Sony to Comb Geohot’s PayPal Transactions in PS3 Jailbreak Case

Federal Magistrate Grants Access

Sony is allowed to subpoena Paypal in order to obtain account transactions made by George Hotz, a federal magistrate judge said today.

Wired News reports Sony is seeking records on Hotz’s transactions from January 1, 2009 to February 1, 2011.  It’s part of a jurisdiction battle Sony is waging in its case against Hotz.  Sony believes the case should be tried in San Francisco, instead of Hotz’s home state of New Jersey.  Any donations made to Hotz’s account in that period which originated from California would strengthen Sony’s argument.

But if Sony wants to find evidence, it can first look to itself.  As we reported in January, evidence was uncovered once Sony first filed its suit against Hotz that suggested the company itself made a $1 “donation” to Hotz, perhaps as a way to allege the hacker was profiting from the release of a jailbreak code that, while released in the interest of promoting homebrew, compromised some of the Playstation 3′s security measures and opened a door to piracy.

No matter what side you take in the core dispute, from a personal liberties standpoint there is not much to like about Sony’s tactics to take Hotz down.  For his part, Hotz has not updated his blog on the matter since March 1st.