Sony Sued for Not Allowing us to Sue

Sony have been taken to court for not allowing users to sue them if the PlayStation Network is compromised again in the future. The argument has stemmed from what users experienced earlier in the year when the Network went down for two months. This is known as a Class Action Lawsuit and has been filed in the USA.

What this means is that Sony have been challenged on the legality of the terms and conditions of the PSN user agreement which states: “Any dispute resolution proceedings, whether in arbitration or court will be conducted on an individual basis and not in a class or representative action or as a named or unnamed member in a class, consolidated, representative or private attorney general legal action, unless both you and the Sony entity with which you have a dispute specifically agree to do so in writing following initiation of the arbitration.”

In English this means if the PSN becomes unavailable to a mass number of players they cannot be sued unless both parties agree in writing to do so. They will look at a case by case scenario though. Sony have also stated that users can opt out of this clause by writing to them.

Companies such as Microsoft are closely following the case as they have included a number of clauses in their products to protect themselves.

It is worth noting that legal proceedings are still underway against Sony for the breach of data in April when millions of users had their account information stolen along with a number of encrypted credit card information.

Source: BBC