George Hotz

The web host to a PlayStation online forum moved Thursday to quash a subpoena connected to Sony’s lawsuit against George Hotz, the man who released the first full-fledged PlayStation 3 hack.

SoftLayer Technologies, which counts psx-scene.com among its hosted sites, is objecting to a records demand seeking server logs and other information related to site-user Hotz. Sony is suing the 21-year-old New Jersey man on charges that he breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by publishing an encryption key and software tools in January that allow PlayStation 3 owners to gain complete control of their consoles.

Dallas-based SoftLayer is the only company so far to object to subpoenas in the hotly contested Hotz case. The judge has signed off on Sony subpoenas to Twitter, YouTube, Google and PayPal as part of the console-maker’s scorched-earth litigation tactics to win an unspecified amount of monetary damages from Hotz.

Thursday’s legal tussle surrounds a SoftLayer subpoena approved by Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero of San Francisco two weeks ago. It demands “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records, and application or registration forms” (.pdf) connected to Hotz’s psx-scene.com account.

Sony wants those logs, and a record of all of his postings, to determine whether Hotz had logged in from the San Francisco area while trumpeting or posting his hack.

That data is at the center of a jurisdictional argument whether Sony must sue Hotz in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, where Sony would prefer.

SoftLayer objects to the subpoena on grounds that, among other things, it requires “disclosure of protected matter” (.pdf).

No hearing date has been set.

The DMCA prohibits the trafficking of so-called “circumvention devices” designed to crack copy-protection schemes. Hotz’s hack provides PlayStation 3 owners the ability to run pirated and home-brewed software or alternative operating systems like Linux. Performing a similar hack on a mobile phone is not unlawful.

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