SCEA v. Hotz was a lawsuit in the United States
by Sony Computer Entertainment of America
against George Hotz and associates of the
group fail0verflow for jailbreaking and reverse
engineering the PlayStation 3.
== Timeline ==
On January 11, 2011, Sony sued Hotz, Hector
Martin Cantero, Sven Peter and Does 1 through
100, purportedly including members of fail0verflow
on 8 claims, including violation of the DMCA,
computer fraud, and copyright infringement.
The law firm used by Sony is Kilpatrick Townsend
& Stockton LLP.
In response to the suit, Carnegie Mellon University
professor David S. Touretzky mirrored Hotz's
writings and issued a statement supporting
that Hotz's publication is within his right
to free speech.On January 27, 2011, Sony's
request for a temporary restraining order
(TRO) was granted by the US District Court
for the Northern District of California.
This forbade him from distributing the jailbreak,
helping or encouraging others to jailbreak,
and distributing information they've learned
during the creation of the jailbreak.
It also ordered him to turn over computers
and storage media used in the creation of
the jailbreak to Sony's lawyers.
Professor Touretzky's mirror was voluntarily
censored following issue of the TRO, but Hotz's
writings and software have been mirrored elsewhere.On
February 12, 2011, Hotz posted a rap video
on his official YouTube page explaining his
Sony lawsuit.On February 19, 2011, Hotz started
a blog about the Sony lawsuit.On March 6,
2011, the court issued an approval that Sony's
lawyers were allowed access to all the IP
addresses of all the people who visited geohot's
blog for the purposes of establishing jurisdiction.
Sony said the server logs would demonstrate
that many of those who downloaded Hotz's hack
reside in Northern California — thus making
San Francisco a proper venue for the case.On
April 11, 2011, it was revealed that Hotz
and Sony had reached a settlement out of court.
This included a permanent injunction against
Hotz doing any more hacking work on any Sony
products.
to prevent any future firmware release from
being decrypted.
The claims (filed in United States district
court for Northern California, San Francisco):
Violating the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (17 U.S.C. § 1201)
Violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
(18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(c))
Contributory copyright infringement (17 U.S.C.
§ 501)
Violating California Comprehensive Computer
Data Access and Fraud Act (§ 502)
Breach of Contract (related to the PlayStation
Network User Agreement)
Tortious interference
Misappropriation
Trespass
== Alleged Anonymous attacks in response to
lawsuit ==
The activist group Anonymous announced their
intent to attack Sony websites in response
to Sony's lawsuit and, specifically due to
Sony's gaining access to the IP addresses
of all the people who visited geohot's blog,
terming it an 'offensive against free speech
and internet freedom'.
The attack would be a form of Hacktivism.
Although Anonymous admitted responsibility
to subsequent attacks on the Sony websites,
much speculation has arisen concerning a sustained
collapse of the PlayStation Network in April
2011.
Anonymous has denied any involvement in the
PlayStation Network outage.
However, Sony announced on May 4, 2011, "We
discovered that the intruders had planted
a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment
servers named "Anonymous" with the words "We
are Legion."
== 
See also ==
Electronic Frontier Foundation
George Hotz
Groklaw
Illegal number
Strategic lawsuit against public participation
Forum shopping
