Judge in PS3 case lets Sony track visitors to Geohot website [Ninth-Circuit Nonsense]

Electronista ^ | updated 07:05 pm EST, Fri March 4, 2011 | Electronista Staff

[Gondring]

Judge lets Sony spy on Geohot visitors in PS3 suit

George Hotz faced another setback in his defense against Sony's anti-jailbreaking lawsuit late Thursday after a judge granted Sony a potentially controversial amount of information access. It now has permission to get the IP addresses, accounts and other details of anyone who has visited either his main Geohot site or his PS3 jailbreak Blogger site between January 2009 and the modern day. Sony made clear that the access wouldn't be limited to those who downloaded the jailbreak code.

The company had already received permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video of the jailbreak, including their comments. Sony has also been petitioning the court for permission to see all of Hotz' Twitter updates.

Sony has argued that it needs the complete records to show how Hotz was distributing the hack. It also wanted to prove that some of the traffic came from Northern California so that it could keep the lawsuit in its preferred area instead of being pushed to move it to New Jersey. A hearing on the decision is due in April.

The company has argued that Hotz was actively helping out pirates by posting a jailbreak that would users run their own code on the PS3. Hotz has denied this and noted that his jailbreak code was written in such a way as to prevent casual piracy.

Sony's subpoena requests have already been challenged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as too wide-ranging. The agency has contended that Sony is making no distinction between actual infringers versus simple observers and may have too much access to private data that has no relation to the case.

The attitude is nonetheless consistent with Sony's scorched earth policy to the jailbreak, where it has threatened lawsuits to anyone posting the code and to silence as much talk about it as possible. It has faced some opposition both from Hotz and from a countersuit over feature limitations, since the same patch to close down piracy also removed popular support for installing Linux. [via Wired]

[Gondring]

Unbelievable.

And before anyone asks...

The "Honorable" Susan Y. Illston
Susan Yvonne Illston (born 1948) is a San Francisco, California-based judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.

• Unanimous recommendations of Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein
  
• Nominated by President Bill Clinton on January 23, 1995.
• Confirmed by U.S. Senate on May 25, 1995 on a majority voice vote.
• Received her commission on May 26, 1995.

Some might remember her from trials such as the Barry Bonds case.

[Gondring]

Ping

[BipolarBob]

Can we post an address with Google mapping of the house? Would the Hon. Judge like that published and released as well?

[BipolarBob]

I meant of the Judges house of course.

[Gondring]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2683073/posts

[HiTech RedNeck]

This isn’t the first time Sony has “pushed the envelope.” Remember their infamous rootkit.

[muawiyah]

Her recommends and bona fides mark her as a total ignoramous, and possibly a very dangerous person in all respects.

[Gondring]

This isn’t the first time Sony has “pushed the envelope.” Remember their infamous rootkit.

Most definitely.

I can't believe I was recently thinking of getting a Playstation 3. I guess I'll be going the Xbox route if I want to play L.A. Noire.

Sony is one of the most rotten corporations, and I find them to have some innovation but poor engineering.

[Dapper 26]

The 9th Circus clowns again.

[HiTech RedNeck]

“Justice for all” doesn’t usually apply to IP cases. It’s usually like “contest thrown to whoever has the most money.” What Sony is likely to do is send shakedown letters to everybody who saw the video. Most won’t have the means to pursue a court case showing that Sony has no evidence they did anything wrong. On the other hand, if you’re a small time songwriter and Sony stole your song, good luck getting the dough to prosecute it.

[battousai]

Open proxies are your friends...

[Bobalu]

https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en

Create an anonymous online persona and always use TOR.

[Gondring]

Create an anonymous online persona and always use TOR.

Wouldn't prevent this.

Torbutton blocks browser plugins such as Java, Flash, ActiveX, RealPlayer, Quicktime, Adobe's PDF plugin, and others: they can be manipulated into revealing your IP address. For example, that means Youtube is disabled.