They mean business don’t they, and by they I mean Sony.  Geohot has been served papers and the charges include:

• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) – Confidential Information On Computer
• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(4) – Intent To Defraud And Obtain Value
• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A) – Knowing Transmission of Code
• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(B) and (C) – Intentional and Reckless Damage And Loss
• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(6)(A) – Trafficking in Password
• 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7)(B) – Intent to Extort

Oh but don’t think it ends there the papers were also served to 27C3 lecturers and fail0verflow members Marcan aka Hector Martin and sven aka Sven Peter and 100 John Does, as posted on IRC and his site.

I don’t know what this proves other than Sony has a lot of money to hire a legal team to go after a bunch of people who embarrassed them worldwide by hacking their console. I hate to say it Sony but you are going to have to make a whole new console from scratch. Which is why when GeoHot offered to help you protect against future hackers on a future console you slapped the “Intent to Extort” charge.

In reality how many people know anything about hacking, or jailbreaking a console, the fanboys won’t do anything to their beloved console, so really it leaves it to a few of those who went out of the way to play backups, homebrew, custom firmware, and themes. Oh wait does that sound like something else we use to know, wait for it, wait for it, The PSP! How are the sales numbers on those units by the way?

Don’t ruin it Sony , you were just starting to make a comeback with your blu-ray player that also plays video games. I am going to give you honest advice here and I’m only going to say it once. “Don’t be the Metallica of the gaming industy”