A lawsuit has been filed against Sony for its removal of the “Other OS” feature in a recent PS3 firmware patch.
The class action lawsuit, of course filed by an American, alleges Sony advertised the Other OS capability as “an important PS3 feature,” and quotes Sony marketing hype as evidence of this.
The plaintiff claims he bought his PS3 in 2007 largely as a result of this Other OS functionality, and that the recent 3.21 firmware disables this functionality, constituting “breach of contract,” “breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” “unjust enrichment,” and violations of California consumer protection laws.
The scope of the suit is broad – all US PS3 owners who bought their units between 2006 and 2010 and did not resell their consoles – and damages sought are predictably huge: all “unjustly retained” profits and a full or partial refund for all buyers affected.
The only indication so far of how much is sought is the “in excess of $5,000,000” stated in court documents.
The lawsuit probably hinges on whether courts accept that Sony’s firmware update is a voluntary process with no impact on previously released consoles (and one which is covered by the EULA users must agree to), as Sony is likely to insist, or whether Sony has indeed established “a vast and sticky web of restrictions” which “downgrade” users sticking with older firmware, as the lawsuit claims.
The consequences of the suit could be significant (not least for Sony’s already weak financial position) – on the one hand consumers are rightly dubious of companies unilaterally withdrawing advertised functionality after product release, and on the other hand manufacturers providing online services on computer-like devices are likely to consider rules preventing them from removing functionality a potentially huge liability.
So, for Academia, does this mean no more massive parallel processing using the cell procs and Linux?
Too bad…I was saving up for my second one……
it was removed because of geohots patch which re-routed the firmware check to a bogus site to allow people to play online without updating firmware
sony has since patched the bypass leaving non-updated consoles stuck offline
I hope the guy wins the lawsuit because there was absolutely no reason to disable the feature
you guys are all fucking retarded, of course they’re going to go for the money.
why the f♥♥k would anyone want a piece of s♥♥t OS on a bigger piece of s♥♥t console.
I hope they destroy sony.
(American writing here, IANAL)
The U.S. legal system has been shifting towards a dollar-amount-damages mentality, away from a make-the-injured-party-whole mentality.
I don’t know if that due to lawyers wanting more money (percentages of damages awarded), or other forces (insert description of your favorite conspiricy here).
I see two parts to this:
(1) “Making the injured parties whole” would consist of Sony creating a yet-newer firmware update which added back in the “OtherOS” feature;
(2) Punitive damages (“Bad corporation! BAD corporation! No biscuit for you!”) to encourage the corporation to quit taking actions which violate the rights of the consumers.
But that’s “logic and fairness”, and has little relationship with what goes on in, and comes out of, the legal system.
Just because a EULA has a paragraph stating, “CUSTOMER agrees to give SONY his/her firstborn son, who will then be fed to the lions, and also agrees to be shot in the head by SONY agents, at SONY’s sole discretion”, does NOT make it legal.
No, the U.S. legal system hasn’t been shifting towards dollar amounts. The JUDGES have been shifting towards that, there is still the right of the judges to require that something be fixed/repaired/returned to it’s previous condition if the manufacturer breaks something when it comes to computer equipment.
That is the only place where that applies however: computer equipment and nothing else.
NOTE: On the US PS3 blog site it said that the firmware 3.3 update was mandatory, thereby forfeiting their claim that firmware updates are optional.
The ppl behind the lawsuit might want to note that 😉
Yeah, they should. That blows away one of Sony’s arguments. Really, NONE of these updates should be mandatory in the slightest, and people with older versions of software should still be able to use the services that they paid for.