Sony wins a new battle in the war against the geohot hacker as a US judge has ruled that the company can check donations made to the Paypal account associated with the e-mail address geohot@gmail.com. Sony will have access to a list of all the donations made from January 1, 2009 until now, claiming that geohot would have received money for the development of the jailbreak solution for the PlayStation 3. Sony asked the court to give it the opportunity to verify this donation claiming that geohot would have received money from people in North Carolina, and a court in San Francisco, the headquarters of the Sony company, should be competent to judge the litigation.
The latest development allows the Japanese console maker to acquire "sufficient documentsto identify the source of funds (.pdf) in California that went into any PayPal account associated with geohot@gmail.com for the period of January 1, 2009, to February 1, 2011," Spero ruled.
The information sought is part of a jurisdictional argument over whether Sony must sue Hotz in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, where Sony would prefer.
If you have made any donation to geohot in the last 2 years, then your name and email address will definitely be on that list. Sony seems extremely determined to turn geohot into an example for all those who would have the courage to develop jailbreak solutions for PS3.
