Sony, PS3 hacker settle suit

What was looking to be a long legal battle between Sony and self-proclaimed hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz has come to an abrupt end. This morning, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that it has settled the lawsuit it filed against Hotz in federal court in San Francisco. As part of the settlement, Hotz consented to a permanent injunction against publishing methods to hack the PS3 online.

Hotz still maintains he did no wrong in the case, saying, "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 settlement also declares Hotz was not involved in recent attacks on Sony's websites and the PlayStation Network attributed to the group known as Anonymous.

Today's resolution ends a three-month saga that saw much legal back-and-forth between Hotz and Sony. In January, the PlayStation 3's security was broken open by Hotz, who disseminated the information online. He and a hacker collective called fail0verflow were promptly slapped with a lawsuit by Sony for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Copyright Act, and the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.

Even though Hotz defended himself on a number of fronts, Sony was granted a temporary restraining order against the hacker, who was ordered to turn over all his computers and jailbroken PS3s. Later, the court ordered Bluehost, which hosts Hotz's website, to turn over all documentation that could be used to identify anyone who visited the website. The plot thickened when Hotz took a South American vacation in the middle of the proceedings.