George “Geohot” Hotz, infamous for hacking the Playstation 3 system earlier this year, which led to a controversial lawsuit by SCEA, has donated $10,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). This comes after the foundation supported Hotz in his defense against Sony.
The news came after Hotz posted a screenshot of the generous PayPal donation on his blog;
"As promised, all left over legal defence money, plus a little to bump it to a nice number, has been sent to EFF," he wrote. "Thank you all so much for your support, without it, things could have been much worse."
In the beginning of April, the lawsuit was dropped, under a mutual agreement between both parties that Hotz does not attempt to hack the Playstation 3 system again, and remove all online material that gives information to the general public in how to hack the system, known as “jailbreaking”. Hotz agreed to a permanent injunction, which prevents him from posting such information online.
Despite the court case not going as ugly as expected, Hotz continued to mock Sony over the outcome on his blog;
"If you piss them off enough for them to pull out the legal team and their million dollar checkbook, worst thing that happens is you have to super swear to never do it again. As much as I don't respect the goons at Sony, I do respect the court," he wrote. "At the end of the day, something I take comfort in. The PS3 got OWNED."
Electronic Frontier Foundation has not personally commented on the donation made by Hotz, but did state in a blog post that “future security researchers” should refuse to be intimidated by the judicial process, and that Sony’s heavy-handedness in this situation should set an example for other companies not to do the same.