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The information sought is part of a jurisdictional argument over whether Sony must sue GeoHot in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, where Sony would prefer. Sony argues that if GeoHot accepted monetary donations for the PS3 hack from people residing in Northern California, San Francisco would be a proper venue for the litigation. GeoHot denies he accepted donations, though he did ask for them.
Spero's decision follows sidings with Sony from earlier this month. The judge allowed Sony to obtain the IP addresses of everyone who visited GeoHot's personal website for the past 26 months (since January 2009) as well as the account names of anyone who has accessed a PS3 jailbreak video on the 21-year-old's YouTube account, his tweets relating to the hacking on Twitter, information on people who posted comments to his blog on Blogspot, and information about his account on the PSX-Scene website.
Last month, Sony demanded that Google hand over the identities of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video posted on YouTube. GeoHot posted the video on January 7, later made it private, and then pulled it on a judge's orders.
Sony's legal attacks against the hackers that released the PS3 root key and custom firmware began two months ago. The group known as fail0verflow is accused of posting a rudimentary hack in December 2010 after finding security codes for the PS3. It was refined by GeoHot weeks later when he independently found and published the PS3 root key. The resulting hacks allow homebrew apps and pirated software to run on unmodified consoles. Sony is still threatening to sue anybody posting or distributing PS3 jailbreak code, despite the fact that the company accidentally tweeted the PlayStation 3 security key.
Sony's official stance is if you crack your PS3, you'll get banned. GeoHot meanwhile says "beating them in court is just a start."
User Comments: 53
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This is infamous.
If you buy a car, house, table, cell phone, computer, or pack of cool-aid you can modify it all you want legally. Cause once it's yours it is yours.
You can sup-it-up, add another room, paint it, mod it, over-clock it, or add more sugar than recommended. But you cannot change its plates (for felony use), knowingly install faulty wiring (for insurance fraud), add felt to it (AND use it as the center table of a gambling ring), connect it to C4 (and use it as an explosives detenator), make no modifications (and use it to hack into banking systems), or mix it with vodka (and give it to minors at a party).
It is what you do with the item (that you should own if you paid for it) that makes its use (not necessarily its modification) illegal or not. Hotz has not used this key to produce illegal content (that Sony Japan (who do think is really behind this) receives no monetary compensation for). Sony, however, did produce a mod that removes an advertised component (the one many of us actually bought the PS3 for - I for one wanted my awesome all-in-one home entertainment system but never got it), are forcing you to update to play any newer games, and are preventing play of some games purchased via PSN if you don't update (this is robbery and should be illegal).
Sony can't say that Hotz has done anything illegal even though his discovery can be used by those that may. And that's why they're suing him cause through others they may lose millions. Microsoft has proven that intelletuctal property means squat if you can prove that you can figure out how to do the exact same thing on your own.
I want my other os Sony - work with developers and make one that's fast and secure.
I say sue Sony for trying to take away your right to be brilliant or at least for theft of property.
And a word on hacking... Hacking in and of itself is not bad. Breaking into computer systems is rarely hacking, it's exploiting security holes that already exist. Hacking is making modifications to provide unintended functionality. We have our super computers today thanks to hacking.
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Oh, and it's obvious neofryboy is a Sony executive - possible one that tweeted the root key and should be sued beside Hotz.
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Oh, and it's obvious neofryboy is a Sony executive - possible one that tweeted the root key and should be sued beside Hotz.
Bwahahahaha... Yes I am a Sony exec...
Ooooor... I'm willing to face the reality that no matter how much people want to define our economy as a form of socialism; it is in fact, a capitalism. The capstone of which gives companies rights to distribute their product as they see fit, and to sue the person who opens that product to theft. (ie. Sony suing Hotz)
If I recall correctly, (and I do because I just researched it) Sony has already been sued (7x) over the OtherOs removal and not a single case has gone anywhere.
How do you expect to change the world if you don't understand how it works?
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