George Hotz, the man accused of illegally hacking the PlayStation 3, has reportedly fled the country to South America, according to a filing by Sony.
In the filing, posted to the Justia Web site, Sony Computer Entertainment of America claims Hotz, also known as “geohot,” has fled the country with several key components.
SCEA noted Hotz’s departure in a filing that attempted to counter an attempt by Hotz’s lawyers to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue. Hotz says he is a resident of New Jersey, while SCEA is based in California.
“Most seriously, after Magistrate Judge Spero ordered an inspection of Hotz’s devices and ordered Hotz to appear at a deposition in California, SCEA learned that Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and that Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral,” SCEA’s counsel wrote. “Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions.”
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The undisclosed components that Hotz removed made the hard drives completely non-functional, the SCEA filing said.
In January, lawyers representing Hotz argued that he hacked the PS3 to add back a feature that Sony had removed. Hotz, the lawyers claimed, “re-enabled” OtherOS functionality, or the ability to dual-boot the PlayStation 3 using some other OS, such as Linux.
SCEA filed suit against George Hotz (AKA “geohot”) as well as “Bushing,” Hector Martin Cantero, Sven Peter, and others alleged to be part of the FAIL0VERFLOW group of hackers that contributed to the release of the PlayStation 3’s root key.
The entire motion that SCEA filed attempted to show that retaining the trial venue in California was appropriate, based on the knowledge that SCEA is based in California, a fact established on several pieces of documentation that shipped with the PlayStation 3 that Hotz purchased. Hotz has also retained two lawyers in San Francisco and a third in Atlanta.
SCEA also claimed that over 13,000 users, or IP addresses, in California, have downloaded the circumvention software that Hotz developed, establishing the venue in California.
Finally, SCEA also claimed that posts on Hotz’s site also claim that he has enough money, via donations, to fund a trial in California.
“Recently, in fact, Hotz conveniently traveled to South America in the midst of jurisdictional discovery, including his court-ordered deposition,” SCEA said. “Accordingly, the burden on Hotz of litigating in California will be minimal at most, and hardly dispositive.”