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Forums - Sony - Sony Suing Geohot and others over PS3 Hacking

r505Matt on 12 January 2011

I had this huge wall of text ready, but screw it. Sony's lawsuit is based on 4 different sections of the law, and the fact that they brought the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) into this is kind of disgusting.

Most of the other sections of the law require the plaintiff to show that the defendant(s) profitted from his/her/their actions, which I'm not sure is the case. I doubt he (Geohot) can be convicted crimnally because of this. I'm not sure about the other people though.

Sony's shotgun approach to this lawsuit kind of bothers me. It was like their lawyers got together and said "Hey, you think we can win if we sue them for this part?" "Probably not, but let's just throw it in there anyways".

tl;dr, Sony's lawsuit is based on 4 different parts of the law being broken. For Geohot, they should lose in regards to the the first 2, and probably win (civilly, not criminally) in regards to the last 2.



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Soonerman on 12 January 2011
M.U.G.E.N said:
noname2200 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:


we shouldn't support pirating....I sure as heck don't, and geohot and co. has opened the door for that. For a few conveniences I will not support pirating sorry.

The problem is that this method has several other, perfectly legal and legitimate, applications as well.  Just because something "opens the door" for piracy, it does not give a copyright holder the right to terminate the consumer's rights. 

To give you a rough and imperfect analogy, pockets can be used to shoplift.  Therefore, merchants should have the right to ban people with pockets from entering their store, or at least be able to search your pockets when you leave their premises.


I am perfectly aware you can have some fun applications with this..however within the last few days we have seen several games already being pirated and played thanks to this hacker/s. Heck I saw a video of a ps3 playing Donkey Kong, this is in no way good for the industry, especially in these horrible economic conditions WW.

the analogy you provided was overly simplistic and as you said imperfect. Let me use the same line of thought and give you the opposite end of the outcome. A guy distributes weapons, which he made without permission, to the masses. You can definitely use it to defend yourself, shoot a fly and enter the guinness and be famous BUT this will lead to more harm than good. As yours this is by no means perfect. But like I said for a few neat tricks I won't support piracy, doesn't matter which console it is.

h/e sadly I don't think Sony will win this either. Most probably they will take the guy to court for so long and make his life miserable. But I doubt it. But I do hope they win tho

Actually, your analogy is also weak. The person has the right to create a weapon and distribute it at will as long as it meets the standards set by the government. For example, let's call this person A. He knows that AK-47 are illegal because they can shoot several rounds at once. Yet, he wants to create a similar looking gun that only shoots one round per click. A has now created a weapon that he can distribute. Then here comes a third party called B. B sees the weapon, likes it, and gets it from A. B then decides to modified it to shoot several rounds in one click. At this point, A is not responsible for the actions of B. The same scenario applies with the hackers of the PS3. They modified it to serve a non-illegal purpose. Yet, other parties are using it for illegal reasons. The burden falls on those third parties and not the creators of the hacks since they haven't done anything illegal with the PS3.



M.U.G.E.N on 12 January 2011
Soonerman said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
noname2200 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:


we shouldn't support pirating....I sure as heck don't, and geohot and co. has opened the door for that. For a few conveniences I will not support pirating sorry.

The problem is that this method has several other, perfectly legal and legitimate, applications as well.  Just because something "opens the door" for piracy, it does not give a copyright holder the right to terminate the consumer's rights. 

To give you a rough and imperfect analogy, pockets can be used to shoplift.  Therefore, merchants should have the right to ban people with pockets from entering their store, or at least be able to search your pockets when you leave their premises.


I am perfectly aware you can have some fun applications with this..however within the last few days we have seen several games already being pirated and played thanks to this hacker/s. Heck I saw a video of a ps3 playing Donkey Kong, this is in no way good for the industry, especially in these horrible economic conditions WW.

the analogy you provided was overly simplistic and as you said imperfect. Let me use the same line of thought and give you the opposite end of the outcome. A guy distributes weapons, which he made without permission, to the masses. You can definitely use it to defend yourself, shoot a fly and enter the guinness and be famous BUT this will lead to more harm than good. As yours this is by no means perfect. But like I said for a few neat tricks I won't support piracy, doesn't matter which console it is.

h/e sadly I don't think Sony will win this either. Most probably they will take the guy to court for so long and make his life miserable. But I doubt it. But I do hope they win tho

Actually, your analogy is also weak. The person has the right to create a weapon and distribute it at will as long as it meets the standards set by the government. For example, let's call this person A. He knows that AK-47 are illegal because they can shoot several rounds at once. Yet, he wants to create a similar looking gun that only shoots one round per click. A has now created a weapon that he can distribute. Then here comes a third party called B. B sees the weapon, likes it, and gets it from A. B then decides to modified it to shoot several rounds in one click. At this point, A is not responsible for the actions of B. The same scenario applies with the hackers of the PS3. They modified it to serve a non-illegal purpose. Yet, other parties are using it for illegal reasons. The burden falls on those third parties and not the creators of the hacks since they haven't done anything illegal with the PS3.

