Bottom line; this is a worthy fight to wager and my money will help support it.
Just because you don't like what Sony is doing doesn't make it illegal, and just because you support geohot doesn't mean the law is on his side. IANAL, but I don't see how he can win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Univer....
Edit: HN sees to dislike periods at the end of URL's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Univer...
I think it's a bad law, but it is a law and geohot broke it. IANAL, but I would imagine the only defense would be to try to get the law itself overturned. I don't see how else he can get out from under it.
If you want to cite cases, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealNetworks,_Inc._v._DVD_Copy_...
And the important bits: (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
As long as his work is not directly setup so people can pirate content there seems to be little for Sony to base their case on.
I really don't see how you could read the law you quoted and reach that conclusion.
If you post a tool that breaks DRM and you don't fit into one of the very narrow exemptions (and geohot doesn't), then you broke the law. It doesn't matter if you intended the tool for piracy or if it was "set up for piracy" or if anyone ever used the tool for piracy.
This is probably a major reason why Sony is trying to sue geohot in California (under the 9th Circuit) despite the fact that the claim that California has personal jurisdiction over him in relation to his Playstation activities is extremely weak.
The plain text of the DMCA anti-circumvention clause is: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" Interpreting this as congress intended is difficult, because often, systems which prevent their owner from doing one thing will also try to prevent their owner from doing other legal activities - for example, installing their own operating system, developing their own homebrew games using only their own copyrighted material, repurposing hardware for purposes that the manufacturer never intended, and building compatible add-on products or accessories that compete with the original vendors products.
I believe the intention of Congress was that circumventing the system only far enough to do one of the above, with the intention of doing one of the above, is not "circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected" - for that act to be complete, and the circumvention the act references to occur, the final step of accessing the copyrighted work needs to occur. The interpretation of the 9th circuit is, in my opinion, not what congress intended.
Sooner or later the Supreme Court will hear one of these cases, and hopefully will agree with the 6th and Federal Circuits that the interpretation I gave above is correct.
Inference: "Circumvent" means to bypass or disable so any method that disables protection must therefore also "Circumvent" it.
Rebuttal : If "circumvent" implied simply disable then you would not be able to turn a PS3 off or damage it. Melting down old PS3's and selling them for scrap and novelty bookshelves would destroy the DMCA protection, but the modified device is not going to break copyright law.
Counter Inference: That's an argument from absurdity we are not arguing about an inter object but a device capable of running copyrighted software illegally.
Counter Rebuttal: A 300$ general purpose computer may also run come copyrighted software illegally. However both the modified PS3 and the cheap computer run the same range of Sony's protected software without significant further modifications. We can even demonstrate that running PS1 games is simpler on the computer.
etc on down the rabbit hole.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#a
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#a2
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#b
There's one exception - circumvention is allowed only for security testing purposes, but I doubt he would be able to successfully use that clause.
There's a specific exemption to the anticircumvention provision of the DMCA for "Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jail...
Using the letter of the law, PS3 jailbreaking is not covered under those exemptions. The only exemptions relating to video games are to controlled DRM works where a hacker wishes to research security vulnerabilities, but the "information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement". Sony might have a decent case against GeoHot based on this, since he released the keys that enable people to sign custom code that may act as a frontloader to bypass DRM checks for illegally obtained copyrighted code.
Us hackers might consider the differences between a PS3 and an iPhone negligible enough that hacking either is logically the same task, but the DCMA states that they are two separate beasts and hacking one is entirely different than hacking the other. Unfortunately, people need to follow the letter of the law in order to stay out of these kinds of legal challenges, but these legal challenges are also what help craft the law to be fair. I just wish that GeoHot had a better chance at winning this. He should have been thinking about how to cover his ass a long time ago.
DCMA Exemption source [PDF]: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/07/dmcaex...
IANAL and I haven't seen it played out in court, but it's one of the more commonly discussed flaws in the DMCA.
The other fun thing is that exemptions can expire unless they elect to renew them each time.