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Sony Agrees To Pay Millions To Gamers To Settle PS3 Linux Debacle (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After six years of litigation, Sony is now agreeing to pay the price for its 2010 firmware update that removed support for the Linux operating system in the PlayStation 3. Sony and lawyers representing as many as 10 million console owners reached the deal on Friday. Under the terms of the accord, (PDF) which has not been approved by a California federal judge yet, gamers are eligible to receive $55 if they used Linux on the console. The proposed settlement, which will be vetted by a judge next month, also provides $9 to each console owner that bought a PS3 based on Sony's claims about "Other OS" functionality. Under the plan, gamers eligible for a cash payment are "all persons in the United States who purchased a Fat PS3 model in the United States between November 1, 2006, and April 1, 2010." The accord did not say how much it would cost Sony, but the entertainment company is expected to pay out millions. On March 28, 2010, Sony announced that the update would "disable the 'Install Other OS' feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models." This feature, Sony claimed, would be removed "due to security concerns." Sony did not detail those "concerns," but the litigation alleged piracy was behind the decision. A gamer can get the $55, but they "must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality." To get the $9, PS3 owners must submit a claim, at the time they bought their console, they "knew about the Other OS, relied upon the Other OS functionality, and intended to use the Other OS functionality." Alternatively, a gamer "must attest that he or she lost value and/or desired functionality or was otherwise injured as a consequence of Firmware Update 3.21 issued on April 1, 2010," to get $9.
So, basically, the lawyers get a fee of millions, but they have made it so hard to actually register for the fifty-five dollar rebate that pretty much all the users will get: zero.
Horray for America.
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$55 is a pathetic recompense for losing the ability to rip one's own SACDs.
Everyone gets 1 dollar, whoopie!!!!
I doubt there were millions of Linux users, and because it's a fairly trivial fine no one in the Sony management hierarchy will feel the slightest pinch of.
But for all their supposed personhood, can't throw a corporation in jail for fraud, so why not one or group of executives who okayed messing with people's private property? Might actually send a message for once that white collar crime doesn't pay.
How many people were effected by this or even cared about putting linux on what is nothing more then a massively underpowered PC?
Installing YDL 6.1 on my PS3 was my first Linux experience. I ran it over composite RCA to my TV so it wasn't much to look at, but it was step one in me becoming a computer guy.
I latter put YDL 6.2 on it and that had a much easier install, as I recall.
I went without upgrading to the OtherOS firmware for a year or so, but eventually some game I wanted to play required a newer firmware so I bit the bullet and installed it. I manually removed the Linux partition before the upgrade so I can't confirm whether the tales of the system not reclaiming the Linux partition if upgraded with it still in place were true.
Still have my PS3, only replaced the original 60GB HDD a few months ago. Didn't realize at the time I bought it in January 2007 I would be getting the most capable version of the hardware... early adoption went well for once. Only real downside compared to the newer models is how loud the cooling fans are.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I'll bet Sony wish they had stuck with Linux. What with M$'s major missteps on Windows huge invasion of privacy, a Sony playstation computer with Linux running for all you other needs, Libre Office et al, would have quite a good marketing advantage but of course the morons got stuck on the idea of how to charge console licence fees for free open source software, so went full blown greed driven stupidity and killed the idea. They could have actually sold playstations for a profit and eased up on licence fees, to gain a major marketing advantage over Xbone (discount games). The civil suit is kind of salt in the wound over the chance they lost.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Get all PS3 owners to Object to the settlement and demand the remedy of Specific Performance. Sony will be ordered by the court to restore 100% of the OtherOS functionality present before the update, which we paid for.
How would you go about proving that you installed linux on a console 6 years ago?
what will the us air force get for there settlement?
Considering all of the money that Sony's paid out to lawyers over the years fighting this plus the amount they'll end up paying out to the customers if they're going to end up worse off than they would have if they'd settled before this even came to trial. Maybe, if the total costs of the case are high enough, Sony's stockholders may decide to vote out the current management on the grounds of their failing to protect the company's assets. One can only hope.
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They represented me in the VW lawsuit, and I didn't collect a penny. They made millions.
