Sony wins Geohot restraining order

By Fred Dutton Published 27 January, 2011

Its lawsuit shows "likelihood of success".

Sony has won a temporary restraining order against the hackers responsible for the widely-publicised PlayStation 3 security breach earlier this month.

According to documents published by PSX Scene, Sony was granted the order so as to prevent "immediate and irreparable damage to SCEA" before court proceedings proper begin.

The ruling explained that Sony "has shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its claims for violation of the DMCA and CFAA, and that it will suffer irreparable harm unless Defendant Hotz's violations are enjoined."

Duly, the restraining order prevents Hotz and his team from attempting the following:

  1. Offering to the public, creating, posting online, marketing, advertising, promoting, installing, distributing, providing, or otherwise trafficking in any circumvention technology, products, services, methods, codes, software tools, devices, component or part thereof, including but not limited to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm ("ECDSA") Keys, encryption and/or decryption keys, dePKG firmware decrypter program, Signing Tools, 3.55 Firmware Jailbreak, root keys, and/or any other technologies that enable unauthorised access to and/or copying of PS3 Systems and other copyrighted works (hereinafter, "Circumvention Devices").
  2. Providing links from any website to any other website selling, offering for sale, marketing, advertising, promoting, installing, importing, exporting, offering to the public, distributing, providing, posting, or otherwise trafficking in any Circumvention Devices.
  3. Engaging in acts of circumvention of TPMs in the PS3 System to access, obtain, remove, or traffic in copyrighted works.
  4. Engaging in unauthorised access to the PS3 System or the PlayStation Network in order to obtain, access, or transmit any program, code, information or command therein.
  5. Publishing, posting, or distributing any information, code, program, instructions, video, or other mateiral obtained by circumventing TPMs in the PS3 System or by engaging in unauthorised access to the PS3 Sysytem or the PSN.
  6. Assisting, facilitating or encouraging others to engage in the conduct set forth above in Nos. 1-5.

The court also gave Hotz 10 days to hand over any "computers, hard drives, CD-roms, DVDs, USB stick, and any other storage devices on which the Circumvention Devices are stored."

Sony began legal action against Hotz and his co-defendants earlier this month, claiming that their PlayStation 3 hack infringed on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFFA), in doing so directly enabling piracy on the platform.

Hotz then dismissed the allegations, claiming he was only being pursued in court for "making Sony mad".

"The way piracy was previously done doesn't work in my Jailbreak," he explained. "I made a specific effort while I was working on this to try to enable homebrew without enabling things I do not support, like piracy."

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (59) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • FuzzyDuck #1 1 year ago

    Good.

    White hat hackers my ass.

  • WolfForager #2 1 year ago

    Sony have scored twice today it seems...

  • Der_tolle_Emil #3 1 year ago

    Not really surprising. Luckily for him the restraining order is reasonable and won't have too much impact on his life for now.

  • niteninja #4 1 year ago

    unlucky for him hes going to slaped with a big ass jail sentence is 12 months time.
    Geoholt dont pick up the soap bet hes shitting himself right now.

  • Snake_2011 #5 1 year ago

    good news I hope Sony win the case.
    Edited by Snake_2011 at 27/01/11 @ 21:21

  • Stomp224 #6 1 year ago

    I hope the first words he hears in his first prison shower are along the lines of "Hack THIS, bitch"

  • ChuckNorris #7 1 year ago

    Oooh snap. Kind of a blow.

  • Skurmedel #8 1 year ago

    Only on the internet can you find people wishing ass rape on a console hacker.

  • timewarp87 #9 1 year ago

    Looks like he is breaking into jail
    Edited by timewarp87 at 27/01/11 @ 21:49

  • Shikasama #10 1 year ago

    Didin't the 'gaming lawyer' you interviewed a while back say that this injunction will probably go through as it is very easy to prove, but has absolutely no bearing on the main lawsuit and shouldn't be used as anything indicative of the result?

  • dirtysteve #11 1 year ago

    Hacking it = White hat
    Releasing the hack to what could only be a majority of pirates = black hat.
    You can't use the threat of releasing the hack to strongarm a corporation into reinstituting features. And the idea that a he's jailbroken the console, but not for pirates seems suspect.

  • davisorle #12 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 15:13:14 09-05-2012

  • man.the.king #13 1 year ago

    @davisorle

    "What have you done other than exploiting his job and him get in trouble for it?"

    Nothing. Nothing at all. I have never illegally downloaded any MP3 or any such audio-visual media.

