Geohot Goes On Vacation; Sony Accuses Him Of Fleeing Legal Action
from the no-rest-for-the-weary dept
Sony continues its crazy, pointless and damaging attack on George Hotz (Geohot), the guy who jailbroke the PS3 to add back in functionality that Sony itself used to offer, but disabled. The latest move is to accuse him of skipping the country to South America, implying he took money raised in donations to flee. Geohot has responded by noting that it’s Spring break and he’s on a vacation that he planned months ago. Sony also freaked out about the computer equipment that Hotz recently was forced to hand over, saying that it had been sabotaged by Hotz. The company claimed that Hotz had “removed integral components.” However, Geohot’s lawyer pointed out that Sony was completely overreacting, noting that the hard drives just didn’t have the controller cards attached, which is hardly sabotaging the drives.
Filed Under: geohot, george hotz, hacking, ps3, south america
Companies: sony
Comments on “Geohot Goes On Vacation; Sony Accuses Him Of Fleeing Legal Action”
For the love of GOD, do not read the comments on the Wired article. There is monumental amounts of stupid.
Re: Re:
> do not read the comments on the Wired article. There is
> monumental amounts of stupid.
I read them. Basically, the majority are people saying, “I bought it, I can do whatever the hell I want with it”. It is also peppered with the typical morons spouting “What is a Gamecast?” and “These hackers are terrorists.”
Re: Re:
Oh brother.. I already did, and yeah, there are some real doozies there, like one person saying you CAN’T do whatever you want with something you bought (and this beautiful strawman to go with it) because you shouldn’t have the right to take something you own and harm someone with it. (or take a plate and throw out the window with intent to harm someone)
He obviously missed the context of the conversation that people are referring to modifying, destroying, or otherwise altering the products they own, not harming or infringing on the rights of others.
Re: Re:
Hahaha, you should have read the piece that kotaku had. The comments of those “gamers” were all bad and misinformed. “He should be sent to Guantanamo” more or less summarizes them all. Also against the anonymous group, they ran an article about some unmasking, that I can can see why they did that since their poor security led some hackers to release an assload of passwords.
Re: Re:
Now, that statement just entices me to go read those comments. I must not have gotten my quota of stupid for the day!
Re: Don't Look Down
Aww c’mon man, you know where I’m going now, so much for reading the second comment.
*leaves thread*
Heh, He took the controller cards off. That is awesome. Technically all of the data is still there. It just became a lot more expensive in getting to the data without the exact controller card to the model.
Re: Re:
I thought that as well; especially if he has a RAID striped across the drives. If they were also encrypted that would make data recovery VERY difficult indeed.
Re: Re:
“Heh, He took the controller cards off.”
Or he has drives with separate controller cards.
Expect...
Going by previous behavior, expect the judge to grant Sony everything they want, and find George in contempt.
Re: Expect...
Breaking news: Sony was granted a global warrant vs Mr. Hotz who is being sought by the Interpol to the extradited to the US. Also, all the hard drives and social media logins of everybody who visited Hotz website.
Re: Re: Expect...
it’s sad that i can’t tell if this is a joke or not :S
Completely overreacting Sony.
The neutral party examining the drives already noted that they are only missing a RAID controller, which is a very common and easy to acquire device (that they probably already have on hand) that he was never ordered to supply. This is just Sony being a bunch of overzealous and deluded children trying to create an uproar in order to make GeoHotz look like a criminal rather than just a defendant in a civil suit. This isn’t a criminal trial and he’s under no subpena to remain in the US, so George can go wherever he damn well pleases without being cast under suspicion of fleeing litigation. Also, accusing him of using donated money to “flee” is tantamount to libel or slander (which ever applies) on Sony’s part since they can’t, and didn’t bother, to prove that he used donations for legal fees to go on a trip that he’s been planning since November.
Re: Completely overreacting Sony.
Oh! A raid controller. I was thinking harddrive controller, I must have mis-read that. That would make it even harder to get to the data with out the controller card and same raid configuration.
Re: Re: Completely overreacting Sony.
Meh. Any experienced tech guru could have it humming along and reading fine in one work-day without harming any of the data.
