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back to article Sony wins subpoena for PS3 hacker's PayPal records

A federal judge in San Francisco has given Sony permission to subpoena the PayPal records of George Hotz, the hacker being sued for jailbreaking the company's PlayStation 3 game console. Tuesday's order by US Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero said the information subject to Sony's subpoena “shall be provided on an Attorneys' …

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        1. Cyberspice
          Reply Icon
          Unhappy

          Not comparable.

          Your analogy would involve you going to Ford to find out if it was okay for you to have modified your Ford motor car. Instead we're talking about going to an independent third party.

          Now if you could go to some place that *Isn't* Sony and say I'm modifying my console because of X. I'm letting you know. That would be better. But at the moment Sony are judge, jury and executioner and that isn't fair.

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    2. Cyberspice
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Fail

      Mods do not have to make your insurance null and void. I mod cars and I tell the insurance. They adjust my premiums appropriately. I still don't get the car company coming around to sue me because I modified the car I owned.

      Sorry your argument is fail!

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  2. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Thumb Down

    This is why American law is fu**ed...

    So as far as I can tell from this story is that the only reason Sony are going after this guys Pay Pal records are because they are either too lazy to try him outside of California, or because they know that their case won't stand up to scrutiny in any other state due to rulings made in other similar cases. To me this looks like law in Cally is in the back pocket of the corporates.

    And there was me thinking it was the "United" states. The reality couldn't be farther from the truth it seems.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aaaaaah

    Sweet Merkin Justice - the victory goes to the corporate wallet holder!

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  4. maxillius

    Rent to Own?

    What Sony is trying to do here is end the sales of high-end computing devices. Not even Apple will sue if you've jailbroken an iPhone, though they will brick it.

    If I can't do what I like with it, it isn't mine, so I might as well rent, and if I'm going to rent I'm not paying full price.

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    1. ph0b0s
      Reply Icon

      No, it's more like buy to rent

      They want you to purchase full price, so the consumer has to take all the disadvantages of ownership, like bearing the brunt of hardware depreciation, disposal, etc. But at the same time take away the advantages you would normally expect to come with ownership.

      They would never want to go with a rent model as then they have to have the depreciating hardware on their books. Much better to have the consumer bear these costs but still only have the same rights as if they had rented.

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  5. ph0b0s

    The future

    For those who only think this is a battle against piracy, you need to wake up. This is a battle about consumer rights. This is a battle about what you can do with products you have purchased. Tech companies are trying to make it that hardware you buy is licensed by you rather than owned.

    A win here will mean we are closer to being locked down on anything we purchase. Only being able to play Blu-ray's and DVD's from the same company we brought the players from. Only being able to use bread in toasters supplied by the toaster maker.

    I know I am being a bit hyperbolic in my doomy scenarios. But if there is a win here one thing I do think we will see is that consumer devices like TV's etc that have internet connections will require you log into an on-line account. Once locked to that account you will not be able to sell the device on as it will be locked to your account. So no more second hand market.

    I expect to see this happening with consoles very soon if, Sony wins here.

    Also how legally bad is this that Sony are allowed by a US court to look a records that may implicate people from other countries.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      If you are right,

      If you are right then it will only be the consumers in the US, not Europe.

      And if it did happen then it wouldn't be as bad as you say! FFS, these companies want to make as much money as possible so they follow standards, and that will mean that any Blu-Ray or DVD will be able to work in ANY Blu-Ray or DVD capable machine!

      What Sony have stated is that yes, you can do what you want with the hardware, BUT the software installed on the hardware is licensed!! The same goes with bog standard computers - you can do what you want with the hardware but the software that came with it - Windows (in the majority of cases) - is licensed!!

      And to tell you the truth this is mainly GeoHots fault anyway. The guy comes across as a bit of a dickhead. He should not have disclosed the keys (if he did, can't remember) and he certainly should not have advertised how to break into the fecking console by posting videos of it on the internet. Being from the US he was asking to get sued.

      Most people posting here truly need to get a brain and more importantly go get a life!

      I own a PS3 - two actually, and am not really bothered by this. Neither are my PS3 owning mates. The only friend who is bothered by it is an XBox owner who thinks it is right for the PS3 to be broken so people can pirate games. The fact that Microsoft openly sold faulty hardware, knowing that said hardware would break before the warranty was over, is ok as far as he is concerned!!

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      1. Cyberspice
        Reply Icon

        But some people *do* want to experiment.

        I'm a hardware hacker, a software hacker and a maker. I carry a multi-meter in my purse. I have paid for all the music I own (sometimes more than once) and the movies. I own all console games. However I have a couple of old PS-2s I want to experiment with. At some point in the future I will want to do the same with the PS-3 when it gets to the end of its life. Why shouldn't I. This may mean changing the software on the machine. That Sony doesn't want me to do. I'm not breaking the software licence. I'm just changing the software...

        You don't properly own something unless you can hack it (in the traditional sense not the cracker sense).

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      3. ph0b0s
        Reply Icon

        @AC

        'go get a life!', what are you, 12?

