Geohot Sony defense fund closes after rapid response

Hacker George Hotz (aka Geohot) surprised a few people when he changed his long-standing unofficial policy on asking for donations last week; then again, when Sony unleashes its legal team on you, you need all the help you can get. It seems that help was fast forthcoming: Geohot has announced that he has all the donations he needs to secure "a few more lawyers" to defend his case over PS3 encryption cracking.

Sony's ire is that, having closed up the routes that allowed unofficial software and platforms to be loaded onto the PS3, hackers like Hotz then came along and offered a jailbreak so that owners of the console could continue to do so. The company's argument is that such a jailbreak enables pirated games; Geohot's response is that there are also legitimate uses for the access. Sony sued on January 11 2011.