Judge: Give Sony the IP Addresses of Anyone Who Visited Hacker Geohot’s Website

 Rosa Golijan — I've got bad news for those who have checked out the website of my favorite hacker-turned-rapper, George "Geohot" Hotz, at any point between January 2009 and now: Sony has been granted the right to acquire your IP addresses.

Bluehost, the company who maintains Hotz's website, doesn't have much choice in the whole matter, of course:

The approved subpoena requires the company to turn over "documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms" tied to Hotz's hosting. The Bluehost subpoena also demands "any other identifying information corresponding to persons or computers who have accessed or downloaded files hosted using your service and associated" with the www.geohot.com website, including but not limited to the "geohot.com/jailbreak.zip file."

Sony justified the subpoena by claiming that the data is necessary in proving the Hotz's distribution of a Play Station 3 hack as well as determining which city is the proper venue for an upcoming legal battle.

I'm not entirely sure how the electronics maker managed to justify three more ridiculously broad subpoenas though:

The judge also signed off on a Google subpoena seeking the logs for Hotz's Blogger.com blog, geohotps.3.blogspot.com.

A YouTube subpoena, also approved, seeks information connected to the "geohot" account that displayed a video of the hack being used: "Jailbroken PS3 3.55 with Homebrew." The subpoena demands data to identify who watched the video and "documents reproducing all records or usernames and IP addresses that have posted or published comments in response to the video."

A fourth subpoena is directed at Twitter, demanding the disclosure of all of Hotz's tweets, and "documents sufficient to identify all names, addresses, and telephone numbers associated with the Twitter account."

We'll see what happens with this whole mess when the showdown moves to either a San Francisco or New Jersey courthouse, but I secretly hope that Sony will just hand Hotz's a recording deal instead of continuing to bicker over those venue choices and the little hacking incident.

But that's just because I love the video above. [Wired]

(gizmodo.com)