If you live in San Francisco and you visited George Hotz's website between January 2009 and now, you might be in in Sony's headlights. A federal magistrate has given Sony the power to expose anybody who patronized the PS3 jailbreak site.

Sony claimed it needs to unmask anybody who downloaded Hotz's files in order to prove that the majority of users were based in California. This would allow Sony to sue "Geohot" in San Francisco, rather than his home town of New Jersey. Sony has also won subpoenas for Youtube, Google and Twitter, as well as Bluehost, the company that maintain's Geohot's site.

While Sony is no doubt thrilled with its progress, not everybody is pleased. Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Corynne McSherry said the subpoenas were "inappropriate" and criticized how "overly broad" they seemed to be. Concerns about data protection and web-privacy have been thrown up around the 'net.

I'm no fan of some of the negative impact this jailbreak has had, but the potential privacy concerns are certainly unsettling. All I know is, I didn't jailbreak mine, so I guess I'm sitting pretty ... I just hope nobody sees the modifications I made to my toaster (it now cooks SPAGHETTI!)

Judge Lets Sony Unmask Visitors to PS3-Jailbreaking Site [Wired]