Slashdot Mirror
Sony Sued Over PSN 'No Suing' Provision
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Examiner:
"In a grand dose of irony today, Sony was sued over a term in the PlayStation Network's End User Agreement that states that users cannot sue Sony. These terms were added in September, after a long string of Sony hacks (the official count is that Sony got broken into 17 times in a space of about 2 months), which included a massive outage of the PlayStation Network itself. The suit that was filed today is a class action suit for all of those who bought a PS3 and signed up for the PSN before the September update to the EULA. The suit also claims that this is a unfair Business practice on Sony's part, and requires users to forgo their rights in order to use the device that they purchased."
A EULA, like any other contract, is only enforceable if it's provisions don't break the law. A company can put whatever they want into them, but that doesn't mean it has legal standing. Companies don't get to arbitrarily make laws. They could add a provision that you'll give them your first born son, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't stand if challenged in court.
Wrong--in the case of a free software license, the user agreeing to the license is the developer who uses the code.
Which is why he said no EULA is required to use free software. I can take linux and use it all i want, modify it, re-compile, not release my changes, remove all copyright and legal notices, etc... and that's fine. It's only if I want to distribute it that the license terms will have to be considered.
In California no clause is valid that restricts your rights to sue.
Ask IBM about this. In the early 2000's they went through and laid off a large group of workers. Many of the employees felt they unfairly were fired or forced to retire early. Many of these people had families and no other source of income. IBM offered severances to these employees but required them each to sign a waiver signing away their rights to sue the company.
Some of these employees had no choice and signed the agreement and took the meager pittance offered by IBM.
Now for the fun part, someone figured out that in California the law protects people from having their rights revoked. Those same employees joined together and sued IBM. The case lasted a couple of years. IBM even petitioned for dismissal on the grounds the former disgruntled employees signed waivers and received concessions (far below what that deserved). The California courts rejected IBM's petition and ordered them to pay up to a much higher level for all former employees. Those that had received the lower payouts received the difference.
What Sony is trying to do would be non-binding in California.
In this specific case Sony also allowed you to opt-out from that specific provision and still accept the rest and use PSN, you only had to give them written notice about it. So if you want to bash Sony, it would be good to at least stay in truth.
You obviously didn't read it carefully, as if you send this in, your PSN account is immediately closed and you forfeit any money you have in your PSN wallet.