San Francisco – A federal magistrate has granted Sony’s (NYSE: SNE)
request for the IP addresses of users who have visited a website that offered
code which can be used to hack its PlayStation 3 to play unauthorized software,
Wired.com reports. The operator of the site, George Hotz, was sued by Sony for
violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) after he published the
code on his GeoHot.com website.
Magistrate Joseph Spero has ordered GeoHot.com hosting
provider BlueHost to turn over IP addresses for every user who has visited the
site since January 2009.
The magistrate also granted a Sony subpoena seeking
data on anyone who has watched a YouTube video Hotz made detailing his hack, as
well as subpoenas of Google (NASD: GOOG) for Hotz’s Blogger.com account logs.
Another
subpoena seeks data related to Hotz’s Twitter account.
Wired notes the next
hearing in the lawsuit is slated for April.
Related Links:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/geohot-site-unmasking/
http://tinyurl.com/4dtzkso
(DMW previous coverage)