Sony To Subpoena PayPal Account For PS3 Jailbreaker 'Geohot'

Sony Computer Entertainment America this week made its latest move in its case against PlayStation 3 "jailbreaker" George "Geohot" Hotz. Court documents [PDF] show that a U.S. District Court on Tuesday authorized a proposal from plaintiff SCEA to serve a subpoena to online payment firm PayPal in order to collect records from Hotz' personal account for the period of January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2011. SCEA said it is looking for "documents sufficient to identify the source of funds in California that went into any PayPal account" associated with Hotz' email address. SCEA is adding the PayPal order to another group of subpoenas that seek to collect information from Hotz' web provider Bluehost, as well as records from YouTube, Google and Twitter. The court also approved this week SCEA's proposal to require Hotz to sign a consent to allow SCEA to obtain his Twitter posts from January 1 2009 to present. New Jersey-based Hotz is also ordered to appear in California to be deposed relating specifically to the issue of personal jurisdiction. In January, Sony alleged that Fail0verflow, a "hacking group," laid the groundwork for Hotz to "unlawfully ... [gain] access to a critical level of the PS3 System" protection measures in December. The complaint alleges that Hotz distributed circumvention devices through the internet that were needed to access that critical level of PS3 security, and that he released software code used to run pirated software on the console in January. Hotz has denied the hack is meant to facilitate piracy. In January, the court also accepted Sony's proposal for the right to impound any computers, hard drives, USB sticks and other storage devices belonging to Hotz or that are in his custody or control.