The 2011 hack of PlayStation Network that brought the online service to its knees and led to a failure on Sony’s part to protect the personal information of its customers is the centre of the news again today. Following the PSN outage, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Sony by some of those affected.
However, today we’re learning that all charges against Sony have been dropped by US Judge Antony Battaglia.
Battaglia has said that “Because none of the named plaintiffs subscribed to premium PSN services, and thus received the PSN services free of cost.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit itself states that it was hackers that stole the information and doesn’t claim that Sony was involved.
“Plaintiffs freely admit, plaintiffs’ personal information was stolen as a result of a criminal intrusion of Sony’s Network,” Battaglia says, “Plaintiffs do not allege that Sony was in any way involved with the Data Breach.”
Then, of course, there’s the issue of the end-user agreement that most be accepted before you’re given access to PSN. The agreement informs and warns that errors of this kind may happen and that the security of PSN is not perfect–essentially, use PSN at your own risk.
Right decision? Wrong decision? Has justice been done?
