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Playstation Network Gets Revised, More Restrictive ToS
LordDax writes "Sony just rolled out their new Terms of Service for the Playstation Network. The new ToS features additions about the Master & Subaccount relationship, specifically that you can only 'legally' create a sub account for your own child. No friends allowed. Where it really gets interesting is when you get to the additions to section 3.0 Community Code of Conduct. You now can't tell anyone your real name, where you live or basically anything besides your PSN ID. The new ToS also brings to light that SCEA is going to be monitoring every piece of communication and activitiy, and reserves the right to remove any content or communication they find objectionable without having to tell you in interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors. Another addition is: 'Some content may be provided automatically without notice when you sign into PSN. Such content may include automatic updates or upgrades which may change your current operating system, cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities.'"
Automatically force an update on me? Sounds a bit intrusive to me. Why should I have to update if the firmware I have now plays my games just fine? Also.. read my messages, and delete any they deem inappropriate? Yeah this sounds like a great plan.
Further, I'm actually glad for them to make explicit a policy of wanting to remove abusive griefers. Lately I've stopped playing PSN games online with non-friends simply because I keep on running into asshats with Bluetooth headsets and too much time on their hands, which make the whole experience horrible. By giving possible consequences for peoples' actions, it makes it possible that people might actually, you know, not be complete dipshits.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
I got a feeling, somebody's watching me...
"Victory can be anticipated, but not assured" - Sun Tzu
Lack of PS3 sales leave Sony executives baffled!
the "not able to let a friend make a sub account" thing looks silly at first, but keep in mind digital ip rights. if they say that, and if you lose your cloudsong to your best bud who made a sub account and xfered it over, they're not (or less) legally responsible to help retrieve/recover the item. also keep in mind sub accounts possibly share account data. maybe, i dunno, i didn't rtfa tbh.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
Well, Sony is just telling us that it's *their network*, and they can do whatever the hell they want with it. It's a closed network. Is anyone surprised?
Naturally, no company in their right mind would create a closed network without asserting control over it. After all, whatever happens on the network, they'll likely held responsible for it to some degree. They're a big company with deep pockets, so they cover themselves like this.
The whole notion of users not broadcasting their real name - well, that's a pretty good idea in general, right? But by codifying it into the terms of service, they protect themselves when some idiot smack-talking kid actually gets the crap beat out of him when someone learns his real name and home address. Or is the target of a scam. Or any number of a thousand bad things that can happen if you aren't careful with your identity online.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Oh no! We'll have to resort to using local multiplayer and actually socializing with REAL people! Clearly such a platform would never succeed.
Seriously though, the hell are you even ranting about? Where is DRM even presenting a problem here? I'm fairly certain my PS3 doesn't have net access from time to time, yet everything I've downloaded from the PSN still works great. The only thing even remotely related to DRM in this change is the ability for them to push and kill content without the end-users direct approval (Which, I see there being some minor problems arising out of this, but honestly -- aside from force-killing homebrew hacks, what's the worst that could happen [heh]?).
I think what you're trying to be upset about is the whole net-nanny crap they're introducing. I don't agree with it either, but I also understand how many idiots have PS3s and how many of them are likely to do something stupid which somehow results in someone trying to sue Sony for a ridiculous amount of money. Care to take a wild guess what happens after that?
I get it, everyone hates Sony because they're ZOMG SPYING ON THE INTERNETS THROUGH THE PS3. Whatever. If they want to take extra measures to make sure two trash-talking jackasses don't end up killing each other, fine by me -- so long as I can still smoke you fools in some Wipeout HD.
Wow. At night, do you see racists under your bed and in your closet?
Just wait until the PS3 is no longer popular and Sony shuts down the netplay servers. Wow... nobody'll then be able to play along or against each other. DRM at its finest.
This is not going to happen any time soon. But, let's say the day comes when PSN is shut down due to lack of popularity...
Who is going to care? It's no longer popular. Presumably that means everyone has moved on to whatever the new, popular gaming network is.
PSN works just fine. The DRM employed by Sony on the PS3 (as well as that on the Xbox 360 and the Wii) is not onerous.
Does this mean my PSN account will get banned if I quote the Quran?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Once, a long, long time ago I liked Sony. That time is past.
Why do they think they can do this to their customers? Unfortunately, they think they can do this to their customers because too many of us have kept coming back for more. When they would not honor their warranty on my laptop a few years back, I finally had enough. I have not regretted my decision one bit. Life is better without Sony.
A/S/L?
I got this horribly long mail about this, and thought: fuck it, if this is bad, it'll be on slashdot. thanks as always slashdot.
Do we sit and whine about our rights, complain about big brother spying on us or what?
I don't know, I realise some of these things are 'bad' in their TOS but really as has been stated, it's THEIR network and it's very very likely this is to cover their ass from litigation and kids being on the system.
I think you'll find it's unlikely that 2 conscenting (sp?) adults will be banned or in any real kind of trouble if they strike up a genuine friendship and swap names on the system, this is purely due to our modern, over litigous (sp?) society unfortunately
Disclaimer: I own a PS3 and hell yes, I do like it.
"'Some content may be provided automatically without notice when you sign into PSN. Such content may include automatic updates or upgrades which may change your current operating system, cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities.'"
