I was hoping for some interesting case law or for Sony to get a nice backhand slap for their actions (as it stands that they were allowed and effectively part of the public record might have some implications) but if people can walk away from this somewhat intact (that ruling* linked up has a bunch of terms that any contract lawyer would swat down in seconds) I will sleep happily. I thought Mr Hotz had a fairly good legal footing myself but one can certainly not ignore the realities of the present US legal system.
*the one that makes me most curious is "F. Knowingly assisting or inducing others to engage in any of the conduct set forth in A-E above solely directed at any SONY PRODUCT or that otherwise constitutes contributory liability under the law" which given the tendency for Sony legal teams (well not necessarily Sony) to abuse the English language in a way that would even make a politician blush (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKftRlzh2RM ) the term inducing does not help. Equally with the concept of duality of knowledge coupled with some weaker wording in D) is a hack against a common encryption method that happens to also be used in some Sony product (at the time of publishing*) possible to drop him in it?
The second one despite some apparent weakening terms and leaning towards actual branding is that Sony have been known to make a few chips in their time and some things suggest they (along with a lot of others in the electronics industry) might be heading down the system on a chip/board path more than they already have (to call much of what they have a true SOC is a bit rich for my liking). Equally they sit on and have serious clout (paid or otherwise) for many big industry boards.
The third is the obvious jurisdictional stuff and maybe the lack of an expiration timeframe but seen as this probably falls under it being a continued case.
*would be interesting to see if Sony were switching something up for a new version.
Re fines- read the section carefully " Such liquidated damages shall be an
optional alternative to demonstrating actual or, if relevant, statutory damages." (bolding is my own)
On the flipside this is a killer bit of CV/résumé padding for people in that line of work (aside from the obvious but clean room reverse engineering has been a go to practice for a while now).
@SPH73 and Sony's legal fees- see term "on retainer" as it applies to law. Most big companies have this sort of thing or even better they have such things in house.
I guess now it remains to see what happens to the other (arguably somewhat bigger) players in this PS3 saga.
Re releasing hacks anonymously- I am somewhat shocked it was not done that way anyway. I would love to see proper hacker signature (thinking some of the programming analysis type techniques rather than people tagging/signing their work) analysis tried in court.