Re: Re: Re: Completely overreacting Sony.
Even without the exact RAID controller rebuilding a stack is a trivial exercise for those with the right tools.
Re: Re: Re:2 Completely overreacting Sony.
You can also rebuild the data with out the raid controller just .iso (image) files of the disks.
Re: Re: Re:2 Completely overreacting Sony.
Too bad Sony doesn’t know what hard drives that they used in the Playstation…
oh wait.
This is just further proof that Sony is run by idiots.
Re: Re:
Indeed. And that is why I continue to excise Sony products from my personal and professional life. I have already made it a point — repeatedly — with purchasing that they aren’t to buy so much as a single CD made by Sony.
Re: Re: Re:
damn, the NGP looked pretty sweet, well I guess open pandora will have to do
Re: Re: Re:
I felt super bad a couple weeks ago. Girlfriend got me a new DVD player for my birthday and it was Sony. I had to thank her for the gift but then proceed to explain how Sony is the devil and I love the gift but please never anything from Sony. Talk about a tough spot.
Heaven forbid a computer expert would use a non-standard configuration then fail to inform sony when they forgot to ask for the card. When faced with legal action its best to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit.
When asked to provide a hard drive you provide the most minimal parts that someone would consider a hard drive. Extra stuff like a raid controller, encryption co-processor, encryption keys etc that don’t get listed wont be provided. The controller would most likely be looked on as part of the hard drive. An onboard Raid controller may not be.
I bet Sony is going to say he’s trying to ruin the evidence by not including the SATA cables next
Re: SATA cables
And after that:
ext4!!?! WTF is that? We should sue this guy more for inventing imaginary file-systems!
Re: Re: SATA cables
ext4 has been around for a long time.
Re: Re: Re: SATA cables
(that’s why it’s funny)
:eyeroll:
Re: Re: Re:2 SATA cables
or Btrfs
Re: Re: Re: SATA cables
woosh joke went right over your head AC.
Re: Re: Re: SATA cables
Stop inventing imaginary animals file-systems!
Re: Re: Re:2 SATA cables
I thought the word animals would have strikethrough…. I guess that is an unsupported tag…
Re: Re:
DUDE! HE FORGOT TO GIVE US POWER CABLES!!?!?!?! TO THE CLOUD!!!
Re: Re:
DUDE! HE FORGOT TO GIVE US POWER CABLES!!?!?!?! TO THE CLOUD!!!
Because Sony is so worried that their past reputation will catch up with them, they require that all salesmen or whom ever will sell their product to sign agreements that they will not speak bad of Sony products.
This means if there is some sort of known issue with the product, they can’t tell you. So you are never going to find out directly from the salesman anything damaging or to guide you in your decision based on the better of products.
I simply won’t buy a Sony product, like poster #12 above.
Sony can continue to be the a$$. They won’t get my money now or in the future. They are their own worse enemy.
Re: Totally
By taking away the functionality that swayed me into getting a PS3 instead of a 360 and adding a ton of shit I DON’T want on it without being given the option, they lost ALL of my future business. I used to, well, tolerate Sony. Now they can go cram it with walnuts.
I also remember when I used to be able to fire a system up and play a game. Now it is fire it up, download another pointless update that further nerfs the system and eats up precious hard drive space, reboot, load ANOTHER update for the game I want to play and then play it (IF I have any time left to do so, which after 15 minutes, I typically don’t care anymore.)
Sony Strategy: Ruin the functionality of the product, load it with bloatware (or a rootkit!), ask for more $$.
Yeah, no thanks.
I do not know what to think in this case ...
Some conspiracy theories pop into my head about this case.
1) Sony put some sort of spyware on the PS3 that they are don’t want anyone to find, so they are making a huge stink to make people run the other direction.
2) The chinese provided chips for the PS3 and that included spyware. Hence shutting down the alt OS option makes sense from the stand point of liability. (US government, Universities, corporations, etc using them for research.)
Re: I do not know what to think in this case ...
I was thinking this was a possibility the other day as well.
After running my own company I find it harder and harder to believe that actions aren’t directed and guided with an underlying reason.
Re: Re: I do not know what to think in this case ...
