14 DAY TRIAL // Former PS3 hacker George Hotz, aka geohot, has donated $10,000, including the remaining money received from people for his legal defence fund, to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the leading digital rights watchdogs.
Geohot was sued by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) in mid-January after reverse-engineering and publishing the private ECDSA key used to sign all software that runs on the PlayStation 3 gaming console.
The hacker claimed his efforts were intended to enable people to run self-developed (homebrew) applications on their PS3s, as well as bring back the OtherOS feature forcefully removed by Sony.
In order to mount a strong legal defense that, he claimed, served the interests of all pro-jailbreakers and PS3 owners, geohot asked for donations from the community.
It's, therefore, understandable that a lot of people who sent him money were not happy when the hacker settled with SCEA earlier this month.
At the time, Hotz said he will address the donated money issue in a way that will make people happy. As it turns out, this idea was to donate it to the EFF, which offered him guidance throughout his legal troubles with Sony.
"As promised, all left over legal defense money, plus a little to bump it to a nice number [$10,000], has been sent to the EFF. Thank you all so much for your support, without it, things could have been much worse," the hacker wrote on his blog.
"This money goes to the EFF in hopes that America can one day again be a shining example of freedom, free of the DMCA and ACTA, and that private interest will never trump the ideas laid out in the constitution of privacy, ownership, and free speech," he added.
The hacker also says that he will not continue to work on hacking the PS3 anonymously, but he thinks that PS3 hacking in general will not be hampered by Sony's legal crackdown. He points out that all this settlement proves is that if anyone upsets Sony enough to be taken to court, the worst they can expect is to be asked to "super swear" to never do it again.