''SCEA v. Hotz'' was a lawsuit in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Sony Computer Entertainment of America Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is made up of two legal co ...

against

George Hotz George Francis Hotz (born October 2, 1989), alias geohot, is an American security hacker, entrepreneur, and software engineer. He is known for developing iOS jailbreaks, reverse engineering the PlayStation 3, and for the subsequent lawsuit bro ...

and associates of the group fail0verflow. It was in regards to jailbreaking and reverse engineering the

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

Timeline

On January 11, 2011, Sony sued George Hotz and fail0verflow members Hector Martin and Sven Peter on 8 claims, including violation of the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

, computer fraud, and copyright infringement.Sony follows up, officially sues Geohot and fail0verflow over PS3 jailbreak
Nilay Patel, Engadget (2011-01-12). Retrieved on 2011-02-16. The law firm used by Sony was Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP.Lawyers
CahnGillilandSmithGaudreau
an
Bricker
/ref> In response to the suit, Carnegie Mellon University professor David S. Touretzky mirrored Hotz's writings and issued a statement supporting that Hotz's publication is within his right to free speech. On January 27, 2011, Sony's request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) was granted by the US District Court for the Northern District of California. This forbade him from distributing the jailbreak, helping or encouraging others to jailbreak, and distributing information they've learned during the creation of the jailbreak. It also ordered him to turn over computers and storage media used in the creation of the jailbreak to Sony's lawyers. Professor Touretzky's mirror was voluntarily censored following issue of the TRO, but Hotz's writings and software have been mirrored elsewhere. On February 12, 2011, Hotz posted a one-minute

diss track A diss track, diss record or diss song (diss – abbr. from ''disrespect'') is a song whose primary purpose is to verbally attack someone else, usually another artist. Diss tracks are often the result of an existing, escalating feud between the ...

against Sony on his official

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

channel in relation to the lawsuit. On February 19, 2011, Hotz started a blog about the

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

lawsuit. On March 6, 2011, the court issued an approval that Sony's lawyers were allowed access to all the IP addresses of all the people who visited geohot's blog for the purposes of establishing jurisdiction. Sony said the server logs would demonstrate that many of those who downloaded Hotz's hack reside in Northern California — thus making San Francisco a proper venue for the case. On April 11, 2011, it was revealed that Hotz and Sony had reached a settlement out of court. This included a permanent injunction against Hotz doing any more hacking work on any Sony products to prevent any future firmware release from being decrypted. The claims (filed in

United States district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district co ...

for Northern California, San Francisco) were: *Violating the

() *Violating the

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law pro ...

() *

Contributory copyright infringement Contributory copyright infringement is a way of imposing secondary liability for infringement of a copyright. It is a means by which a person may be held liable for copyright infringement even though he or she did not directly engage in the infringi ...

() *Violating

California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act The California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act is in §502 of the California Penal Code. According to the State Administrative Manual of California, the purposes is as follows: The Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act ...

(§ 502) * Breach of Contract (related to the PlayStation Network User Agreement) *

Tortious interference Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party, causing e ...

Misappropriation In law, misappropriation is the unauthorized use of another's name, likeness, identity, property, discoveries, inventions, etc without that person's permission, resulting in harm to that person. Another use of the word refers to intentional a ...

Trespass Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels, and trespass to land. Trespass to the person historically involved six separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, woundi ...

Alleged Anonymous attacks in response to lawsuit

In an act of

hacktivism In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hac ...

, Anonymous announced their intent to attack Sony websites in response to Sony's lawsuit and, specifically due to Sony's gaining access to the IP addresses of all the people who visited geohot's blog, terming it an 'offense against free speech and internet freedom'. Although Anonymous admitted responsibility to subsequent attacks on the Sony websites, much speculation has arisen concerning a sustained collapse of the PlayStation Network in April 2011. Anonymous has denied any involvement in the PlayStation Network outage. However, Sony announced on May 4, 2011, "We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named "Anonymous" with the words "We are Legion."

References

External links

*{{Cite Pacer Docket , plaintiff = SCEA , defendant = Hotz , date = Jan 11, 2011 , case-division = 3 , case-year = 2011 , case-type = cv , case-sequence = 00167 , case-state = ca , case-district = nd , pacer-number = 235965 , access-date = Jul 23, 2017 , use-pacer = no , use-recap = yes , case-title = Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC v. Hotz et. al. *http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=SonyHotz *http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Network-Support/Questions-About-End-User-Safety-Concerning-New-Exploit/m-p/38690337 *https://blog.playstation.com/2011/04/11/settlement-in-george-hotz-case/ American bloggers Sony litigation Digital Millennium Copyright Act case law 2011 in United States case law Video game controversies United States District Court for the Northern District of California cases

Timeline

Alleged Anonymous attacks in response to lawsuit

See also

References

External links