Sony’s Legal Retaliation

Sony of course have come out swinging in retaliation to this hack, issuing a Temporary Restraining Order, Order to Show Cause, and Order of Impoundment against GeoHot and fail0verflow, which would require them to relinquish all the hardware and software tools they used to break into the PS3, as well as stopping them from using PS3’s to further crack the systems. In the court documents Sony say that despite GeoHot and the fail0verflow group denying supporting piracy, this hack will certainly increase piracy and that it has caused “irreparable harm” to the system.

GeoHot’s lawyers responded to the suits saying that what Sony hopes for as a result to the court proceedings will not in fact stop the hack. The key is already on the internet which means that any harm it causes cannot be stopped now by acting against the hackers. Fail0verflow also responded claiming that their only goal was to get back the OtherOS feature, and at no time have they “condoned, supported, approved of, or encouraged videogame piracy.”

It’s an incredibly bad situation for Sony, and they seem to be grasping at straws with these suits. Judge Susan Ilston in the US District Court for the Northern District of California has asked Sony to provide legitimate proof that GeoHot is inside Californian jurisdiction, the state where the suits were filed.