Sony win subpoena for PS3 hacker paypal records

A federal judge in San Francisco has granted Sony permission to subpoena PayPal records of George Hotz, the hacker who is being sued by Sony for jailbreaking the Playstation 3 console.

US Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero said the information subject to Sony's subpoena ‘shall be provided on an Attorneys' Eyes Only basis' and is limited to information leading to whether Hotz has enough ties to Northern California to be sued in federal court in that district. Hotz has said that he is a resident of New Jersey and has said that the court doesn't have the authority to convict him.

Sony have brought the copyright case against Hotz and 100 other hackers who are believed to have found a way to run unauthorised games and programs on the Playstation 3. Sony have been granted a subpoena to allow them to get the IP addresses of everyone who visited Hotz's personal website in the past 26 months.

Sony have also been granted permission to subpoena Twitter, Google and other services for information related to accounts held by 21 year old Hotz who goes under the name GeoHot.

Sony have said that Hotz has violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act by posting videos and blogs showing how to bypass technical measures Sony have placed in the PS3 to stop running of non authorised titles.

The Paypal subpoena covers “documents sufficient to identify the source of funds in California that went into any PayPal account associated with [email protected] for the period of January 1, 2009 to February 1, 2011.”

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