No they are NOT. You are making things up at this point. YOU CAN determine illegality based on the possible infraction that a product enables. Like I said before, you cannot sell silencers for handguns based on that simple fact. Because although you can make a case that a silencer is used for hunting, it is far too likely to be used in crime for them to be considered legal.

It is of the exact same essence of this case. 

If Sony can prove that cracking the system using Geohot's software will be used extensively for piracy or anything that can hurt their product's image or usability, then they have a case. I don't see what is so hard to understand here.

The difference being that this falls more clearly into a grey area. I'm not making stuff up, but rather projecting what i hope the interpretation will be, that is the consumer's right to tamper with their products and to distribute information on tampering with products, which should fundamentally be the same under the law. This is levels different than circumventing DRM on a copyrighted bit of intellectual property, this is taking out the details of a working product which are or should be freely examinable

I'll admit there's more than a bit of wishful thinking in there, but there's a degree of separation from direct piracy that by god should be protected

*Throws hands up in the air*

"Internet jurisdiction is used to determine which legal authority may hear a case, between a defendant and plaintiff, in which the potential crime was committed on the Internet. Typically, when a plaintiff, or the individual who initiates a lawsuit, wishes to accuse someone of a crime, he appeals to the legal authority, or court, given jurisdiction over the geographical area where the crime occurred. Internet crime, however, is difficult to assign to a particular geographic location because the originator of the website may be located in a different region or country than the individual against whom the crime was allegedly committed.

When determining state jurisdiction within the United States, current US legal precedence has established that a website operator must exhibit the intention to do business within a specific region in order for that regional court to claim jurisdiction. For example, if a plaintiff in Massachusetts believes that the content of a website, operated in the state of California, violates laws unique to Massachusetts, the plaintiff must prove that the website specifically targets his state as a region in which it wishes to do business. If this intent can be proven, a Massachusetts judge and court would have jurisdiction over the case.

Evidence of intent to do business may be proved through various means, such as contact, made by the website operators, with businesses in a specific geographic area, via the website itself. It could also be established if operators made business trips, telephone calls, or fax messages to the region. A variety of other means for proving the intent to do business exist as well, and are often determined by the court of jurisdiction on a case-by-case basis."

Hence, the twitter accounts, who he talked to specifically, they can make the case that he targeted california.

Period. End of story. Very common. Happens all the time. 

just for the sake of it.

when this guy FIRST hacked his ps3, the very first time, and blew it up, and the media exploded, led to the end of other os, etc, did Sony sue him??

now the answer to that is the end to your entire arguement, this discussion, and 90% of the threads made on this subject. Now go ahead, and ignore that to.

I believe they did actually. I'm not sure what your point was, but they sued failoverflow for the other OS exploit. Then they got sued for removing other os. Both groups were found to be breaking the digital rights act or something like that.

your wrong, when he first hacked his ps3 using other os, Sony did not sue him, they removed other os and his hack was rendered useless, Gehot ending up shaking his fist swearing he would return the feature. This was WAY before the failoverflow stumble over the security key. In fact the opposite happened, Sony was the one who got sued.

Like these big websites are specifically targeting California, though. Again, vengeful anti-consumer opportunism with no real basis except that that's where they want the case to take place. There's an equal chance of it occurring in any state in the Union, and quite a few out of it, if they're going on that flimsy of an argument.

yes you're right, it was the hack to get other os back in that they were sued for. my mistake.

while I agree that they are doing it to get the best case in the region with the best chance to win, there is nothing wrong with that and companies AND people do it all the time.

They are just seeing in the offhand chance that they could get it to take place in california, they have every right to do so. Like I said before, this has nothing to do with the people who watched the vido, or downloaded the hack or anything. This is simply a jurisdictional thing.

Umm, thats a sad excuse. You know as well as every one else does, hackers pirate games.  That's stealing which is against the law and morally wrong as well