He addmitted guilt when he settled in court, so yes he is guilty and the only reason they didn't press charges is because he didn't directly give it to them, he gave it to everyone which was agaisnt another law, so yes he is guilty and yes it's his fault piracy and online cheating are here and everyone else involved in hacking the ps3, hell their at fault for removal of linux it wasn't taken out until they hacked it, you can blame sony all you want but bottom line no priracy and no cheating online is better then cheating and piracy and being able to play crappy homebrew games no1 even knows how to find 

1. Attacking an actual threat is a thing, attacking what COULD be a threat, but could not be too, indiscriminately, goes beyond their rights ad violates the rights of those not threatening it. You cannot report to the Police whoever owns a weapon, accusing all them of planning to kill you, whoever is innocent of your accusations, most probably the vast majority of them, would sue you and you'd be condemned to compensate them, or even closed in an asylum, should your form of paranoia be considered dangerous.

2.  Virtual machines are used in contexts more critical than a console, Sony could have found a viable way to keep Linux and make its honest users happy without offering pirates an easy backdoor. Not rewriting the vulnerable part of the hypervisor, suing those that reintroduced the lost functions and just hoping pirates wouldn't break through the weak point anyway, even without GeoHot, was just wishful thinking and by no means an effective defensive strategy.

3. Criminals could obtain weapons anyway. In my country, like in many others in the world, people cannot legally own automatic weapons, at most semi-automatic, but criminals always had them anyway. Stopping the source is utopian, criminals could even build them  by themselves. And in the case of HW and SW, as they aren't deadly weapons, limiting honest users rights would not only be ineffective to stop pirates, just like it isn't in the weapons case, but it would be plain unjust. Imagine if Sony's presumed strategy were considered legally acceptable, companies (but also privates) could have practically everything made forbidden, as almost everything can be used for crime, if a criminal wants to. You could beat to death somebody using a cured ham or a stockfish, for example, should we forbid them? A brick or a stick can be deadly weapons. And OMG! We got knives in our kitchens! And how many people are killed by cars every year? So no, companies must fight criminal use of things against them, not things themselves or people using them for harmless and honest purposes. And as I wrote in previous points, bettering security is the only effective strategy, criminals and pirates don't give a damn about further prohibitions, as what they do is already forbidden now.

Well to start with... he didn't distribute their code.  He distibuted a patch that overwrote their code.

Second of all his hack did not allow piracy and online cheating.... and if he did.  That is not illegal. 

See Galoob V Nintendo.

"The Court denied Nintendo's motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that Game Genie did not create a derivative work and also suggesting that even if it did, it might well be fair use. As the district court wrote, "Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work."

Essentially, your entire basic premise of the idea is wrong.

If you're doing something for educational/research/fun purposes, there is no problem at all with distributing it. Of course you can't distribute any copyrighted content, but instructions/materials for modding a console, why not?

Of course Sony would like you to believe otherwise. They want you to believe they have the right to restrict people's exchange of ideas that relate to their products, customer rights be damned...

Because it causes priracy and cheating, and the vast majority of the people who download it download it for those 2 reasons, there are a few that have other reasons, but if the vast majority bought guns to murder someone with the country probably wouldn't sell guns and do everything in their power to keep them out of the country 

No... like I said, I thought the activities could be anticipated.  What couldn't be anticipated is Sony's incopetant security.  Sony should know there own itnerent security.

If you're doing something for educational/research/fun purposes, there is no problem at all with distributing it. Of course you can't distribute any copyrighted content, but instructions/materials for modding a console, why not?

Of course Sony would like you to believe otherwise. They want you to believe they have the right to restrict people's exchange of ideas that relate to their products, customer rights be damned...

1. in the suing of geohot they were suing the person responsible for posting the keys to the ps3 online, the person whos actions caused the piracy and cheating online so yes they were attacking a threat

2. "Sony could have found a viable way to keep Linux and make its honest users happy" how, since linux itself was what was exploited ( do you really think its that simple to say they should have found another way? )? originally linux was what allowed the hackers to break in so it was removed

3. with regards to this lets say for example that piracy or online cheating is water coming through a leak and the leak can be the exploit in question... taking a sponge and removing some of the water will work to a certain extent but unless the source is patched it is pointless... as i said it makes absolutely no sense to go after the pirates on an individual basis if the exploit is still there continuously allowing others to join in the activity

1. That is what they state, but in a lot of other cases, like phones jailbreaking, courts ruled there were legit uses for the hacks, and we know there are also for GeoHot's one.

2. Pirates used Linux to break through because there was a vulnerability in the way Sony implemented OtherOS, the right thing to do was removing that vulnerability, as they would have been forced to do so if the vulnerability were in a subsystem essential for gaming or movie playing, for example. Moreover, once Sony produced millions vulnerable PS3s, removing Linux from successively produced ones was totally pointless, pirates just need old unpatched consoles to crack the security and also to study without problems every other subsystem, looking for other vulnerabilities in parts Sony just can't remove. Sony closed the stable door after the horse has bolted.

3. Responsibility is individual, not collective so Sony really hasn't choice about it, you can't interrupt water supply to everybody because in some homes there are leaks. But Sony hasn't just the instrument of suing pirates, it can kick them out of its networks without the need of suing, for breach of the rules that everybody wanting to access them must explicitly accept (much stronger and enforceable obligation than EULAs).