Geohot Closes His Legal Defense Fund After Two Days

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You may have heard that George “Geohot” Hotz was being sued by Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) for his work on “hacking” the PlayStation 3. Hotz is going up against quite the behemouth in Sony, and he put out a call for donations to his legal fund this past weekend. Fortunately for Hotz, he closed the fund just two days later because of what looks like overwhelming response from those wishing to help Hotz.

On February 19th, Hotz put the following up on his blog:

Donations here are for legal defense ONLY
I checked with my lawyers before setting this up

Two days later, on February 21st, Hotz wrote:

Thank you so so much for all of your help, things are looking up money wise.

Expect to see a few more lawyers on my responses!

I have enough to cover my legal fees for the time being.

And in the absolute worst case scenario, we don’t want Sony getting it :-P

For now, the best thing you can do is spread the word

Let people know how Sony treats customers

Let people know Sony would rather sue than be proactive and try to fix the problem

Let people know about laws like the DMCA which stifle innovation, and don’t do anything to fix the problems they were created to solve

When Hotz was first served by Sony, I remember there being a note on his website advising that he didn’t need any legal contributions and that any such e-mail was a hoax. Apparently, the prospect of facing down Sony and their teams and teams of lawyers got to Hotz, and he reached out for help this past weekend.

Public opinion of Hotz on the internet seems to be mixed. You have the open-source hacker types who support him, but then you also have the PS3 gamers who blame him for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 and the ensuring few weeks of chaos on Call of Duty: Black Ops as hackers ruined the gaming experience for lots of people. One guy on his blog called Hotz the “Julian Assange” of hackers.

What do you think about Hotz? Do you think he can stand up to Sony?