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Aussie Gamer Loses PS3 Court Case Over 'Other OS'
dotarray writes "An Australian man who took Sony to court over the company's decision to remove Linux functionality from the PS3 console has now lost his claim, with the court clearing the manufacturer of any wrongdoing regarding the upgrade."
It's not quite as simple as that for a number of reasons:
1. A number of countries have a system for dealing with claims with a low monetary value (which this would almost certainly fall under) and generally speaking this system is set up to make it practical for you or I to sue a huge company by limiting the amount of costs (and, for that matter, messing around) either party can incur.
2. "How could any court not view this as false advertising?" : Good question. IANAL, but I can think of three things: I seriously doubt many people genuinely used their PS3 for Linux - and Sony could easily dig up numbers to support that, the fact that the feature was removed in the update was well known and in the release notes and the update may well have shipped with a "regardless of what this does to your console, you can't sue us" disclaimer.
I would add that IMV the only thing worse than Sony doing this is that I haven't yet heard of a single legal case where the judge(s) involved seem to be taking it particularly seriously. I really don't like the idea of living in a world where a manufacturer can release a product with features X, Y and Z only to remove Z - even from items already sold - at a later date. Could be particularly interesting here in the UK where no matter what the manufacturer does, it's the retailer who's on the legal hook if they sell you something which doesn't perform as advertised.
Forum post from the guy involved. Scroll up for some more info.
There's a forum linked elsewhere - in essence, Sony's argument was "you can't sue us, the EULA says so" and the judge agreed.
I know you're trolling but let me explain why the UK does what it does.
The Sale of Goods act (1953) was brought into being to protect the consumer from shops palming off problems to the manufacturer. Your equipment is faulty? Send it back to the manufacturer. The book you bought has pages missing? Phone up the publisher to get it replaced. With this act the retailer is obliged to offer a replacement to the purchaser and it becomes the retailer's responsibility to get a replacement from the manufacturer. No flux capacitor required.