It's Over. For Now.

Sony has announced that their legal battle with celebrity hacker George Hotz has reached a settlement. Both parties have agreed to put their differences aside, and Hotz has agreed to a permanent injunction to avoid any further investigation and litigation. Full details below.

According to Patrick Seybold, Sony's Communication and Social Media Director, an accord was reached at the end of last month. This marks the end of three months' worth of aggressive legal chicanery as Sony doggedly pursued the homebrew coder for alleged breaches of user license agreements, copyright infringment and good old fashioned piracy. Whilst George Hotz still admits no legal wrongdoing, he has agreed to a permanent injunction against owning Sony hardware from now on.

Sony is glad to put this litigation behind us. Our motivation for bringing this litigation was to protect our intellectual property and our consumers. We believe this settlement and the permanent injunction achieve this goal.

We want our consumers to be able to enjoy our devices and products in a safe and fun environment and we want to protect the hard work of the talented engineers, artists, musicians and game designers who make PlayStation games and support the PlayStation Network. We appreciate Mr. Hotz’s willingness to address the legal issues involved in this case and work with us to quickly bring this matter to an early resolution. - Riley Russell, General Counsel for SCEA

It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I’m happy to have the litigation behind me. - George Hotz

Well, that's it for now... but Sony are still actively pursuing a large number of other individuals who are proving much more difficult to identify. Considering the recent attacks by hacker collective Anonymous, this certainly isn't the last we'll hear from Sony's legal team. [Playstation Blog]