George Hotz, the 21 year old hacker Sony is suing over his work cracking the PlayStation 3, has had no shortage of help from the public when it comes to paying his lawyers. Hotz put out a call for donations on his blog in February, and within a couple of days he closed it, telling supporters he had “enough to cover my legal fees for the time being,” according to a post quoted by iDownloadBlog at the time. He had said before the appeal that he had already run up more than $10,000 in legal bills.
Sony Computer Entertainment America filed its lawsuit in January in federal court in San Francisco, naming Hotz along with members of the fail0verflow hacking group. Sony alleges the defendants violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by publishing tools and information that circumvent the console’s security. Hotz denies supporting piracy, saying his goal is to let owners run their own software on hardware they paid for, including the ability to install other operating systems that Sony removed in a firmware update last year.
Sony Seeks Hotz’s PayPal Records
The donations have since become part of the legal fight over where the case should be heard. Hotz lives in New Jersey, and his attorney, Stewart Kellar, has asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction in California.
Earlier this month, as Engadget reported at the time, a federal magistrate judge, Joseph Spero, authorized Sony to subpoena records identifying California sources of money paid into a PayPal account linked to Hotz between January 2009 and February 2011. Sony alleges that Hotz received donations for his PS3 work from Northern California residents, and argues that such payments would help justify keeping the case in San Francisco.
Sony Points To A Trip To South America
This week brought fresh accusations. In a court filing, Sony alleged that Hotz removed components from hard drives he had been ordered to hand over, and stated that he “is now in South America.” Hotz responded on his blog that he was on a spring break trip planned and paid for since November, and that he remained in near daily contact with his lawyers.
Kellar told reporters that the missing components were hard drive controller cards, which have since been handed to the neutral third party examining the devices. He also dismissed any suggestion that donation money paid for the trip, saying the funds are used solely for Hotz’s legal defense and that anything left over will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As he put it to the press this week, “You can never take a vacation from a lawsuit.”
Sony’s filing also suggests Hotz may not have been truthful when he said he never had a PlayStation Network account. For now, the jurisdiction question remains in front of the court, and the PayPal subpoena is one of several pieces of discovery both sides are fighting over as the case moves forward.