It's been a while since I've read about it, and I'm not a lawyer, but my recollection is that geohot said he deliberately kept his PS3 offline once it was compromised, and Sony's counterargument was (in effect, via some truly mind-bending equivocation) that geohot compromised the PS3 (the abstract computer for which authorization presumably proceeds from Sony) as opposed to his PS3 (the specific computer for which authorization presumably proceeds from geohot). Since the PS3 interacts with PSN, geohot had thereby gained unauthorized access to a computer used in interstate and foreign commerce.

It's one of those arguments for which I have a hard time deciding whether it's fiendishly clever, gratuitously obfuscated, or jaw-droppingly stupid.