    Yes - some of us prefer to be honest. But I guess traits like honesty would be surprising for you.

  • NotSoSlim #14 1 year ago

    Idiot for releasing the key...grade A muppet

  • timewarp87 #15 1 year ago

    @davisorle - you ever hear of Napster ? £5 a month unlimited streaming £15 quid to download to an mp3 player. Or spotify - now a available on Iphone and Android.
    Im sure we have all done something illegal at some point or another. Most people learn and move on though
    Edited by timewarp87 at 27/01/11 @ 21:59

  • dirtysteve #16 1 year ago

    @davisorle
    "What have you done other than exploiting his job and him get in trouble for it?"
    How has anyone here exploited 'his job' ? Mind you it's hard to take your point as your post is a bit garbled.

  • jumpdeveraux #17 1 year ago

    Irrespective of the trial outcome I'm sure Sony will do their hardest to ensure that he amasses significant legal bills that he will be trying to pay off for the rest of his life - no amount of "fan" contributions will really help by the time he gets to the checkout.

  • niteninja #18 1 year ago

    If theres such a thing as a smart dumb fuck its him.
    First he hacks the ps3 which nobody before him did, then he films himself showing people how its done completely incriminating himself with his ego.

  • goatjugsoup #19 1 year ago

    with the not meant for piracy bit I might have been on the hackers side but for all the other bad stuff i've heard his hacking enabled, mostly ruining online gaming for people (i'm mostly a single player gamer myself but still for others that's gotta suck). i hope he gets whatever punishments the law allows

  • CaLeDee #20 1 year ago

    Let the game of whack-a-mole commence.

  • niteninja #21 1 year ago

    Hackers who steal bank account details dont go public after the heist do they?

  • Accordi0n #22 1 year ago

    I'm of two minds about this…one the one hand i support legitimate homebrew, on the other i think Geohot could do with taking down a notch or two…he's done some great releases but his methods and ego cause plenty of harm…both to the hacking community and the device manufacturers.

  • Hei #23 1 year ago

    Good :)

  • YenRug #24 1 year ago

    For those crowing how this means Geohot is going to be taken down, this part of the injunction was practically guaranteed to go Sony's way as it's based purely on "least harm" caused, i.e. it's not going to hurt Geohot to remove this from his website until the case is heard in court. The court case is not a done thing, Geohot has got precedence with his unlocking of the iPhone which was granted an exception under the DMCA; Geohot has got reasonable grounds to believe he could argue that unlocking the PS3 presents the same reasonable fair use rights.

  • kimchibaka #25 1 year ago

    I'm in no way making a comment about GeoHot's motives either way, because I'm yet to be convinced, but it's astounded me recently how many people in the comments sections on these articles post things like 'I've never once shared an MP3 in my life' etc and are apparently so outraged about it.

    Just saying, because in real life I've never met a SINGLE person like that, from students to solicitors, doctors, accountants, headteachers and whatnot. I guess these people (who make those comments here*) never watch copyright material wrongfully uploaded to Youtube and whatnot? In my experience nearly everyone I've met that I've talked to about things like this are open to it, or at least see it as a grey area - i.e. not obviously asking for strong condemnation.

    Is my real life just a dream and the Eurogamer comments sections the unveiling of 'the truth'?

    * edit here for clarity, and the second for seplling :p
    Edited by kimchibaka at 27/01/11 @ 23:32

  • markyHD #26 1 year ago

    Have a beer mate, then it all seems to make sense =D

  • Kenshin001 #27 1 year ago

    Good news! Thanks to that self aggrandizing idiot Hotz we now have piracy, hacks and more firmware updates. Most PS3 owners couldn't care less about being able to play SNES games.

  • JJrabbit #28 1 year ago

    I think the main reason people aren't looking to keenly on this is because he released the keys. A great amount of skill, yes, but what he's done has essentially ruined online games for many people. Piracy is obviously another upshot, but when a game the user paid for suddenly becomes useless (at least online), then it becomes the user's problem. I don't have a PS3, but I can imagine how frustrating it must be to not being able to play Modern Warfare thanks to the hacks. That, and IIRC, many people have permanently lost their MW stats.

  • Phredreeke #29 1 year ago

    This shows that with enough money, anything is possible.

  • DrStrangelove #30 1 year ago

    The court also gave Hotz 10 days to hand over any "computers, hard drives, CD-roms, DVDs, USB stick, and any other storage devices on which the Circumvention Devices are stored."

    lol. I thought he already made it available on the internet?

