I think it is funny... none of this would have happened if they would have left geohot alone.
This has a long history...
Many years ago, well before the hidef era began, two developers - authors of DVD Decryptor and RipIt4Me - were served with C&D letters.
A lot of effort was put into hiding who initiated those. But eventually this info was leaked: it was Sony (doom9 has the story).
Since the programs were not open source, they faded into irrelevance.
This time Sony couldn't hide: unlike DeCSS, only Sony was suffering from PS3 hacking. Their mistake was more of a PR nature.
They hoped to quickly intimidate him into admitting guilt, slap with multi million dollar fine and settle for his lifetime wages.
They didn't expect
- Anonymous to show up
- money to be donated to geohot defence
- geohot lawyers to actually be smarter than them.
After failing to link his PS3 to the "geohot" account, they tried some stupid "He left the country! He's a fugitive!" crap
and when that didn't fly they quickly settled. The very fact that geohot not only talks but pokes fun at Sony means his lawyers dictated the settlement...
The fact that everything was plastered over the internet - about what geohot did and how the lawsuit developed - certainly helped.
And then came the 19th and sh!t hit the fan...
Bottom line:
Sony could not leave him alone. It was in their DNA. But next time something like this happens,
they might...
Diogen.