by Ryan DowneFor most normal teenagers, keeping up with the latest social updates tends to encompass most of a typical day; but for George Hotz, now 22, a typical day consisted of taking apart iPhones and gaming consoles so that he could change them to fit his needs. In 2007, at the age of 17, Hotz became the first person to ‘crack’ Apple’s iPhone so that it was no longer locked to one mobile service carrier. This process, which is now universally known as “unlocking” or “jailbreaking”, first involved taking apart the smartphone and making minor hardware modifications but Hotz altered the process only months later to a software modification that made it much easier for the everyday user to do themselves. By 2008, Hotz was widely known by his alias “geohot” and his method of unlocking the iPhone was being used by thousands of people to change carriers and use custom firmware on their smartphone. Hotz didn’t stop there; Hotz moved onto Sony’s PlayStation 3 in late 2009, an effort that would result in Sony striking back in big way earlier this year.
The PlayStation 3, or PS3, is Sony’s version of the modern gaming console and was first released in November of 2006. One of the ways that made the PS3 unique was its “OtherOS” function, which allowed the console to have alternate operating systems, like Linux, installed on the system. It was also praised by the industry for having backwards compatibility, which allows games from Sony’s previous consoles to be played on the PS3, unfortunately this feature was removed in newer models due to production costs. In 2009, Hotz began his attempt to hack the PS3 through the OtherOS feature in order to bring back the removed backwards compatibility feature. On January 22, 2010, he announced on his blog that he was successful in this effort and proceeded to release it to the public. In response, Sony removed the OtherOS feature completely with its next firmware update, much to the dismay of its users. This provoked Hotz to create and release a custom firmware, or “homebrew” as he called it, which replaced the newer Sony firmware and brought back the ability to install Linux and other custom software applications.
Sony decided that is was time to take legal action and on January 11, 2011, they filed a lawsuit against Hotz and his accomplices. Within the suit, Sony claimed that Hotz had violated a number of laws of the DMCA and hired a well-known law firm to carry out the suit. Hotz had significant support from many free speech advocates and was able to afford a lawyer from the donations that he was receiving. During the trial, Sony was even granted the right to access all of the IP addresses that had access Hotz’s blog in order to prove that many of them resided in the Northern California region. This action was widely criticized as a significant breech in privacy and is said to have provoked the later attacks against Sony that would result in their online servers being down for a number of weeks. Despite the support for Hotz, the trial ended in a settlement out of court that required Hotz to never again alter Sony’s products or attempt any jailbreaking whatsoever.
Hotz was hired by Facebook in May, 2011.
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