailbreak the ps3 before OtherOS was removed. It was actually Chinese pirates that found the original exploit and Hotz took it further and released the keys online which led to millions having their online experience ruined. But /. likes to pretend it was some heroic story.....gag.
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.
He did what he wanted to his own console in his own home. He told others how to do the same. The court silenced him. That sure as hell sounds like a free speech issue to me - not to mention the fact that there never existed a contract between Hotz and Sony (he rejected their EULA and does not use PSN, from what I gather).
To use your analogy: guy modifies car to the extent that it is no longer street legal. Guy has great fun driving around on his private farmland. Guy posts on internet explaining how others can modify their cars for use on private land. Car company sues guy. Guy is silenced by the courts and forced to stop discussing his modifications.
You sound reasonable enough, and obviously I can't make you care about this issue, but I'm surprised that you claim that he had it coming; his 'crime' here is pissing off a big company, and the company is responding with a classic SLAPP suit.
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.
Absolutely true, but as others said further up, the fact that one fight is more important doesn't render others unimportant.
Dude, you have some seriously messed up pr0n on your computer.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No, this kid's hack is the reason you can do things like run homebrew and linux again. Like you could when you first bought your PS3, before they updated firmware to prevent it from allowing you to do the very thing it was capable of doing when you bought it. What other people have done with the ability to do what you want with your own hardware is their own doing; not his.
Sony is contending in their court filings that their private key and a text description of elliptic curve DSA together make up a "circumvention device". They're not going after him for physical devices or even source code, but for simply relaying information which, when combined with other public information can be used to sign code which will run on the PS3. They're trying to stretch the meaning of the DMCA so that even information about how to break video game console lock-in schemes is considered a DMCA violation. This is pretty clearly trying to establish a new category of criminalized speech. So, how, exactly, is that not a free speech issue?