The legal fight between Sony Computer Entertainment America and George Hotz increasingly turns on a question that has little to do with the PlayStation 3 itself: does using Google, Twitter, YouTube and PayPal tie a New Jersey hacker to California?
Sony sued Hotz in January in federal court in San Francisco, along with members of the fail0verflow group, after he published the PS3 root key and a method for running unsigned code on the console. Sony alleges that this violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws. Hotz, who lives in New Jersey, has asked the court to throw the case out for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue, arguing that he did nothing aimed at California.
Sony Builds Its Case From Hotz’s Online Footprint
To build its case that he did, Sony has gone after his online footprint. Earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero allowed the company to subpoena Google, YouTube and Twitter for information connected to Hotz’s accounts, along with the IP addresses of visitors to his website going back to January 2009. On March 15, the same judge approved a subpoena for PayPal records showing California money flowing into an account tied to Hotz, limited to attorneys’ eyes and the jurisdiction question. Hotz was also ordered to consent to Sony obtaining his tweets and to sit for a deposition in California on jurisdiction.
In its opposition brief filed March 18, Sony argued that Hotz agreed to the PlayStation Network user agreement, which names California courts, and that thousands of California IP addresses downloaded his work. According to Sony’s filing opposing his dismissal motion, his Google hosted blog, his use of Twitter and YouTube, PayPal and a press interview also count as California contacts. Sony further accused Hotz of frustrating discovery, saying components were removed from impounded hard drives and noting that he had said he was in South America.
Hotz Calls His Site An Internet Diary
Hotz answered on March 25. In his reply, he argues that his personal site is passive and does not solicit or track visitors, describing it as a personal blog “akin to an internet diary.” His lawyers say California downloads made up about 4.1 percent of roughly 323,000 total, and that they were random rather than something he directed at the state. The brief also takes aim at Sony’s argument that accepting the terms of service for Twitter and YouTube creates jurisdiction, and complains that subpoenas sent to Twitter, Google, YouTube, PayPal and web hosts Bluehost and SoftLayer were not limited to California material.
The thrust of Hotz’s argument is that reaching people in California through online services is not the same as deliberately targeting the state. Sony’s position is that the sum of those contacts, plus the PSN agreement, is enough.
A Vacation, Impounded Drives And An April 8 Hearing
On the hard drive dispute, Hotz has said on his blog that he is on a long planned vacation in South America, that none of his legal defense money paid for it, and that he is in near daily contact with his lawyers. His reply brief accuses Sony of abusing the jurisdictional discovery process and questions whether a PSN account Sony linked to him was actually his.
The skirmishing continued this week. Judge Spero held a telephone hearing on Monday over searching Hotz’s impounded drives, and SoftLayer withdrew its motion to quash Sony’s subpoena. A hearing on the dismissal motion before Judge Susan Illston is scheduled for April 8, when the court is expected to take up whether California is the right venue.