“After running my own company I find it harder and harder to believe that actions aren’t directed and guided with an underlying reason.”
This is completely true, though sometimes the underlying reason is not always transparent to the public and sometimes even has to do with internal conflicts that would look silly to those from the outside (and they often are silly).
But the rootkit thing would be a good explanation of why Sony is doing what they’re doing, its almost a better explanation than anything I’ve read so far. The other best explanation is that they were planning on selling the console at a loss to make up profits in games and they didn’t expect many people to use it for non-gaming reasons. After the govt (and perhaps others) did start using it for non-gaming reasons, they considered the possibility that they may have underestimated the extent that people will use it for non-gaming reasons and so they decided to do something about it.
It’s really hard to decipher Sony’s true motives here, but I’m sure if the Playstation does have some secret rootkit, it will be discovered eventually. Even if you can effectively hide the rootkit within the hardware/software (highly doubtful), if the rootkit communicates with the outside, you can’t hide the network traffic that it produces, and people who can view the network traffic from outside the hardware (which is relatively easy to set up, even in such a way that’s impossible for the PS to detect) can see the traffic (even if it’s encrypted, people will see that there is some weird traffic there and once they know it’s there they will dig further into the PS hardware to unmask it further). There is just no way Sony can get away with this if it is the case.
Re: I do not know what to think in this case ...
They already got caught for the rootkit… I don’t think that Sony can get into even more trouble over that.
Out of spite he should use a custom file system built on a custom Linux kernel that requires hand edits of the file table just to spite any would be attempt to actully see his data.
Re: Re:
Encrypt it, delete the partition tables, mail it to them and claim the USPS nuked the drives by X-Ray/mishandling the things in transit
Re: Re: Re:
X-rays do not harm magnetic media. That’s just a long running myth.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Correction, X-rays at low-levels don’t harm magnetic media. At harmful-to-human levels, damage can be done.
Hmmm...
Given Sony has just said he’s fleeing legal action, can he now sue them for defamation/libel as appropriate?
Re: Hmmm...
He won’t win, partly because Sony is a big corporation and the laws don’t apply to big corporations the same way they apply to individuals (depending on the circumstances. In the case of Google, because Google often serves a public good, the laws will tend to disfavor them). Now, if it were the other way around, Sony would have a good chance of winning a (bogus) defamation case.
Either way, I don’t really think this is defamation. I don’t think trying to speculate on someones motives constitutes defamation.
For it to be defamation one would have to claim something about someone that one knows is not true. For instance, if someone said that they saw me rob a bank when they never saw such a thing (because I never robbed a bank) and so they know (or at least should have known) better, then that’s defamation. Speculating on why someone left the country shouldn’t be defamation.
I think that it’s quite funny that all the nay sayers on this case seem to believe that he’s responsible for game pirating and hackers in online games. I hate to break it to all them that cheats for COD existed far before George and his team even got close to having the hypervisor figured out. Though I will stand and say that this enables piracy, I don’t think thats really an issue here. PS3 blue-rays we’re being torrented long before George released the keys. On top of that when I buy a console game I buy it typically for the extras that come with pre-orders or buy it because I waited ages for it to come out. I think most console gamers will agree with me that you went out and BOUGHT GT5 because you waited 6 dammed years for it, you weren’t about to pirate something you waited so long for and miss out on potential extras. All in all I think people a little confused and mis-educated about the whole situation. It would have been in Sony’s best interests to leave OtherOS alone and let George and his team work on breaking the hypervisor they so kindly used to restrict access to any amount of usable computing power. Then we’d just have a 7 core PPC linux system running without any need to fake authentication to Sony’s XMB. But they had to screw with s*** and look where it got them. Don’t lock someone out if you don’t want them to break in.
It’s so amusing when everyone gets their panties in a bunch because an adversarial legal system gets…adversarial. Reading the filing, this is fairly typical lawyering.
Let’s try to put ourselves in the shoes of some of the parties that we don’t necessarily agree with. I know empathy is bad form on Techdirt, but try it for a minute.
You are a neutral third-party, hired by Sony to get some files off of Hotz’ hard drives. Sony has subpoenaed the drives and they are delivered to you in boxes. Just the drives. You plug them into a standard SATA controller or whatever and they won’t mount. Maybe you get the impression that they have been RAIDed. Uh-oh.
