Primera victoria de Geohot

from geohot.com:
As of 2:00 PM EST, 1/14/2011, I am not subject to any TROs

No court order against PlayStation hackers for now
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No personal jurisdiction
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Security, 14th January 2011 20:22 GMT
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A San Francisco federal judge declined to order New Jersey-based hacker Geohot to turn over the technology he used to root the PlayStation 3, saying she doubted Geohot was subject to her court's authority.

The move by US District Judge Susan Illston on Friday was a blow to Sony, which argued that the 21-year-old hacker, whose real name is George Hotz, should be forced to surrender his computer gear and the code he used to circumvent digital rights management features in the gaming console. Illston rejected arguments that Hotz's use of Twitter, PayPal, and YouTube, all located in the Northern District of California, were sufficient contacts with the region to establish personal jurisdiction.


“If having a PayPal account were enough, then there would be personal jurisdiction in this court over everybody, and that just can't be right,” Illston told James G. Gilliland Jr., an attorney representing Sony. “That would mean the entire universe is subject to my jurisdiction, and that's a really hard concept for me to accept.”

Sony's motion for a temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit it filed on Tuesday against Hotz and more than 100 individuals who belong to a hacking collective known as fail0verflow. At the Chaos Communication Congress in late December, fail0verflow members revealed the key used to sign PS3 games and demonstrated how to use it to run homebrew apps on the console. A few weeks later, Hotz independently deduced the “metldr” key, which allowed him to root the PS3.

Sony's suit claims that by publishing the means to bypass the protection measures built into the console, the hackers violated provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It also claims they violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “by transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a communication containing a threat to obtain information from a protected computer without authorization.” Both laws carry stiff civil and criminal penalties.

Sony attorneys asked Illston to order Hotz and the other hackers to give Sony “any and all computer hardware” and software used to root the PS3. They are also seeking unspecified monetary damages.

AN FRANCISCO — A federal judge here on Friday put off deciding whether PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz should surrender his computer gear as part of a lawsuit from console-maker Sony.

Sony sued Hotz on Tuesday, alleging Hotz’ posting of the code to crack the PlayStation 3 was a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions. Sony, which is also seeking unspecified monetary damages, also wanted Hotz to remove any code the New Jersey man had uploaded to the internet last week.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, without deciding any of the merits of Sony’s DMCA claim and other allegations, said she was unsure whether the lawsuit should even be tried in her courtroom. She wondered aloud whether the case should be aired in the 21-year-old’s home state of New Jersey, where the hacking took place.

“I’m really worried about the jurisdictional question,” the judge said from the bench during a 20-minute hearing.

Sony’s attorney, James Gilliland Jr., argued the case could proceed in San Francisco because Hotz posted the hack on Twitter and YouTube, which are based in California. And Gilliland said Hotz received donations for the hack via California-based PayPal — an allegation Hotz’ attorney denied.

But if using Twitter or Facebook is enough to bring a case to San Francisco, “the entire universe would be subject to my jurisdiction,” the judge told the Sony attorney about his argument.

Gilliland countered, arguing that the PlayStation’s terms-of-service agreement demands that legal disputes be settled in federal court here, near where Sony Computer Entertainment America is based.

In the end, Judge Illston said she would rule at an undisclosed time.

“Serious questions have been raised here,” she said.


Hotz accessed the so-called “metldr keys” and obtained root access to trick the PS3 into running software not approved by Sony. He published the code a week ago, and was greeted Tuesday with a lawsuit from Sony, which has sold 41 million PS3 units since the console’s 2006 debut. The code allows the playing of pirated and homebrew software on the console, and has spread across the net like wildfire.

In an e-mail, Hotz said the case “doesn’t have any basis.”

“I am a firm believer in digital rights. I would expect a company that prides itself on intellectual property to be well versed in the provisions of the law, so I am disappointed in Sony’s current action. I have spoken with legal counsel and I feel comfortable that Sony’s action against me doesn’t have any basis,” he wrote.

The DMCA makes it either a civil or criminal offense to traffic in wares meant to circumvent devices protecting copyrighted works.

But hacking or jailbreaking an iPhone so it will run apps not authorized by Apple is neither a civil nor criminal offense. The U.S. Copyright Office made that activity lawful in July.