Sony's new plan to avoid class action lawsuits

[owsf2000]

These kinds of things are driving me away from the gaming industry altogether. I will still be getting a PS3, but this pretty much tells you why I will never be hooking it up to the internet.

Seriously, things like that should automatically void a terms-of-service. Although apparently the supreme court of the US has already judged that it can be enforced in the US at the very least. I suspect Sony will still be receiving class actions in europe, etc.

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in my particular case with TS2, I made sure to scan them all before using them, and they came up clean (or at least didn't have anything the various virus/malware scanners I used could detect anyway). I don't say it's a good thing to have to do it that way, because it's obviously not. I'd rather get whatever shit I need from an official source, but if that official source is too stupid/lazy/greedy to continue providing them, the only other alternative is to do without altogether (see previous comment re: console games). But I'd rather have the patches than not have them if I can still get them somewhere, and if Joe Randomdude on the Internet is willing to provide them when the original company isn't (and he isn't being a douchenozzle by pumping them full of malware), then more power to him. But yeah, the fact that EA itself no longer provides the patches is the height of shitty behavior, as far as supporting one's products and customers is concerned. Same with any and all other companies (at least those that still exist anyway) who don't support their shit anymore, even if it's just to provide a simple download location for old patches and shit at the very least. I don't personally care so much about the store closing down, since I never used it, but I still think it's incredibly asinine for them to not provide a place for the people who did use it to still be able to download the shit they bought, even if they can no longer buy any new shit.

As for abandonware, I definitely agree with you in that the law sees things in black and white. No surprise there. But then, the law sees a lot of things in purely black and white with no mitigating circumstances in between, at least when it comes to issues of copyright and such. This is due in no small part to the copyright holders themselves (or their lobbyists, anyway) being the ones who are drafting a lot of such laws these days, so of course they're not going to allow any wiggle room for things like abandonware or whatever. I'm sure you'll agree that's part of the problem as well. The main reason I'd personally say it was a "gray area" is when comparing it to the dickweeds who torrent new shit with no qualms whatsoever, regardless of their supposed justifications to do so. Compared to those assholes, the ones who download mere abandonware are far less deserving of being vilified in my eyes, at least if there is literally no other legit way to get the game in question. If however, a legit way to buy it becomes available, such as if it shows up on GOG at some point, for example, or, in the case of console games, on Wii VC/XBLA/PSN/etc., then my sympathy for them once again drops to zero.