Sony asks for restraining order against Geohot, fail0verflow over PS3 exploits

We knew Sony would be non-plussed about the PlayStation 3 jailbreak , and now we have a better idea as to the full extent of its anger. The company has filed suit (not yet, see below) asked for a restraining order against George ” Geohot ” Hotz, the “hacking group” fail0verflow (Hector Cantero, Sven Peter, “Bushing,” and “Segher”), and numerous John / Jane Does over the exploit and its release. To be more specific, the company cites violations of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, various copyright infringements, and other acts of binary malfeasance. A temporary restraining order has also been sought, asking that all “circumvention tools” be taken offline and his computers and related media (i.e. anything storing said tools) be impounded. It looks like Geohot’s servers are being slammed at the moment, so we’ve gone ahead and hosted the relevant PDFs ourselves below. We’re still sifting through ourselves and will let you know what we unearth. Update: Nilay here — let’s take a look at what’s going on. This isn’t a “lawsuit” in the traditional sense, since Sony hasn’t filed a complaint for copyright infringement or whatever against Geohot and friends. Instead, the company appears to be trying to shove the genie back in the bottle and have the jailbreak and any information about the jailbreak removed from the web by filing a temporary restraining order. That might work in the short term — Geohot’s already pulled his pages down — but history suggests that the forces of paperwork rarely triumph over the righteous anger of nerds, and that this code is out there for good. That said, we’ll see what the court says tomorrow; although we very much doubt Sony’s melodramatic proposed motion and order will be granted as written, we wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of order is eventually granted — and then from there a formal lawsuit is likely just a few days away. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Sony asks for restraining order against Geohot, fail0verflow over PS3 exploits originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Posted by on January 12, 2011. Filed under News, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry