George Hotz, the man accused of illegally hacking the PlayStation 3, has reportedly fled the country to South America, according to a filing by Sony.

In the filing, posted to the Justia Web site, Sony Computer Entertainment of America claims Hotz, also known as “geohot,” has fled the country with several key components.

SCEA noted Hotz’s departure in a filing that attempted to counter an attempt by Hotz’s lawyers to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue. Hotz says he is a resident of New Jersey, while SCEA is based in California.

“Most seriously, after Magistrate Judge Spero ordered an inspection of Hotz’s devices and ordered Hotz to appear at a deposition in California, SCEA learned that Hotz had deliberately removed integral components of his impounded hard drives prior to delivering them to a third party neutral and that Hotz is now in South America, an excuse for why he will not immediately provide the components of his hard drives as requested by the neutral,” SCEA’s counsel wrote. “Hotz’s attempts to dodge this Court’s authority raise very serious questions.”

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The undisclosed components that Hotz removed made the hard drives completely non-functional, the SCEA filing said.

In January, lawyers representing Hotz argued that he hacked the PS3 to add back a feature that Sony had removed. Hotz, the lawyers claimed, “re-enabled” OtherOS functionality, or the ability to dual-boot the PlayStation 3 using some other OS, such as Linux.
SCEA filed suit against George Hotz (AKA “geohot”) as well as “Bushing,” Hector Martin Cantero, Sven Peter, and others alleged to be part of the FAIL0VERFLOW group of hackers that contributed to the release of the PlayStation 3’s root key.

The entire motion that SCEA filed attempted to show that retaining the trial venue in California was appropriate, based on the knowledge that SCEA is based in California, a fact established on several pieces of documentation that shipped with the PlayStation 3 that Hotz purchased. Hotz has also retained two lawyers in San Francisco and a third in Atlanta.

SCEA also claimed that over 13,000 users, or IP addresses, in California, have downloaded the circumvention software that Hotz developed, establishing the venue in California.

Finally, SCEA also claimed that posts on Hotz’s site also claim that he has enough money, via donations, to fund a trial in California.

“Recently, in fact, Hotz conveniently traveled to South America in the midst of jurisdictional discovery, including his court-ordered deposition,” SCEA said. “Accordingly, the burden on Hotz of litigating in California will be minimal at most, and hardly dispositive.”

Microsoft has introduced aliases to for Hotmail email – allowing you to manage multiple email aliases from a single Hotmail account.

Microsoft has been making key changes to Hotmail as it looks to stave off competition from the likes of Google’s Gmail, and that now includes the ability to use a different email address within the webmail service.

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“The email address a person uses is a big part of their online identity,” blogged Microsoft’s Dharmesh Mehta.

“The average person maintains three different email addresses in order to organize different types of email, maintain different personas, or keep junk mail away from a primary email address.

“So there are many good reasons that people want multiple email addresses, but maintaining multiple accounts, with different user names and passwords that require you to check multiple inboxes, is inefficient.

“With today’s update, Hotmail helps you save time by making it easier to manage your current and future email addresses in one place.”

15 total

Hotmail will now let you add up to link up five email aliases a year that are completely different from your main hotmail address (so, not just the now familiar address+keyword addition).

“You might also be concerned that your address could be sold to other companies or could result in a large amount of new email that you don’t want or doesn’t belong in the same place as your regular email, adds Mehta.

“Or maybe you want an address that’s better suited to your hard-core gaming persona rather than your normal, professional one.

“Starting today, you can add up to five aliases per year to your Hotmail account, up to fifteen aliases in total, all designed to make it a lot easier to organize different types of email and personas in one Hotmail inbox without having to give out your primary email address if you don’t want to.”