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Hotz fires a powerful blast back at Sony's California jurisdictional claims
- shazow 16y agoWhat an amazing overview of the legal proceedings. Clearly a lot of effort went into this, huge thanks!
- nutjob123 16y agoI find these posts about legal proceedings much more interesting when the facts are stated with actual links to the relevant information.
- sp332 16y agoGroklaw is consistently amazing like that. PJ manages to make complex cases intelligible without dumbing things down so much that you feel like it's just an editorial. Of course there is editorializing, but it's mostly to point out how crazy some of the stuff is that's happening. It feels like getting the opinion of an expert instead of punditry with an agenda. Oh, and PJ's earlier coverage of this case: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110322114658410 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110322114658410
- javanix 16y agoWhat exactly was the rationale for changing the title of this article from the one on Groklaw?
- CWuestefeld 16y agoAll of this has very little to do with the actual suit. This is all over the question of jurisdiction.
- GrandMasterBirt 16y agoAn interesting turn of events. However a ruling on this will indicate that if sony wants to sue anyone for hardware hacking, they will have to do it in the jurisdiction of where the person lives, not where sony choses.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoWell, not so much. This isn't a higher court, so it's not setting any precedent wider than this court itself. Of course, other courts might choose to take these findings as guidance, but there's no requirement for them to do so.
- younata 16y agoI couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous SCEA is.
- originalgeek 16y agoI know. If I was a SCEA Exec, I would be asking my lawyers "WTF do I pay guys for? So you can get pantsed by some kid?"
- pdenya 16y agoIs there any reason SCEA wants to file in CA other than making it inconvenient for Hotz?
- omh 16y agoDoes Japan have a DMCA-style law? Even if it does, I'd guess that SCEA has a better (bigger?) team of lawyers than SCEJ when it comes to this sort of case.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoThey're not saying the case should have been bought in Japan or under Japanese jurisdiction (they admit it should be bought in the US, just that it should be bought in New Jersey as that's where the alleged offence was committed and because to bring it anywhere else is deliberately inconvenient to the defendant). The point about SCEJ is that it should be them that should be bringing the case rather than SCEA. Personally that one feels like clutching at straws as it doesn't invalidate the alleged infringement, just this particular case. In the unlikely event that the judge threw it out based on this SCEJ would just bring the case using the same lawyers and the same materials (SCEJ and SCEA are both after all Sony and to assume that they wouldn't co-operate and share resource isn't really realistic).
- jlazarow 16y agoIf the case was brought up in Japan, then wouldn't Hotz just need to avoid ever stepping on Japanese soil in order to stay out of trouble (regardless of the outcome of the case).
- rorrr 16y agoSome courts are more favorable in some areas. CA must be the most favorable when it comes to copyright cases.
- roc 16y agoPeople have a predictable and powerful tendency to put everyone into buckets via easily quantifiable properties and treat them very differently based on whether they see themselves as sharing those buckets. Ergo, if a jury gets involved, it's worse for Sony if the action is framed as "Japanese corporation vs New Jersey citizen", given a jury composed of New Jersey residents. If they can get SCEA/California jurisdiction, it's "California corporation vs New Jersey resident", given a jury composed of California residents.
- SeanDav 16y agoI really try hard not to buy Sony anymore. Not fanatical about it, but why support a company that does this, along with installing rootkits and other behaviour of course.
- danieldk 16y agoI sympathize. However, it is very hard to completely avoid their products if you love music or movies.
- eekfuh 16y agoWell if you love music or movies, you can easily avoid PAYING for their products.
- redthrowaway 16y agoEven if you don't support piracy, you can easily avoid paying Sony by just buying used.
- patrickyeon 16y agoBuying used doesn't support anybody else involved in the production. If you're worried about the ethics of piracy, I do not understand how buying used changes things.
- derobert 16y agoThe existence of a resale market likely increases the initial purchases of the item. How? Hypothetically, say the utility you'd get out a specific album is $8. The price is $10, so, naturally you won't buy it. However, you normally tire of music in, say, a year. You realize you can sell it them for $4. So instead you go ahead and buy it ("it really only costs me $6, 'cause I can sell it when I'm done with it").
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- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago"The implication is that SCEA might be fighting dirty, providing misleading information to the court." That's kind of naive, this is how the law works - you make your case by putting the most beneficial spin on everything from your clients perspective ("he agreed to this when he did X"). The defendant then makes their case by putting the most beneficial spin on everything from their clients perspective ("X only extends to cover Y and therefore is not relevant"). The judge or jury then rule on who is right. That's not fighting dirty, it's the practice of law. This is an analysis of the defence motions which are always going to be worded to make everything Sony has done sound deeply wrong and evil. The Julian Assange defence was very similar - if you read through it you'd wonder how the case had ever been bought and yet the judge found against them on pretty much every point. They weren't fighting dirty, they were giving their interpretation of things and this is the same. Not saying this isn't good, or interesting, just that it has a very specific and obvious bias and that irks me a little.