    "We give you ten days to hand over the internet!"
    Edited by DrStrangelove at 28/01/11 @ 01:06

  • Bigmac1910 #31 1 year ago

    Great news, hopefully Sony wins in the end.

  • DrStrangelove #32 1 year ago

    @kimchibaka

    Since the invention of the article comment function, the global expression of ballocks has skyrocketed beyond belief.

    I hope I get a lot of pluses for saying this.

  • dirtysteve #33 1 year ago

    @DrStrangelove Good luck to him climbing to the top of Big Ben to get it.

    The worst part is, Hotz has reinforced the idea of programmers being geniuses in one field,but clueless as to how the world actually works.

  • Mnia786 #34 1 year ago

    Should not have gloated to the BBC and took all the credit. This is where anonymity always wins.
    GG
    Edited by Mnia786 at 28/01/11 @ 02:15

  • jackdoe #35 1 year ago

    I personally don't think the lawsuit will succeed. However, Sony has pretty much showed hackers that they will take them to court and disrupt their personal lives which may deter some hackers (but not a lot). Honestly, this could have all been avoided if Geohot wasn't such a dumbass and released keys through private channels, rather than blasting it away on his own website.

  • KDR_11k #36 1 year ago

    And the idea that a he's jailbroken the console, but not for pirates seems suspect.

    Hackers don't play videogames, why would they bother with piracy?

  • cjs #37 1 year ago

    YenRug: The DMCA doesn't allow any sort of generic "fair use." It has only specific exceptions, and there's a pretty good case to be made that what Geohot did doesn't fall under any of them. The PS3 is certainly not a "wireless telephone handset," and it seems a hard sell to claim it falls under "Video games accessible on personal computers."

  • lockload #38 1 year ago

    Quick hotz hand over the internet

    It will be interesting as if he owned a ps3 with other os and as we know this feature was taken away this could very well end up with the ps3 jailbreaking being legal as he bought the device with the feature and he wanted that feature back, this is how the ipone jailbreak was made legal

  • Beano #39 1 year ago

    Sony sueing the cork in the bottle after the genie got out. That makes sense.

  • McShifty #40 1 year ago

    I think the major issue here is the ego of these so called white hat hackers. While parading themselves at functions and over the internet because they got an ftp client to work on PS3 (cus that's all anyone ever wanted from their PS3 - right?) the real result of their work is that hundreds of families all over the world, that are connected to game development in some way could have to uproot themselves and find new work because their latest game is pirated so heavily. And I'm not just talking about the devs themselves, it's the people who clean the offices, the guy who stops the door hinges squeaking, the girl on reception - these people are all victims as well, not just the fat cats at Sony as some would have you believe.

  • Widge #41 1 year ago

    I got fed up with the PSP CFW scene, it got to a point where there were games and demos coming out that I wanted to play and the Dark Alex stuff had dried up. Eventually I went FUCK IT and just got OFW.
    Someone said Sony should whitelist the existing catalogue and randomise going forwards. Certainly the way to go. People will abandon CFW to play the latest titles.

  • NotSoSlim #42 1 year ago

    Well played Sony, PSN access is too important to mess around with so force hackers to buy 2 machine thus selling more consoles

    Activision banning consoles in servers as well, OFW for me not worth hassle at all
    Edited by NotSoSlim at 28/01/11 @ 08:57

  • Beano #43 1 year ago

    @cthulhu_steev : I don't expect Sony to do anything else that try to scare other hackers away making an example with geohot & co. But it will not work - may just work the opposite direction and make Sony more popular among hackers as a target.

  • Beano #44 1 year ago

    "Activision banning consoles in servers as well, OFW for me not worth hassle at all "

    Surely you mean CFW?

    OFW=Official Firmware
    CFW=Custom Firmware

  • djed #45 1 year ago

    You people are disgusting.

  • NotSoSlim #46 1 year ago

    @Beano

    I know what i meant so OFW for me. It's not worth aggro as they are locking out PSN so what's the point? People may say thats a good thing but not for me

  • HL706 #47 1 year ago

    This whole sorry situation could be avoided if Sony went down Microsofts route and released tools for developers to play about with the system. I regularly mess about with XNA and I used to play about with OtherOS. There will always be piracy but if Sony opened their machine up a little bit it'd certainly help reduce some of that threat.

    Here's hoping anyway...

  • brokenkey #48 1 year ago

    "immediate and irreparable damage to SCEA"

    So they can't fix it, then?

