After George Hotz was instrumental in hacking and jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 earlier this year, Sony took ‘Geohot’ to court. In protest, the hacking collective Anonymous declared war on Sony and took action by taking down Sony and PlayStation.com, and later the PlayStation Network. Despite Anonymous apparently backing off, Sony has announced they have reached a settlement with George Hotz.
Over on the US PlayStation Blog, Sony have announced that the case has been settled:
“Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us,” said Riley Russell, General Counsel for SCEA. “Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal.”
Continuing:
We want our consumers to be able to enjoy our devices and products in a safe and fun environment and we want to protect the hard work of the talented engineers, artists, musicians and game designers who make PlayStation games and support the PlayStation Network.
We appreciate Mr. Hotz’s willingness to address the legal issues involved in this case and work with us to quickly bring this matter to an early resolution.
Hotz also made a statement:
It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier, I’m happy to have the litigation behind me.
The details of the settlement were not announced, but Hotz did agree to a permanent injunction on his work involving the PlayStation 3. At no point did Sony explicitly announce that the early settlement was in part due to Anonymous’ attacks, but with the collective planning a bigger assault in the near future, the timing does seem more than just a coincidence.