- YooLi 16y agoI agree with you. That said, where does it cross the line from beneficial spin to providing misleading information? Can, for instance, a landlord claim to a court that a tenant agreed not to throw loud parties in the rental contract (even if there was no such provision) and leave it up to the the tenant's defense to correct that no, the rental contract says nothing about parties? To me this would be misleading information, but I am highly ignorant of how courts work.
- markklarich 16y agoIt can, actually, get much worse. While cross examining the other side, the opposition attorney can, and often does, state an assumption in the middle of a question that misstates a fact. If you don't object, then that statement becomes fact. In other words, every statement made must be considered. Is this something I am willing to allow? It seems that we want to think of a world that is logical and populated with verifiable facts. However, the world of the lawyer is fundamentally illogical (as are most humans most of the time) and facts only exist when either agreed to by the parties or determined by judge or jury. As a result events that you or I would consider to be unquestionably true may end up being not facts. I have seen this in supreme court opinions, appeals, and bench (judge-not jury) cases. Sony knows this well. They have tons of money to throw at lawyers. Generally speaking, the more money spent, the more likely you will win. The word "justice" is never used in law school.
- drags 16y agoDespite my distaste for Sony, I worry that the tone and claims of bad faith in Hotz's filing will distract from the overall strength of his argument. From Kozinski's "How You Too Can Lose Your Appeal:" Let's face it, a good argument is hard to hold down. So what you want to do is salt your brief with plenty of distractions that will divert attention from the main issue. One really good way of doing this is to pick a fight with opposing counsel. Go ahead, call him a slime. Accuse him of lying through his teeth. The key thing is to let the court know that what's going on here is not really a dispute between the clients. What is really going on here is a fight between the forces of truth, justice, purity and goodness--namely you--and Beelzebub, your opponent. http://notabug.com/kozinski/loseappeal http://notabug.com/kozinski/loseappeal
- eli 16y agoSounds like some spinning of his own in explaining why he did not fully comply with a judge's order that he take the code offline: "The Code was also posted on Pastie. org and Github.com. Originally, it did not occur to me that these locations counted as within my custody or control."
- markklarich 16y agoIt would help to read this Wikipedia article to better understand this post. The post is based on court filings addressing personal jurisdiction in an internet case. It seems California has weighed in on the subject and knowing what they are looking for helps to understand the nature of the arguments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_in_Internet_cases_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_in_Intern...
- albemuth 16y agomaybe we should start a Spartacus-like "I am blickmaniac" movement
- inklesspen 16y agoLying to a judge is not typically a good strategy. SCEA likely has more details about who blickmaniac is; they just haven't disclosed them yet.
- burgerbrain 16y agoYou are presumably operating under the assumption that geohot really is blickmaniac^. If he's not, any possible further details SCEA has either would not be in their best interest to share, or would fall apart upon further examination. Furthermore, as none of us, I assume, are currently under oath, or even in the court room, there is realistically little harm in publicly claiming to be blickmaniac. ^And he's not, because I am blickmaniac, and I'm not geohot.
- grellas 16y agoThe bombshell here (and it is just that) lies in the forced last-minute production of the agreements between Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (referred to in the papers as "Sony Japan"). To establish personal jurisdiction over Mr. Hotz, SCEA must show that he had minimum contacts with California such that it makes it fair and reasonable to sue him in that forum over this set of claims. This is so-called "limited jurisdiction," and is to be distinguished from the "general jurisdiction" that enables you to sue someone in the state of his residence over any claim whatever (see my mini-primer on the technical aspects of this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335698 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2335698). The key to the limited-jurisdiction analysis here is whether Mr. Hotz "purposefully directed" his activities toward California (intending that they have an effect there) in committing the acts for which he was sued. It is not enough to show incidental contacts with the state because such a standard would allow any person to be sued anywhere in the United States over any matter simply for having, e.g., purchased a product from remote state x, or had some similar tangential contact. Remember, the standard requires the court to find contacts in the forum related to the wrongs committed such as to make it reasonable to require the distant defendant to have to defend the suit remotely. Because of this, the vital question concerns the nature of the claims asserted in the lawsuit and whether such claims show that Mr. Hotz intended to affect a California resident in committing the wrongs alleged. And this is where the bombshell comes in: in a forced document production that SCEA managed to stall until just a few days before Mr. Hotz's reply brief was due, it had to produce the key contracts between SCEA and Sony Japan, which contracts conclusively demonstrate that all copyrights that are alleged to have been violated in this case are owned by Sony Japan exclusively and that SCEA has nothing to do with them other than being one of many licensees of such copyrights within the Sony family of companies. In other words, SCEA appears to have nothing legitimate to do with the case other than serving as a proxy by which Sony Japan hopes to bootstrap its way into California jurisdiction. SCEA is connected with the PlayStation Network terms of service having a California forum selection clause. The problem is that none of the claims in this case concern violations of such terms of service. The clear implication is that SCEA is a puppet being used to manipulate the court for Sony's tactical purposes. This is reinforced by several collateral indicators. SCEA filed this suit and "flooded" the case with subpoenas that went far beyond the scope of the limited discovery allowed in this sort of case. It then went to great lengths to avoid being straightforward with the court about the copyright ownership upon which the DMCA claims were based. And it has filed a blizzard of affidavits and court papers trying to confuse the main issues in the case. Of course, nothing is completely predictable in a court matter where a court must decide an issue based on a nebulous legal standard such as whether something is "fair" or "reasonable" under the minimum-contacts jurisdictional analysis. But these revelations, to me, look pretty damning. Essentially, Mr. Hotz's attorneys have provided near-conclusive rebuttals to all of SCEA's jurisdictional claims and left SCEA looking disingenuous. Judges usually do not react well when they come to believe that a party is trying to play them, and this rebuttal does a superb job of showing that that is precisely what SCEA appears to be doing. I would sum this up by saying: if this is all that SCEA has got, it is in trouble on the jurisdictional question (as a fallback, Mr. Hotz's lawyers have also asked that the court be transferred to New Jersey under an "inconvenient forum" analysis, which also looks pretty strong for him). It will be interesting to see how this plays out. (The factual details are a bit more complicated than I have summarized them here but this, I think, captures the essence of what is going on - see the wonderful reporting and links of Groklaw to drill down further).
