Rapper (and part-time hacker) George Hotz has settled out of court with Sony, who wanted him strung up on charges of circumventing the PS3’s copy protection. And the details of that settlement are now public.
In order to escape going to trial, Hotz has agreed to, basically, never mess around with another Sony product ever again. He’s barred from “unauthorized access to any Sony product under the law”, and will be in deep trouble if he violates a Sony product’s terms of service, “whether or not Hotz has accepted such agreement or terms of use”.
If he’s found to have breached those stipulations, he’s liable to face a $US10,000 fine per violation, up to a maximum “cap” of $US250,000.
So, that’ll put an end to his attempts at hacking Sony products, then.
While escaping a fine or sterner penalty will be seen by Hotz as a win, as far as his fans and followers are concerned – some of whom gave the guy money to help him fight his court case – things aren’t so glorious.
He’s being called out for originally writing this about the chances of a settlement with Sony, prior to the settlement actually taking place:
What if SCEA tries to settle? Let’s just say, I want the settlement terms to include OtherOS on all PS3s and an apology on the PlayStation blog for ever removing it. It’d be good PR for Sony too, lord knows they could use it. I’m also willing to accept a trade, a legit path to homebrew for knowledge of how to stop new firmwares from being decrypted.
None of which has happened. There are also repeated calls for an update on what’s been done with the money donated to Hotz to fight Sony, now that the court case won’t actually be taking place.
Sony/Hotz settlement details surface [GameSpot]
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