I live in the Capitol Park apartments, and they made millions, and we got nothing. I wasn't even able to get the fees paid back when my car was towed twice from my parking place.
Pretty sure this mid-sized fiasco wasn't mentioned at the Sony shareholders meeting on the 17th. Unfortunately, my Japanese isn't that good, so I could have missed it, and I've already discarded the documents.
Only memorable thing at this year's meeting was the late start. Some old fellow charged the stage and got in a shouting match with the CEO for several minutes before they could persuade him to leave. Not sure, but he might have been the same crackpot who was blocked about 5 rows back two or three years ago. I was seated on that side, but around the 12th row that year. In between, there were two minor ruckuses (ruckii?) at the meeting last year, but this year the overall tone of the shareholders seemed to be much more placid, if not downright bucolic.
Actually, one more thing comes to mind. Seemed rather more intensely Japanese this year than in some past years. Still no gift for attending, but they did bring back the exhibition of new products.
(I attended the NEC shareholders' meeting yesterday, and that one was seriously forgettable. Used to be that all of them were on the same day...)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Provided you fill out this form with your personal info to be put in our insecure database, but isn't 9$ worth it?
June 21st was the day Amazon calculated how much of an eBook credit you get for Kindle books, paid for by Apple as part of the settlement...
The fact that Apple has to specifically provide credit for Kindle books brings the tragic nature of that trial to a whole other level. Apple was basically trying to prevent a Kindle monopoly, now required by government to re-enforce it...
My sadness over the result doesn't mean I won't use the credit though! Free books!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
which is nothing. We've recently had even this taken away from us. Corps can now force us into arbitration. Want it to stop? Start voting for economically left wing candidates. Corps will always use gov't to their advantage. They're run by the ruling class, and the ruling class has _always_ made good use of the gov't. Either you band together with your fellow 99% and get a piece of that action or you get bowled over.
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All three people will be ecstatic!
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Sony seems incapable of intelligent business decisions or showing any commitment to customers.
The OtherOS is just the latest in a long line of disappointing behavior on the part of Sony. Others include Sony XCP music CDs designed to crash Windows for Sony customers. Or Sony's commitment to the PlayStation 3 having PS2 emulation as being a "key component" of the system. Later they decided to save about $20 in parts for revised PS3 systems by leaving out PS2 emulation.
But in terms of OtherOS, it was going to show the Cell Processor as a platform that goes far beyond gaming. IBM was going to provide cell processor blades for data centers. Sony and Toshiba was going to have other non-game related Cell Processor products. Sony was going to usher in a new era in computing and it was going to be cell. The removing of OtherOS seem to be a major acknowledgement that Sony's hyper about Cell being the future was really just flat out hype.
In terms of removal of OtherOS for security reasons, PS3 was a series of jokes when it came to offering security and anti-piracy. A talk given at a Chaos Communication Congress by the title of PS3 Epic Fail goes over just every which way Sony could have failed was yet another way that Sony did fail.
One of the best slides is 39 minutes into the video where after explaining for ECDSA crypto to work, the value of "m" must *ALWAYS* be random. Then they give Sony's code for deciding a random number for "m" as:
"Sony's ECDSA code: int getRandomNumber() { return 4; } // chosen by fair dice roll. guaranteed to be random"
Instead of acknowledging the PS3 security system was fundamentally flawed, they just stripped out OtherOS and sued George Hotz. Neither of these actions really fixed the real issue of Sony's incompetence. Instead it seem to only serve as method of distracting game publishers from demanding a well designed security system to protect games.
Lastly, for the court to decide OtherOS amounts to a worth of $64 for a $800 console which amounts to only 8% is a major slap in the face to anyone that really bought into the "cell is the future" hype. People that bought the PS3 to really get into using the cell for non-gaming should be entitled to the full $800 back for getting stabbed in the back by Sony.
I love this.
When an individual is sued by a multi-million dollar conglomerate of sorts (Music / Movie / Software industries), they demand hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When it's the other way around: "Here's $55... we're all good?"
So about 5 people actually used it, and then realised that hey they have a PC for that.
