George Hotz

Sony is threatening to sue anybody posting or “distributing” the first full-fledged jailbreak code for the 4-year-old PlayStation 3 gaming console.

What’s more, the company is demanding that a federal judge order Google to surrender the IP addresses and other identifying information (.pdf) of those who have viewed or commented about the jailbreak video on a private YouTube page. The game maker is also demanding that Twitter provide the identities of a host of hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack in December.

Sony’s aggressive pretrial discovery demands come in its lawsuit against George Hotz. The 21-year-old New Jersey hacker, who is well known in the jailbreaking community, published the finished PlayStation 3 code and a how-to YouTube video last month. The code enables the Playstation 3 to play pirated and homebrewed games.

Sony wants the information “to determine the identities of third parties hosting and distributing the circumvention devices” so Sony can send them a DMCA notice to remove the material “and, if necessary, seek appropriate relief from this court.” (.pdf)

“The discovery they call for in my opinion is overbroad,” Hotz’ attorney, Stewart Kellar, said in a telephone interview.

Sony declined to comment.

A hearing is tentatively set for Wednesday. Sony filed its documents about 7:30 p.m. PST on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered Hotz to remove the YouTube video and the code from his personal website — orders with which Hotz complied with last week. Ahead of an unscheduled trial in which Sony is seeking unspecified damages from Hotz, Illston had concluded that Hotz likely breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He did so by publishing or “distributing” a hack designed to circumvent software meant to protect copyrighted material, the judge said.

Hotz, by order of Illston, is also scheduled to surrender his computer gear to Sony by Thursday. Kellar is trying to convince Judge Illston to back away from allowing Sony to examine his drives and other devices.

Sony is also trying to haul into court the so-called “fail0verflow hacking team.”

But first, Sony needs to learn the identities and whereabouts of  the group’s members. They are accused of posting a rudimentary hack in December. It was refined by Hotz weeks later when he accessed the console’s so-called “metldr keys,” or root keys that trick the system into running unauthorized programs

Toward getting the fail0verflow defendants to appear into court, Sony is demanding that Twitter divulge the personal account information (.pdf) behind the usernames of @KaKaRoToKS, @gnihsub, @pytey, @bl4sty, @marcan42 and @fail0verflow.

Sony claims the hacks will eat into game sales for the 41 million PS3 units sold.

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

Ironically, performing a similar hack on a mobile phone is lawful.

Last summer, the U.S. Copyright Office exempted cell phone jailbreaking from being covered by the DMCA. The decision means consumers may run the apps of their choice on mobile phones without fear of being civilly or criminally liable for a DMCA breach.

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