PS3 hacker Hotz's lawyers strike back against Sony

George Hotz, the notorious iPhone and PS3 hacker who is currently engaged in a legal duel with Sony, has so far had no qualms with making his own statements, but he hasn't said much that would make a great legal defense. Now we're getting a look at what his lawyers have to say.

The defense team has ripped into Sony's allegations, from the claim that Hotz signed up for a PlayStation Network account to the notion that Sony can even sue him in California.

The reply is a point-by-point attack on most of the issues Sony has brought against Hotz. For starters, it questions the entire basis of the lawsuit, claiming that even if Hotz has a PSN account, there's nothing in the Terms of Service about modifying hardware.

"Hotz has affirmed that he did not obtain any software he is alleged to have circumvented through the PSN," the argument reads. It goes on to say that any kind of TOS could never even be applied to Hotz because he doesn't own a PSN account, and that the one Sony says belongs to Hotz is actually that of Hotz's neighbor.

And even if it is Hotz's account, "SCEA has failed to proffer any PSN TOS that could be applicable to Mr. Hotz, even assuming everything SCEA has said is true, because the PSN TOS SCEA has proffered was created after Mr. Hotz purportedly created a PSN account," his lawyers wrote.

If that's not enough, the reply states that Sony doesn't even have authority to file the suit in California. And finally, if you think there's been a lot of news about this case lately, you're not alone. Hotz's lawyers agree with you.

"SCEA served a slew of premature and abusive discovery documents on Mr. Hotz and sent multiple third party subpoenas prior to any procedural milestone that would permit such acts. Clearly the tactic was to overwhelm Mr. Hotz by thwarting proper discovery procedure," the statement reads.

"SCEA issued numerous frivolous subpoenas to harass Mr. Hotz. SCEA subpoenaed Twitter, Google, Youtube, Bluehost (webhost for Mr. Hotz's site), SoftLayer (webhost for psx-scene.com) and PayPal. As issued, none of those subpoenas limited categories of documents to "California" despite the limited jurisdictional discovery. After subpoenaing every entity it could think of, SCEA still has nothing (and certainly nothing admissible) to connect Mr. Hotz to California."

Sony isn't the only one with hotheaded lawyers.

[Source: Groklaw]

Mar 29, 2011