Now, you could theoretically go out and do all sorts of things to try to read the drives. You could buy a random RAID controller card down at Best Buy and see if they mount. But these aren’t just your hard drives, these drives are evidence in a case. If you do anything to them that screws up the data on there, it’s a big problem. If you inadvertently change a single bit on those drives, it’s a big problem. So do you risk plugging the drives into a card you’ve never used before, with drivers and software you’ve never used before, that might not be in the exact same RAID format and might overwrite the partition tables on the drives just to be helpful?
No, you don’t, because you’re not an idiot. So you call up Sony’s lawyers and say “hey, I can’t read these drives because they’re RAIDed.” (The lawyers probably only have a vague idea of what that is, because they’re lawyers). “I need the controller card, or at least to know which one he used, to make sure I get the data off without potentially screwing up the drives. If that’s not possible, I guess I could just try random cards, or I could image the drives and try to get the data off that way.”
Imagine for a moment you’re Sony’s lawyers and the neutral third-party is telling you this. He says that there’s a very small but nonzero chance that plugging these things into a random card will cause a problem. He also says something about imaging the drives, which basically means about 8 additional steps you have to justify when you start talking in court about where you got the files from. “Well, no, your honor, these files aren’t from the hard drive directly, they are from an image that was made from the hard drives and then reconstructed with different software…”
Your next option, which is also annoying, is to go back to Hotz’ people and ask for the controller card or the specs. You don’t have forever to get this data – there are discovery deadlines, hearing dates, etc. You want to give the neutral guy the maximum amount of time to get the stuff off the hard drive in case MORE issues like this crop up. So you write a letter to Hotz’ lawyers:
“Dear Hotz’ Lawyers, plz send controller card and/or specs. Kthx, Sony.”
By doing this, you run the risk that Hotz’ lawyers will go complain to the judge that you’re harassing them, which will cause you problems in court later. It’s a chance you have to take, because a potential problem in court is better than a potential problem with corrupting the evidence.
Hotz’ lawyers call back: “OK, but Hotz says he’s in South America for the next couple weeks. He’ll get it to you when he gets back.”
This is the second or third time something like this has happened. You get frustrated. If you don’t have your data by the discovery cutoff or by the next hearing or whatever, you will have to ask for a continuance or an extension. You’ve got a 50/50 chance of getting one, depending on how the judge feels that day. If you don’t get one, then you lose that data as evidence and part of your case falls apart. That is a risk you really don’t want to take.
So, you put a note in your next filing that says “we keep asking for stuff and we’re not getting it promptly because Hotz is out of the country and won’t make other arrangements to get it to us.” You make it sound a little nasty to show that you’re serious. You do this for two reasons: 1) to put the judge on notice that you might be asking for a continuance/extension and you want it on the record that you’re having real problems and not just making shit up at the last minute, and 2) so if the worst case happens and the judge denies you a necessary extension, you have it on record for an appeal later.
Could all this have been avoided? Maybe, had Sony known to ask for the controller card in advance. That is a simple oversight that snowballs into a lot of work for lawyers, as described above. They may have also not asked for anything beyond the hard drives because they didn’t want to get in a fight about what was absolutely necessary to get the data they needed, so it could have been a tactical move that didn’t turn out well also.
Re: Re:
Wow, a wall of text that repeats the same fallacious argument over and over! I never get tired of those! Not at all!
Re: Re: Re:
Wow, a wall of text that repeats the same fallacious argument over and over! I never get tired of those! Not at all!
Which fallacious argument was I repeating over and over, or are you just trolling? Was it:
Or perhaps the one you find most fallacious:
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So, claiming he used money donated for his defense was what part of those points?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
So, claiming he used money donated for his defense was what part of those points?
Who has made that claim, and where is it made, Infamous Joe?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Sony made the claim, “But Sony notified the judge that, when it got the drives from Hotz, they were no longer working. ?Hotz had removed integral components from his impounded hard drives, rendering them completely non-functional.? (.pdf), the company claimed in a filing.”
