Federal Magistrate allows Sony to look up visitors to GeoHot site
Sony was recently awarded another minor victory in its continuing legal action against George "GeoHot" Hotz and his distribution of a workaround allowing users to jailbreak their PS3s. Federal Magistrate Joseph Spero decided Thursday to allow Sony to subpoena Hotz's web provider to acquire the IP addresses of any of GeoHot.com visitors from January 2009 through present day. Sony was also given subpoenas for information from Google, YouTube and Twitter.
Magistrate Spero explained the information obtained by the subpoena would be used to measure the extent of the "defendant's distribution" of the jailbreak files, as well as settle whether Sony must sue Hotz in New Jersey or San Francisco -- the former being Hotz's home state, and the latter being the region in which Sony argues the files were most downloaded. The jurisdiction of the suit will be settled in court during a hearing in San Francisco next month.
