Sony has won another minor victory in its on-going legal battle against PS3 hacker George Hotz. This time, Federal Magistrate Joseph Spero granted Sony the right to obtain the IP addresses of every PC that has visited Hotz’s website since January 2009 – Hotz’s web provider, Bluehost, has to cough-up the details.
On top of this, Sony was also granted subpoenas for data from Google and YouTube as well as Hotz’s Twitter account. Sony wants this information for two specific purposes that will aid their continued litigation.
According to Sony, access to this information will allow them to determine the “defendant’s distribution†of the jailbreak tools. It’ll also allow Sony to see where the tool was downloaded the most. The Japanese company wants the case to be continued in San Francisco and not in Hotz’s home town of New Jersey; the location of the court proceedings is a current point of contention. Sony hopes that the IP addresses and logs from Bluehost will show that a substantial portion of downloads were done by people residing in Northern California, thereby allowing the case to continue in the jurisdiction San Francisco.
Interestingly the YouTube subpoena has granted Sony access to the details of all YouTube users who accessed and commented on the initial video of the jailbreak in action; the clip is entitled “Jailbroken PS3 3.55 With Homebrew†and was posted using the “goehot” YouTube account.
George Hotz’s Twitter account as well as his Blog will undergo the same scrutiny. According to the article on Wired, “documents sufficient to identify all names, addresses, and telephone numbers†will be gleaned from Hotz’s Twitter profile.
Source: Wired
Last Updated: March 7, 2011