        Console owners make money by locking you in to their platforms, hence why you cannot play Xbox games on PS3's and visa versa Or why Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have not agreed on a console gaming standard so you would have interoperability of games over all consoles, even though they use the same API's in the games. Manufacturers would love to have the same situation with movies and music, but the consumer market have not been stupid enough to let them. These companies make less money by having standards like DVD, etc.

        I am not getting into this 'software is licenced so any modification is illegal' argument again. The US library of congress already ruled that you are allowed to jailbreak / root mobiles, so the same is true with consoles. They stipulated that it was only criminal if the only purpose of the hack was for piracy. I have seen no evidence that the hacking SONY are unhappy about was for the sole purpose of piracy. In all the demonstrations of the hack it was to run home-brew software and return features removed by SONY.

        Some will argue that the library of congress did not specifically name consoles, or that the situation with this hack is different to the situation with jailbreaking / rooting phones. But I don't agree. It is exactly the same situation and should have the same exceptions. This is backed up by the fact that before hacking PS3's Geohotz was jailbreaking Iphones using the same technique as they both run Linux.

        And just because the guy comes over as dick makes no difference to the case.

        Next up with this rubbish is Nintendo with their 3DS. Which has tech in to disable the device if you do anything Nintendo don't like. So annoy Nintendo and you get a paper weight. That is not a future I want or others here want.

        I 100% support giving game pirates the worst time possible, but not at the price of allowing these big corporations to rid rough shot over how people can use their devices. It is not hackers fault that the same system that stops piracy as stops the running of legal, but no manufacture sanctioned software or applications. If you could run legal non sanctioned software / actives without breaking the piracy protections, then I would fully support SONY chasing people who break the piracy protection system, as the hackers objectives would be 100% obvious.

        And all the above is why people you disagree with, do have 'a brain' and care about the situation, even if you and your PS3 owning bud's are not really bothered'. And if I owned 3 PS3's, would that make my point any more valid than yours?

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    2. Highlander
      Reply Icon

      It's not about consumer rights as such...

      It's a far larger issue than simply the consumer rights angle.

      The problem here is that the laws surrounding copyright and content protection were not written for a digital marketplace where a copy is as good as the original every time. If you allow unfettered copying of copyright materials (which appears to be the agenda for many) you effectively destroy the incentive to make new content because the content creator is not properly compensated for their work.

      Right now, the free content lobby thinks that if you can download it it should be free, and they'll defend to the death, or at least a product boycott, the rights of haxx0rs to screw with the copy protection mechanisms that prevent their free reign. The debate and discussion is much larger than this GeoHot dweeb and Sony.

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  6. bolccg
    WTF?

    Spero went on to order Hotz to sign a consent form

    Does that strike anyone else as an odd statement? If they can force you to sign a consent form, why not just skip the damn form and force to release of whatever the form relates to?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Jobs Horns

      Alternatively, drop the pretense that there is justice...

      ...and order him to sign a confession to multiple counts of rape and murder. Imprisoned for contempt until he does, so not much of a choice.

      ^^^^^^ Jobs acting as temporary stand-in for Sony CEO

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  7. Rob - Denmark
    Black Helicopters

    Surely, Sony could have paid him themselves?

    Sony could have made a transaction from Northern California to his account, before handing in the subpoena.

    That way they can be 100% sure that they'll find a transaction that'll let them sue him in San Francisco.

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  8. Pat 3
    Thumb Up

    I'm with Sony on this one

    I doubt that Sony would be chasing him so hard if he hacked just his one PS3. The problem was he told the world how to do it, effectively inviting piracy on to the system. If you want a system you can do what you want with, buy a PC ffs.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I remember when all this were fields ...

    Copy protected games on the Amiga. Like unprotected games but with the following "enhancements."

    1. Grinding noise in the disk drive. It's a kind of music.

    2. Frees the user from the extra clutter of personal backup copies - because they can't make any.

    3. Doesn't prevent piracy. The only difference is that instead of someone who bought the game making a copy for a friend you have copies of a cracked version going around.

    The problem with this is easy enough to spot, and today's situation is far worse technically and legally. The anti DRM breaking rule in the DMCA effectively states that any attempt to physically block your fair use rights actually removes those rights from you by law, at least in the US. Obviously it would have been simpler to pass a law which directly strips you of those rights but for some reason nobody could get a law like that to pass, perhaps because it would be harder to pretend it had anything to do with piracy.

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  10. A 31
    Flame

    mmmh goobye sony and @brian6

    That does it for me

    no more Sony products .... ever !!

    I can't stand this victimisation of a single individual against a whole corporate, and the disproportionate sentences that will follow ...

    as for Brian 6, you have the brain of an uneducated and short sighted amoeba, life has not been kind to you as I can see.

    Your analogies make no sense, you own your brain, and you are still allowed to come up with mob-like low level thought process, no doubt you can even vote !!!

    You own your computer and yet, you are still allowed to inflict poor analogies on the rest of us.

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