In an earlier post, Blake surmised that the class-action lawsuit against Sony will either end up in a settlement or find some blurb in their EULA contract to claim they are not responsible. The sentences underlined and boxed above are those exact blurbs. And would look at that? Updated April 2011. How convenient.
Now, before you raise your hands in disgust, these kind of blanket clauses are found everywhere and the usual defense is to claim negligence; that is, Sony made it too easy for its system to be hacked and did not inform its users early enough about the breach, and thus the lines above are null and void. Of course, there needs to be evidence of this, which will likely involve testimony from security experts on the issue.
All of this fighting, though, will happen behind closed doors and out of the public eye, which will just make the public eye more furious about the situation. Of the two possibilities, Sony is almost guaranteed to settle and give some form of compensation to its users – they've practically admitted their wrongdoing, so having to go through months, if not years, of legal battles and bad press probably isn't a good idea.
But who knows? A security breach of this magnitude has never been seen before. Even the F.B.I. is on the case now. What's next? Sony pulls out of E3? Ha, ha. Ha. ha…….