PDF at http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/03/southam.pdf
Perhaps, you should have read the story prior to posting your theory on the incompetence of Sony’s lawyers in not asking questions of the third party on the issue.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Perhaps, you should have read the story prior to posting your theory on the incompetence of Sony’s lawyers in not asking questions of the third party on the issue.
From their perspective, the drives were non-functional without the controller.
Further, the claim that Hotz deliberately withheld the controllers is completely separate from the issue of whether Hotz used money for his legal defense to take his trip to South America (which is what I was asking Infamous Joe about).
The Infamous Joe says that this was actually claimed:
So, claiming he used money donated for his defense was what part of those points?
But Mike Masnick says it’s only implied:
implying he took money raised in donations to flee
What is the specific claim, or how, specifically, is it implied? I see in the brief where they say that Hotz’ bragging about the size of his legal defense fund online undercuts his argument that he can’t support the case being adjudicated in California. Where does it imply or claim that he took the money and used it for a vacation?
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Note that it is Sony making the claim, not the neutral third-party hired to examine the data who likely has the technical know-how to read the drives in an hour or two, regardless if they’ve got the controllers or not. It really isn’t that difficult to recreate a RAID array without the original controller cards. By the way, those controller cards? They are not part of the hard drive, so they were not requested.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Did the court order him to turn over all parts required to make the drives functional? or just the drives? once sony discovered that they had not asked for enough parts, did they then ask the court to make Mr. Hotz provide the missing parts?
I’ll ignore the part about the planed trip(the only way i’m sure his lawyer let him go), and i bet he can produce a receipt of sale predating this proceeding.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, I was referring to the argument that you think we care what you have to say!
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
No, I was referring to the argument that you think we care what you have to say!
Hey, an honest troll. Attention advertisers: you, too, can reach this high-value demographic.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
That’s rich coming from a troll like you.
Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Mar 24th, 2011 @ 12:08pm
That was a great story, you should write books.
Re: Re:
which explains the trade’s exemplary social standing……
Re: Re:
“Imagine for a moment you’re Sony’s lawyers”??? I can’t imagine being a more disgusting thing, no matter how hard I try. “Imagine for a moment you’re Jeffrey Dahmer, and you’ve just had a rather unusual lunch” would be a more acceptable choice. Sony’s lawyers fellate dead iguanas that have been decomposing for two weeks, and proclaim it morally upright and commendable. That’s what you’re asking people to imagine.
Re: Re:
tl;dr.
Re: Re:
“You make it sound a little nasty to show that you’re serious.”
Saying that the controllers were removed from the drives isn’t nasty, it’s just plain false.
Re: Encase?
Too bad there aren’t any ‘industrial drive cloning programs that are used to clone and preserve evidence’….
If you are doing ANYTHING with the actual hard drive that’s part of the evidence…. FAIL you just corrupted the evidence and there is no confidence in anything you produce from that drive.
If he meets Beverly D'Angelo, I'm envious.
Dear Sony,
If you’re truly concerned GeoHot has fled, why not just take South America from him? Or his passport? Bank accounts? Sandals?
It’s not like there aren’t options here.
/sarcasm
At the end of the day, this guy is working really, really hard to be an asshole.
Re: Re:
At the end of the day, this guy is working really, really hard to be an asshole.
By doing what exactly? By following the subpoenas to the letter? Isn’t that what you are supposed to do? If Sony’s legal team doesn’t know what to ask for, it’s not Geohot’s fault.
Or, are you saying Geohot is an asshole for reverse engineering Sony’s system? Something which is completely legal?
Or, is he an asshole for circumventing the technological protections, even though for uses of reverse engineering Congress placed an exemption in the DMCA for situations just like this?
Please clarify.
Re: Re: Re:
He is pushing the envelope in all directions.
The drives, without the controller card, are useless. Worse, hooked up incorrectly, could actually lead to a loss of data. His intention? I would think quite possibly yes.
Going out of the country? He can claim it was “planned a long time ago”, but it seems to be timed so well.
He is is just playing with the system, acting rather smug. It will be a joy to see him lose in court and spend the rest of his life trying to explain it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“It will be a joy to see him lose in court and spend the rest of his life trying to explain it.”
