In the continuing battle against notorious PlayStation 3 jailbreaker George Hotz, Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero has awarded Sony with the power to approach Google, YouTube, and the hacker’s own service provider, in order to obtain information on his visitors.

In Sony’s ongoing crackdown against PS3 hackers, Hotz, also known as GeoHot, is top of the hit-list after a demo video running homebrew applications on PlayStation 3 appeared on YouTube. Sony has since filed a lawsuit against the 21 year old, which has been running for two months, and has now been given permission to approach Hotz service provider, Bluehost and obtain the IP addresses of everyone who has visited his website, geohot.com.

Furthermore, Wired also claims that Sony has requested and been awarded the account names of those who have watched his YouTube videos since it has been made private, responded to his tweets on Twitter and posted on his Blogspot. Wired reveals that the subpoena demands Bluehost to relinquish any “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms." Regarding the GeoHot's YouTube account, Wired states that:

"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.”

Apparently, Sony is trying to obtain proof that the majority of the people who have downloaded the circumvention devices are based in California, which will allow them to sue the hacker in this State, rather than in his home town of New Jersey.

Source: Wired