Now lawyers get millions because they dropped the feature and a judge allowed some weird convoluted process that essentially lets people just get a rebate by an 'honesty; box method.
And then we get slashdot, home of the fan boy raging masses of Microsoft and Sony people, has a bucketload of people yelling and screaming about the indignity of the butthurt they have felt.
Land of the free, and home of the butthurt morons.
But, that being said, Loretta Lynch the Attorney General has already stated that she'll indict HRC if the FBI recommends it and the FBI is headed by Comey who was once number 2 under Ashcroft during the Bush administration. So, you better believe they're going to recommend an indictment if the evidence is there to support the recommendation.
But will they, really? The RNC prefers Hillary over Trump, why would they give the presidency to Sanders, who goes against their corporatist principles?
Jill Stein daukan babbar baki zakaru har ta dubura. Ta wani datti tsõhuwa.
When OtherOS support was removed, a lot of people who were using it for Linux suddenly had an incentive to break open the copy protection in order to run their own code.
I suspect if Sony had not removed OtherOS then the number of people interested in cracking the copy protection would have been limited only to those looking to pirate games and it would have taken a lot longer before piracy became an issue.
I bet that 31 cents is going to good use.
But seriously, how does no one see that there is a vendetta against Sony on this site and in much of the west in general?
They're a good company that has made quality innovative products and they are being teared apart for no reaosn.
I'm amazed this is still somehow relevant. I mean, I understand they removed a feature that was a part of the product and a reason some people bought it and stuff, but why would anyone care anymore when you can just buy a raspberry pi or whatever for 30 bucks and have Linux running on it no problem? Or just buy a computer on craigslist for 10 bucks and use that? What a worthless lawsuit that was. I wish people sued Sony for removing PS2 backwards compatibility from later PS3 models, rather than over this gimmick, useless feature only 2% of people used to any extent other than to experience the novelty of linux on a console.
How about restoring the original Other OS feature in a firmware update? How hard is that? I'd take that over $9.
When cell came out, I was enthralled by using it for certain GPU-like computations where it would have been pretty much ideal for my purposes. But the more I looked into the security architecture, the more my gut twisted in dismay, so I never ended up buying one.
When corporations retain these broad powers (most appliances, almost all cloud services) it's almost invariably exercised to make you less happy at some point down the road.
If I could go back in time to offer my younger self some sage advice, it would include this:
Enjoy a game or two when the stars align, but never make a hardware/software decision based on any consideration of game support whatsoever. It's a toxic leash in every direction. Nine of out ten media/entertainment companies are rotten to the core. There is no happy medium. Do not make multi-boot bargains with devil or other "clever" concessions.
Circa 1996 I bought myself an awesome new Pentium Pro system, stuffed with RAM, and a disk drive almost bigger than the OS. Wow! By the standards of the time, it felt like going from a flip phone to an iPhone. The P6 got a bad rap because Win 95 was a POS, but the truth is that the P6 was the first workstation-class CPU Intel made, and it really kicked ass in NT4 or Linux.
However, Linux device support was spotty, getting a graphical desktop set up could degenerate into a multi-day task, and it was far from obvious when or if Linux would achieve world domination.
Plus NT4 could play Quake out of the box. Case closed. Stupid, stupid, stupid younger self! So now I've placed myself in the losing camp, and it took me five years to fully extract myself.
That gut twist I felt over the Cell security model that spared me from participating in this particular Sony shit-show? Paid for in full.
Do mod chips cost more than $55? Maybe $9 for soldering.
0.5 u in Florida
1.78 u in Massachusetts.
OK?
Only those games that require a minimum firmware include an update on disc.
Is the minimum system software version for each PlayStation 3 game conspicuously labeled on its box?
acquire a second PS3
One can't "acquire a second PS3" for $55.
It will also require confirmation not once...but TWICE before it will perform the update removing OtherOS functionality.
As I understand it, it doesn't ask the console's owner twice. It asks the person sitting in front of the console twice. There's a difference. I remember reading sob stories in Slashdot comments of lost data due to someone else in the household accepting confirmation twice, unaware of the effect that it would have on other users of the same console. Or are multi-person households the edge case?