He’s a hacker on spring break heading to south america with a ton of donation cash in his pocket. He probably probably already has offers to work in countries that could care less about sonys IP…
I’m sure he’s worried to death…..
Re: Re: Re: Re:
He is is just playing with the system, acting rather smug. It will be a joy to see him lose in court and spend the rest of his life trying to explain it.
Wait…Geohot is playing the with system?
What would you call what Sony is doing? If demanding the details of everyone who viewed Geohot’s blog or the YouTube video in order to cast fear at other hackers out there isn’t “playing the system”, I don’t know what is.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Sony pay you much to disseminate this drivel? Looks that way to me, Zippy. Whatever it is you get, they deserve a refund. You’ve convinced nobody but your own lame ass, and it doesn’t get any lamer than that.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“Going out of the country? He can claim it was “planned a long time ago”, but it seems to be timed so well.”
Here in the United States “Spring Break” is very popular with the 15-25 crowd. It doesn’t have a specific date.
So yes a 21 year old going on to South America for spring break is common.
Spring Break
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, if he was being smug, he’d have put Damn Small Linux on and encrypted the root with a 512-bit passkey.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Who says he hasn’t?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
the fact the lawyer complained about a missing piece and nothing else speaks volumes
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
http://xkcd.com/538/
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Funny, that. He left the country at spring break. I’d say it was timed very well, since going out of the country before or after spring break could jeopardize his studies.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“He is pushing the envelope in all directions.”
Good for him. Sony’s lawyers will be pushing the envelope in all directions. Nothing wrong with pushing back.
What part about ‘adversarial’ don’t you understand in an adversarial legal system? The point of the legal system is to push the envelope. Would you quietly take a civil or criminal charge against you or would you fight back?
Re: Re:
Sony’s lawyers or Geohot?
Sony’s lawyers asked for the drives. They got the drives. Now they’ve found out they need additional hardware to deal with those drives.
If they don’t like the results, maybe Sony’s lawyers need to figure out what they actually want before asking for it?
Re: Re: Re:
Makes you wonder who they paid to pass the bar for them, doesn’t it?
Re: Re:
Said the pot about the kettle.
tytyjtyj
tyj
Lost respect for wired.
What a load of BS. They asked for his hard drives…he gave them. If the prosecution’s IT people cant figure out the rest, then so be it. They should have known someone like Hotz isnt going to have consumer grade hardware.
This guy is a freakin genius and he knows exactly what he’s doing. There’s no way in hell he would jeopardize this case because its verdict has such far reaching consequences.
His trip may look a little odd on the surface, but why shouldnt he try to enjoy himself. Sony’s CEO’s didnt put their lives on hold for this case and neither should Hotz. I sincerely hope Sony’s leadership are incensed by his little vacation.
Re: Lost respect for wired.
Yep just a sign of bad legal services committed on the behalf of Sony.
They should know that they would only get exactly what they asked for. You want hard drives, sure no problem. It can’t be helped that they are in a RAID that needs a controller that they lacked the technical chops to know to ask for.
Re: Re: Lost respect for wired.
How much are you willing to bet they tack on the cost of the controller to the case if they gain jurisdiction?
You have to admit, the timing and location of his “vacation” is a little bit suspect. Don’t get me wrong, I support him in this case, because I really feel he didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s not helping his case at all by appearing to flee the country.
Re: Re:
It’s a civil case that will probably last for years. “Fleeing the country” is a complete misnomer.
Re: Re:
However, it does not appear like this at all except to Sony’s lawyers.
This just in:
New study says screwing customers does not increase sales
Re: Re:
This just in:
New study confirms that lawyers don’t care about studies that say screwing customers does not increase sales.
I think next Sony should sue for not automatically providing a disk/raid controller for use in this case. Obviously they should, I mean we’re talking about Sony here, jees.
Then sue for not automatically installing and setting up said disk/raid controller. Clearly these people should be chomping at the bit to do this for a company as prestigious as Sony.
Then possibly find a way to sue South America (as in the whole bloody continent) for potentially harboring such a malicious criminal. They should know better, come on!
Yeah, think this would pretty much be inline with the Sony executive decision making process. Sigh…