No, you'd still be liable in civil court because that's regarded as a different crime, but you wouldn't be able to go to prison for the murder, in that scenario.

Also, a lot of places have "Son of Sam" laws in effect to prevent that, but AFAIK that only kicks in if you're convicted. It's somewhat ironic in that David Berkowitz, one of the Son of Sam killers never had any interest in profiting by his book, at this point he's a devout Christian and has no interest in ever being released from prison for his part in the murders he committed.

Interestingly enough, while he claims responsibility for several of the murders, he denies others and the witness testimony indicate that he's probably being honest about that.

Wikipedia says: So not any more thank fuck.
You mean Sony? I think removal of OtherOS constitutes damage.

What are you talking about, Cheese? This is the same concept as pay per view TV. Sure, he'll crash and burn anyway. But with funding the flames he will go down in will be like a solar flare.

Anyone care to provide a quick summary of the situation with geo-hot ? I dont get why he is lambasted that much here, he didnt remove the features from the ps3.

It's not for jailbreaking, it's for acting like an attention whoring knobhead.

Um? What?
Geohot hasn't damaged anything.

I don't really care about this situation, but Sony removed OtherOS and they fucking allow developers to lock down save files so that you can't back up your progress. Now why should that be possible? So I feel like never playing a game again when my console dies? Brilliant.

I didn't like it either, but then running things on make-shift computer with 256MB RAM and no hardware acceleration should probably constitute as damage too.

But people aren't paying to see him lose. Any way you look at it, things will get very ugly no matter who wins. If GeoHot loses, the idiots who funded him will feel like they were robbed by Sony. And if GeoHot wins, God help us all.

On the face of it it's a no-win situation. But when you look at it, Geohot has systematically enacted character assassination... on himself. Sony has been indefensible from the outset. So I don't see how this case could be used to set a precedent, to be honest. Whoever wins it will simply be those who damaged their own case the least.

That's an excellent point. Looks like the only thing left to do is sit back and watch.

It'll probably be thrown out long before it reaches any conclusion. If I was the judge I wouldn't want to have to contend with either party any longer than I had to. After enduring that I'd rather get back to the rape and murder cases.

This whole anti-piracy, anti-hombrew, pro-DRM thing these companies are doing is kind of silly when you think of it.
I'm no fan of GeoHot, but I'd argue that amateur coders are very important to the industry.

Infact, many of the companies you see today were probably founded by these exact same people, people who coded stuff for a hobby, and decided to go professional.

Legitamising it is the right way to go. XNA is the right way to go.
Heck, even Steam is acceptable. (sure its DRM, but you can't argue against the fact that Valve do support, intergrate and publish the work produced by these coders)

This case should be ignored. I can see bad things coming out of this either way.
(GeoHot is a cocky git, who I can see pushing it in the long-term if he wins, and if Sony wins, I can see the precedent being damaging in the long run)

With PS3 games, how many times do games actually REQUIRE an updated firmware? Could you for example have a launch PS3 thats never been connected to the net then play killzone 3 on it?

Even without looking I'm pretty sure that the PS3 EULA would contain mention of the possibility that features, terms & conditions may change without notice, once you agree to that then you've basically said you're okay with them doing whatever the hell they want to do in exchange for access to the playstation network so if you agree then they do it and you have a problem with it... stiff shit frankly

Better rape than rap then?