Sony has already convinced a district court judge that PlayStation 3 jailbreaker George "GeoHot" Hotz must pull all of his how-to PS3 hacks from the Internet and turn over his hardware. Emboldened, the Japanese tech giant is now hunting for the entire FailOverflow hacker group and anyone and everyone else that posts or distributes the PS3 hacks online. Ironically, that means Sony will now be going after its own fictional spokesperson, Kevin Butler.

Last week, US District Judge Susan Illston ruled that 21-year-old Hotz likely breached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ordered the New Jersey resident to remove his PS3 hack video from YouTube and pull the METLDT root key code from his personal website -- Hotz promptly complied. Illston also ruled that Hotz must surrender his computers by tomorrow.
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Arstechnica reports that, based on its early victory, Sony is now demanding that a federal judge order Twitter to provide the identities of the as-yet anonymous other members of the FailOverflow hacker group. Further, the company is also pushing for Google to surrender the IP addresses and identification of anyone that has re-posted the jailbreak info online or even viewed or commented on the PS3 hack video on YouTube.

Oddly enough, Sony is already well acquainted with one person that unwittingly helped to spread the PS3 root key -- actor Jerry Lambert, aka Kevin Butler, PS3 PR man and "VP of Gamer Inspiration." (Or, at least the person who manages the official Kevin Butler twitter account.)

As Engadget reports, Linux and Mac enthusiast Travis La Marr tweeted the PS3 root key code at Butler with the message "come at me @TheKevinButler." That one tweet in the sea of tweets on Butler's Twitter account likely would have gone unnoticed if the person who manages TheKevinButler didn't respond to the message with a tweet of his own, re-tweeting the root key code to the account's nearly 70,000 followers with the response, "Lemme guess... You sank my Battleship?"

Sony has since removed the tweets and likely added Travis La Marr to its lengthy list of people to sue.

So what's next for Hotz et al? First, Hotz is scheduled to appear in court today to argue against turning over his hardware tomorrow (hardware that likely holds the keys to tracking down the FailOverflow members immediately). Next, Sony is seeking unspecified damages against Hotz, claiming the hacks have and will continue to eat into game sales for the 41 million PlayStation 3 units sold. Judge Illston has yet to specify a date for for the damages hearing

Sony's Case Against PS3 Hackers
Kevin Butler Message to Hotz
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