Court orders Hotz to hand over hard drives to Sony
updated 12:00 pm EST, Fri February 11, 2011
Hotz ordered to surrender hard drive contents
Another hearing this week in the ongoing Sony versus George Hotz case has seen the defendant being ordered to hand over his hard drives after all by the Northern California district Judge Susan Illston. Sony wants to examine the contents of the hard drive to see exactly how Hotz circumvented the PS3's software to allow for running copied and homebrew games. The 21-year-old was the first to fully break down Sony's protection system.
Hotz otherwise complied with the court's requests, removing the videos of the 'jailbreak' from YouTube and his own website. He was accused of Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations. Judge Illston said she acknowledged the concerns about personal data outside of the jailbreak being intercepted and would confine the searches to the immediately relevant material.
"It’s a problem when more than one thing is kept on the computer," Judge Illston said. "I’ll make sure the order is and will be that Sony is only entitled to isolate... the information on the computer that relates to the hacking of the PlayStation."
The judge further ordered the parties to agree on the logistics of how Sony would go through the hard drive. Hotz was ordered not to delete or modify any files connected with the jailbreak. [via Wired]