  • Sunyavadin #49 1 year ago

    The harder you lock down your product, the more piracy and lower sales you see. It's a repeatedly proven fact. This is why years ago MS ACCEPTED that Windows piracy could not ever be fought and instead realised that rather than wasting time and money going after people who couldn't afford or were unwilling to pay for Windows, they could instead ignore piracy, raise the price for businesses and the individuals who could afford it and were willing to pay, and make MORE money.

    I love how hilarious it is when they spend so much money on taking people to court who will never in their entire lives make enough to cover the company's legal costs, let alone the amount they're ordered to pay on top of that.

  • arcam #50 1 year ago

    erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
    riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
    pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
    R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
    n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
    K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
    Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70

  • webcider #51 1 year ago

    The first few comments shows our world is ruled by monkeys : / as long as none of them knows "hat" they can still rule over the bananas.

  • jefranklin18 #52 1 year ago

    @HL706:

    Quite, they did this with the Yaroze - a PS2 for hobbyist developers. They should do it for PS3 and PSP, and enable users to self-publish as per the Apple Appstore. As with Apple they could have a team vetting submissions before publication, charge the developers a publication fee and take a cut of the revenue earned.

    I actually thought that's what the minis were going to bring to the table.

  • YenRug #53 1 year ago

    @cjs

    Yes, you are correct that only specific exceptions are allowed and I never claimed that the DMCA had general fair use rights. However, the iPhone jailbreak exception was allowed on the grounds of fair use rights, because hardware owners wished to install legitimate software which Apple would not approve for the App Store. Now, do you start to see where Geohot might have grounds for precedence? In this instance, Sony took away the ability to run Linux, which is a legally available OS, which some people wished to run on the PS3. No, it does not justify opening the system up to piracy, but it is a valid argument that can be presented to the court that Sony should not be allowed to treat the PS3 as a closed system, as the iPhone was.

  • actionfitz #54 1 year ago

    Give back the Internetz!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

  • GamesConnoisseur #55 1 year ago

    IPhone is a smartphone, ie a mobile pc/gaming device and jailbreak is acceptable but PS3 a multi processing PC/gaming platform where hacking is frown?

    Both arguments re homebrew and piracy are also applicable to both closed system and where both Apple and Sony invested in the infrastructure and need to ensure profitable revenues to encourage publishers getting involved? Whatever our views on the monopoly of Apple or Sony but I think hypocrisy of having double standards for either or other platforms plains stinks!

    Same prinicple applies all across platform, hacking NOT permitted or home brew is socially acceptable?

  • man.the.king #56 1 year ago

    @lockload

    "It will be interesting as if he owned a ps3 with other os and as we know this feature was taken away this could very well end up with the ps3 jailbreaking being legal as he bought the device with the feature and he wanted that feature back, this is how the ipone jailbreak was made legal "

    "We" know no such thing. VERY CONVENIENT how you forgot that Geohot's first hack which used OtherOS was the reason that Sony took the feature away from the Fat PS3s in the first place.
    Edited by man.the.king at 28/01/11 @ 15:29

  • jefranklin18 #57 1 year ago

    @man.the.king:

    Thank you for reminding everyone of this inconvenient truth. Something that appears to have slipped everyone else's mind, conveniently.

  • man.the.king #58 1 year ago

    @TruthGiver

    "Erm not quite, OtherOS was removed from all the consoles with the release of the slim (before Geohot's dumping of hte hypervisor (there was no hack here).
    It was removed from all NEW consoles before he even did anything, it was only when he started poking that they removed it from the consoles that were already sold"

    WRONG again. The OtherOS feature was NOT REMOVED from the PS3 Slims. It was NEVER INCLUDED. Nor was the OtherOS feature advertised for the Slims.

    And it was removed from the Fats BECAUSE of Geohot's hack which abused the OtherOS feature.If you follow the chronology of events, Sony did not remove OtherOS UNTIL it was abused by Geohot in the first place to hack into the machine.

    As for legality of removing the OtherOS from the Fats, IANAL either, but I think Sony could argue that they gave people the "choice" of either keeping the OtherOS feature or log on to PSN.

    For what it's worth though, in my opinion, even though Geohot's self-aggrandizing actions - pertaining to the initial OtherOS-based hack - were ill-advised, Sony should not have resorted to the knee-jerk reaction of removing the OtherOS feature.
    Edited by man.the.king at 28/01/11 @ 18:32

  • Lord_BeeJee #59 1 year ago

    Heh, some decent censorship being applied to these comments, is Sony paying folks to clean up forums or are some peeps here too insecure to allow an opinion that contradicts theirs?