MEGAMANTROTSKY said:I agree with your statements about anonymous releases after this case. In that perspective, the case has indeed set a precedent: hackers will now have to guard their identities more closely to defend themselves. Contrary to FAST6191, I don't think that it's a positive development that one has to remain anonymous under threat of "law". It's not that hacker names are bad, but they shouldn't be the only option of taking credit. Personally, this settlement does not come across to me as anything other than a loss. Hotz is perma-banned from hacking Sony products, and the community will have to be far more cautious than they did before to avoid legal persecution from Sony. At the very least, it is certainly not a "tie," as some others have said.xfcrowman said:Regardless of what anyone thinks of geohot, I think that this whole episode may change how people release their work.
Any future releases of exploits, homebrew, or piracy should be done as anonymously as possible, or released publicly in a country where the laws are favorable to hackers and not corporations.
Upon rereading my post I agree I could have used better phrasing in it. Suffice it to say I too am a great fan of security research/reverse engineering and having to have it as something of a cloak and dagger affair courtesy of the (civil) law as opposed to the vast majority of other areas of research is not something I am fond of in the slightest (if nothing else it looked like a lot of work was repeated by different people). If it was not already evident I would even go so far as to say in this case Sony overstepped the mark in a big way and will certainly second the idea of it being an example of the law being used to persecute.