Well, that didn’t exactly resemble a grand finale at a fireworks show, but it provided some good water cooler discussion during its peak.
The George Hotz aka GeoHot Versus Sony litigation is done. It’s over folks, it’s time to take your ball and go home.
This afternoon, Sony — no doubt grinning ear to ear from their “win” — posted an update on their blog that outlined some of the settlement terms…
As part of the settlement terms GeoHot has agreed to never again distribute his PS3 jailbreak software. Uh, Sony, you do know that this is literally everywhere on the Internet, don’t you?
I guess they’re satisfied with a moral victory in this case, since there was pretty much nothing else they could do to prevent its spread online.
No doubt many of Hotz’s supporters will be disappointed with his post-litigation statements.
“It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier,” said Hotz, “I’m happy to have the litigation behind me.”
While it was true that GeoHot never intended for his tools to be used for piracy, Sony obviously wasn’t hearing it.
Both parties expressed satisfaction that litigation had been quickly resolved. “Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us,” said Riley Russell, General Counsel for SCEA. “Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal.”
This puts a quick ending to what seemed as if it was heading for a long and drawn out litigation.
If you can remember, GeoHot asked for donations a while back to help fight the case. He received so much support (maybe even from Microsoft), that he put an end to the donations, and was confident that he could remain “lawyered up” to fight Sony’s accusations.
Now that he is settled, many in the jailbreak community are understandably disappointed. What happened to the so-called fight? What’s going to happen to all of the goodwill and money that he collected from the community?
I think that there will certainly be some sort of backlash from the community against GeoHot, but then again, we don’t know all of the details of the settlement.
Still, it’s disappointing to see a guy who went from making rap diss videos, to walking away with his tail between his legs.
But give him some benefit of the doubt. I guess if you’ve never been in that situation, it’s hard to relate to what he’s going through.
What do you think?
[Sony]