George Hotz, the guy who hacked the PS3 earlier this month and who kind of looks like Frodo Baggins, has been issued a fairly water-tight restraining order. This restraining order is, however, just the beginning of legal proceedings and has been issued in order to safe-guard Sony’s interests before the official court hearings get underway at a later date. The court documents surfaced on the PSX Scene forums.
The restraining order essentially grinds to a halt any distribution of or progress on the root key hack that Hotz and his hacking buddies have developed. After issuing the restraining order (details of which are coming up) the court pointed towards the fact that Sony stood to “suffer irreparable harm unless Defendant Hotz’s violations are enjoinedâ€.
The restraining order has numerous aspects, but the most essential point prevents Hotz and his group from doing the following:
“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”).”
Hotz has been told to hand over any storage medium that has the Circumvention Device on it; that includes PCs, hard drives, USB sticks etc.
Source: Eurogamer
Last Updated: January 31, 2011