Plus this allows adverts to be sent to your console and it allows them to change the console OS to allow more adverts.
"The new ToS features additions about the Master & Subaccount relationship, specifically that you can only 'legally' create a sub account for your own child. No friends allowed."
Which fits with the idea of marketing. If they can know only family members are on the account, then any profiling of that user allows more specific marketing and better, cleaner profiling data to sell to other market research companies.
"SCEA is going to be monitoring every piece of communication and activitiy"
i.e. allows them to do any amount of marketing profiling they wish and to sell that data to whoever they wish.
Sony have tried some very intrusive marketing methods in the past. In London, one council took Sony to court for their relentless fly posters on everything. Sony made it look like it was just individuals putting posters on a few things, but it wasn't. It was organised advertising and they were the biggest advertiser by far.
My point is, Sony have little eithics when it comes to advertising. Now they see adverts in games as their new advertising market. They can put adverts in free games, but there is no way I want adverts in games I buy. I want to excape the relentless sales tactics, in a form of entertainment I choose to buy and I don't choose to buy adverts for other things, when its the game I want to focus on. So if they want to bombard me with adverts, no thanks Sony, you'll end up undermining your own market.
I'm just wondering if I can count myself as family, as I created a subaccount for myself because I wanted a better account name. I didn't realise that the account name would be my online name in all of my games, I was used to just being able to call myself anything I want in PC games. Often people have their full name in their account name anyway.
The thing I have the biggest problem with in all of this is messages just disappearing without notification. That's something that's happened occasionally on MSN messenger, and I've only found out months later by comparing history messages with the other person :/ I can understand censorship 'for the children', or really moany bastards who don't like swearing, or whatever their excuse is, but it really would only work if you're told that a message has not been sent because it contains inappropriate material. I don't see how they're going to stop everyone from giving out their name or location though - they could easily just say it on VoIP channels or slightly mispell it in a message.
which is totally what she said
I've read a lot of agreements where the company in question did their best to get as favorable terms as possible when it comes to things like warranty and possible lawsuits. Read the typical Microsoft EULA for an example of this.
But the "COMMUNITY CODE OF CONDUCT" goes far beyond the typical asshattery of such EULAS. Sony reserve the right to censor your communications, and I suspect some rules, like ..."
"You may not use, make, or distribute unauthorized software or hardware in conjunction with PSN, or take or use any data from PSN to design, develop or update unauthorized software or hardware,
might even be illegal as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade.
Section 11 "MAINTENANCE AND UPGRADES", finally, goes beyond protecting the network and allows Sony to change data on your PS3. They also claim they are not liable for damage in the case of a botched upgrade.
It seems Sony executives have not learned anything from the rootkit affair (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit).
C - the footgun of programming languages
WHAT!? I cant tell strangers where I live anymore!? Well damn, there go my Friday nights!
Wasn't this "no identifiable information" crap the reason Nintendo added the reviled friend codes?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Yeah sure, what they do with the network is fine. But control over a network and control over a device are two different things! If they modify pieces of data that pass through them, I guess it's their right as we are using them as a conduit and they say there is no guarantee that it should behave in a way we expect it to, it's their property and they set it up to behave the way they want. However if they're sending us data that modifies our device without consent, no, that's not their right. It's my property. Our device can behave however we want it to and choose to modify it. They can block it at the server or alter data in their own server that we choose to send to them. But they cannot just take over our devices and change things around and delete shit and alter functionality.
Twinstiq, game news
I think the people who use SecureROM and other fantastic DRM would disagree with you, and as for me, I'd rather have a hatchet to the eyeball than use a Windows OS again...
:) Most online services blow dead bears anyway... because there's a contingent of morons who spend their days attempting to be as obnoxious as possible because they think it's "funny"... It was "funny" when we all were 11... but then we grew up. Well, most of us.
I remember when Battle.Net became a haven for morons... and that was YEARS ago... But it was free, people said.. Yeah... at least I didn't have to HEAR them.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
While I do love to use pad my folding@home stats on the PS3, I would never seriously consider it for online gaming... Sony is too big brotherish...
Actually it just boosts my F@H stats mostly these days rather than gets used for anything else... and it plays blue-ray DVDs occasionally...
If I am going to shell out $60 for a PS3 game, I'll just spend much less cash for a better game and online experience with my Steam account and use my superior GTX 280 video card in my PC.
I know that not everyone has a gaming PC (I sympathize, I was once a very poor ramen-eating college student), but once you have a well-built fast gaming PC, you will laugh at your past days wasted as a console player realizing what you were missing all the resolution and speed. Now add freedom to the list that is missing using consoles like the PS3.
Unless it is a true peer to peer gameplay without a central controlling server, but rather for a hosting server (similar to how UT2k4 servers operate), I am not really interested.
There is something liberating about telling people stuff about myself *or choosing not to do so*! It is called discretion, and is it what anyone playing games online should understand. There are weirdos in the world, some of them game. DUH!
Where does the Sony slippery slope end?
Not being able to go to certain web sites like Facebook and MySpace with the PS3 included browser (because you might enter some personal information?)
LOL Sony, please buy and vowel and spell out a clue!