>_> ugh he might not be in trouble for the murder or w/e the shooting caused but illegal distribution of firearms is illegal as far as I know, so he will be in trouble as well, but with different charges.



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r505Matt on 12 January 2011
Soonerman said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
noname2200 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:


we shouldn't support pirating....I sure as heck don't, and geohot and co. has opened the door for that. For a few conveniences I will not support pirating sorry.

The problem is that this method has several other, perfectly legal and legitimate, applications as well.  Just because something "opens the door" for piracy, it does not give a copyright holder the right to terminate the consumer's rights. 

To give you a rough and imperfect analogy, pockets can be used to shoplift.  Therefore, merchants should have the right to ban people with pockets from entering their store, or at least be able to search your pockets when you leave their premises.


I am perfectly aware you can have some fun applications with this..however within the last few days we have seen several games already being pirated and played thanks to this hacker/s. Heck I saw a video of a ps3 playing Donkey Kong, this is in no way good for the industry, especially in these horrible economic conditions WW.

the analogy you provided was overly simplistic and as you said imperfect. Let me use the same line of thought and give you the opposite end of the outcome. A guy distributes weapons, which he made without permission, to the masses. You can definitely use it to defend yourself, shoot a fly and enter the guinness and be famous BUT this will lead to more harm than good. As yours this is by no means perfect. But like I said for a few neat tricks I won't support piracy, doesn't matter which console it is.

h/e sadly I don't think Sony will win this either. Most probably they will take the guy to court for so long and make his life miserable. But I doubt it. But I do hope they win tho

Actually, your analogy is also weak. The person has the right to create a weapon and distribute it at will as long as it meets the standards set by the government. For example, let's call this person A. He knows that AK-47 are illegal because they can shoot several rounds at once. Yet, he wants to create a similar looking gun that only shoots one round per click. A has now created a weapon that he can distribute. Then here comes a third party called B. B sees the weapon, likes it, and gets it from A. B then decides to modified it to shoot several rounds in one click. At this point, A is not responsible for the actions of B. The same scenario applies with the hackers of the PS3. They modified it to serve a non-illegal purpose. Yet, other parties are using it for illegal reasons. The burden falls on those third parties and not the creators of the hacks since they haven't done anything illegal with the PS3.

The thing here though is whether or not the As in this case profitted from what they did. I don't know about all of them, but for Geohot, I don't think this is the case.

But the real issue is if they can prove that the As could/should have foreseen their hack as being used for others to profit from. If Sony can get that to go by, then they are all screwed.



CDiablo on 12 January 2011

This will just push those working on pirating programs to make them even faster. Good job Sony. If they had any brains they would go after sellers of pre burned BRD's and filesharers like the rest of the world. In the very least those cases are winable(is that a word?).



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r505Matt on 12 January 2011
CDiablo said:

This will just push those working on pirating programs to make them even faster. Good job Sony. If they had any brains they would go after sellers of pre burned BRD's and filesharers like the rest of the world. In the very least those cases are winable(is that a word?).


This case is winnable, but it most likely only civilly. But Sony is definitely doing it wrong. Everyone else hires hackers to design their security systems, not sue them. So Sony might win this lawsuit, be awarded X amounts of dollars in damages, get about 5% of it, and lose money due to legal fees. Not really the smartest move.

Now if they can get a conviction for fraud, that's different. It's highly unlikely though.



Galaki on 12 January 2011

The winners coming out of this will be the lawyers, LOL.



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r505Matt on 12 January 2011
Galaki said:

The winners coming out of this will be the lawyers, LOL.


QFT



deskpro2k3 on 12 January 2011

thats rather bold of him. asking for donations and such. i'll keep an eye on this story



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Squilliam on 12 January 2011

I doubt that Sony would do anything other than encourage additional hacking of their system by doing this. If sueing was so effective then why didn't Apple sue Geohot? It isn't like they've shown much restraint in the past.



Tease.