George Hotz has answered Sony’s claim that he is in South America, and his answer is simple: he says he is on vacation. In a short post on his blog titled “fearmongering,” the PS3 hacker confirmed that he is out of the country but said the trip was planned and paid for back in November, before Sony filed its lawsuit against him in January.
The response follows a Sony filing dated March 18 that said Hotz was in South America while the company was still waiting on hard drive components from his impounded computer equipment, and that the trip was being offered as a reason for the delay. Sony also said its records tie one of his PS3 consoles to a PlayStation Network account, which it argues contradicts his sworn statement that he did not have one. Hotz is trying to get the case thrown out of the California court on jurisdiction grounds.
Hotz Says No Donation Money Paid For The Trip
Hotz described the trip as an ordinary break. “It is Spring break; hacking isn’t my life,” he wrote, according to OSnews, which covered the post on Thursday. He said he is visiting a friend, that he has been in touch with his lawyers almost every day, and that he will not let the lawsuit run his life, because otherwise the fearmongerers win. He also joked that he plans to head home soon since Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play is hard to come by where he is.
The money question is the part he addressed most directly. Since the suit began, Hotz has asked supporters to chip in toward his legal costs, and after Sony’s filing was reported, some people online suggested that donated money might be paying for the trip. Hotz rejected that outright, writing that “not a dime of legal defense money” would ever be spent on something like a vacation.
Attorney Stewart Kellar Backs Up Hotz’s Account
His attorney, Stewart Kellar, backed him up. Kellar said the donations are being used only for Hotz’s legal defense, and that any money left over once the case is finished will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In comments quoted by GamingBolt on the vacation flap, he called the idea that donations paid for the trip pretty silly given what it costs to litigate against Sony, and added, “You can never take a vacation from a lawsuit.”
Kellar also pushed back on Sony’s description of the hardware. According to his statements, the parts Sony says were removed are the drives’ controller cards, which he called “stock controller cards, not the hard drives themselves,” and which he described as an off the shelf part available at electronics stores. He said those cards have since been delivered to the neutral third party holding the equipment, which in his view makes the issue moot.
Neither Hotz’s post nor his lawyer’s comments dealt in detail with Sony’s claim about the PSN account, which sits at the center of Sony’s argument that the case belongs in California. That question, along with Hotz’s motion to dismiss, is still waiting on the court, and Sony has not publicly responded to the vacation explanation.