- s3graham 16y agoWhat does the declaration of "unawareness" that Hotz filed mean (near the end)? Is that some sort of narrow legal definition, or is he actually declaring that he's really never heard of SCEA and didn't know they were located in California? That seems highly unbelievable and a bit ridiculous.
- pyre 16y agoReally? Do you know the names and business locations of all the subsidiaries of whatever popular brand is out there? Do you know all of the subsidiaries under the "Universal" umbrella? What are the addresses of all of them? What are their responsibilities?
- s3graham 16y agoFair enough, I could believe that he did not know the address of SCEA. Of its existence? Someone who's as deeply involved with consumer tech devices and software as he is, it seems pretty unlikely that he would not have encountered them. For example, searching for "sony playstation" and visiting the first link takes you to http://us.playstation.com/ http://us.playstation.com/ which is an SCEA website as listed at the bottom of the page. That's why I was asking. If it means something more like "I've never dealt with them personally or contractually", well then sure. But "never had knowledge of their existence" seems a stretch. Anyway, of course IANAL, etc.
- Natsu 16y agoI've heard of Sony, but I had no idea there were so many Sony-related corporations and I've never heard of SCEA before this lawsuit. Of course, I've been boycotting Sony since the rootkit. They've yet to give me a reason to stop. Just yesterday, I went out to replace my broken digital camera. Sony's cameras weren't even considered.
- coverband 16y agoLove this... Better than a soap opera. (I don't own a PS3, so don't feel any attachment to either side.)
- wtallis 16y agoYou don't need to have a PS3 to have a stake in this mess. Sony is fighting for the right to remove features from a product as part of "security updates", to prevent jailbreaking from becoming legal for devices other than smartphones, and for several other precedents that would be very bad for the internet privacy and open source software. Basically, if you're on HN, it's a safe assumption that you would be at least indirectly harmed if Sony got everything they're asking for from this case.
- jonursenbach 16y agoWho/what exactly is blickmaniac? Trying to Google for any info on that has been futile and only leading me to news articles about Hotz vs Sony wanting to find the identity of them.
- vessenes 16y agoOne of the many assertions made by SCEA is that Hotz agreed to SCEA's terms of service, and (I believe) that he did so in California. The user they identified as doing these actions was called "blickmaniac" (or maybe blickmanic according to some blogs). Hotz has denied being blickmaniac, and a number of people have come forward and claimed that he/she is blickmaniac, including, apparently, Hotz' neighbour. Fundamentally, many of the maneuvers SCEA is going through right now are intended to demonstrate that Hotz had a contract with a California company, so that they can sue him in California. Hotz's side is that he bought something made by Sony of Japan, and hacked at it while living in (New Jersey?), never connected to SCEA's network, never read any TOS, posted source code from New Jersey, etc. What's at stake is partly the judge (the current judge ruled DVD copying is illegal if I recall correctly), inconvenience / expense for Hotz, and also from his perspective, hopefully showing SCEA up to be lying bastards, hurting their future case when jurisdiction is finally settled.
- metageek 16y agoDoes any of this count as barratry? Even if the underlying case is valid, it seems as if SCEA's attempt to bring it in California is frivolous.
- FreshCode 16y ago@Sony, just drop the case. I hate to rant, but this is bad press. I am a developer and an early adopter; your attempts to make an example out of Hotz has further soured an opinion still bathed in the lukewarm wake of your infamous rootkit. If and when I have time to play games, I will do so on an XBox.