I disagree on this point, I think it makes all the difference in the world.
What difference would that be? Thinking "I'm intending to promote piracy" and "I don't want to support piracy, but this hack makes it viable and will be widely available. I'm going to release it anyway" makes little difference in the grand scheme of things. You don't have to be a supporter of piracy in order to help advance it. GeoHot IS helping advance it, and at the end of the day that's what matters, not whether or not he says he intended to or not.
Because I don't think people should be prohibited from being able to use their stuff the way they want to just because other people will misuse it.
To me that's like saying that Fermi was wrong to build a nuclear reactor because he knew that other people would be able to use the technology to make bombs. (No, I'm not saying that GeoHot is as great as Fermi, or anything, so don't read more into the comparison than I put there.)