In the morning I told you that Sony a PUT to an American court a request requesting the withdrawal from the Internet of the keys for decrypting the operating system of the PlayStation 3 as well as the fail0verflow exploit specially discovered to jailbreak the PlayStation 3. From this morning until now Sony seems to have reconsidered and now filed a lawsuit against geohot, Hector Martin Cantero, Sven Peter plus other members of the team that developed fail0verflow. Sony claims that this exploit infringes the company's copyright on proprietary software.
Here are the charges:
- Violating §1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits bypassing access control measures;
- Violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits accessing computers without authorization;
- Guilty of contributory copyright infringement for encouraging and helping others to crack PS3s as well;
- Violating the California Computer Crime Law, which is the state computer fraud act (think of this as a backup fraud claim);
- Violating the PlayStation Network's Terms of Service (which feels meaningless, really);
- Interfering with Sony's relationships with other PSN customers (also meaningless);
- Trespassing on Sony's ownership right to the PS3 (this one feels weak) and;
- Misappropriating Sony's intellectual property (another weak argument, but there in case the copyright argument fails).
Sony asks the court to prohibit the distribution of the fail0verflow exploit and the decryption keys, as well as the confiscation of the hardware equipment used in the development of this exploit and the "jailbreak" solution. Of course, Sony also demands material compensation for the damages caused plus the payment of the commissions collected by the lawyers in this process.
It's hard to say what the court will decide, anyway all these guys need some very good lawyers to escape without paying physically or materially.
