A federal magistrate said Sony may subpoena the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, as the gamemaker ratchets up its civil lawsuit against the man who released the first full-fledged PS3 jailbreak in the console's four-year history.

Tuesday's order came two weeks after Magistrate Joseph Spero in San Francisco granted Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who had visited Hotz's website from January of 2009 onward. Sony has also won subpoenas for data from YouTube and Google, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot.

Respected for his iPhone hacks and now the PlayStation 3 jailbreak, the 21-year-old New Jersey man is accused of breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws after his website published an encryption key and software tools that allow PlayStation owners to gain complete control of their consoles from the firmware on up. Hotz has complied with a court order and removed the hack.

The latest development allows the Japanese console maker to acquire "documents sufficientto identify the source of funds (.pdf) in California that went into any PayPal account associated with geohot@gmail.com for the period of January 1, 2009, to February 1, 2011," Spero ruled.

The information sought is part of a jurisdictional argument over whether Sony must sue Hotz in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, where Sony would prefer.

Regarding the PayPal account, Sony claims Hotz has accepted monetary donations for the hack from people residing in Northern California – an argument that, if true, might make San Francisco a proper venue for the litigation.

Hotz denies he accepted donations. Sony, which has threatened to sue anybody who posts the hacking tools or the encryption key, is seeking unspecified damages from Hotz.

The DMCA prohibits the trafficking of so-called "circumvention devices" designed to crack copy-protection schemes. The law, however, does not require Sony to prove that Hotz received payment for the hack, which was designed to allow PlayStation 3 owners the ability to run home-brewed software or alternative operating systems like Linux.

It builds on a series of earlier jailbreaks that unlocked less-protected levels of the PlayStation’s authentication process. Jailbreaking a console is also a prerequisite to running pirated copies of games.

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