Should You Consider the New PSN User Agreement Before Just Clicking Yes?

When you come across a user agreement, do you read the entire agreement or scroll down the agreement, click “I agree” and move right on to your music, video game or website without a second thought? I think that’s what most people tend to do. Who has the time to read through every single user agreement that you encounter? Well, if you are a Sony user and you come across the updated agreement that they are releasing, you may want to take a second to read over it.

The Sony PlayStation Network updated its terms of service on September 15. The update was intended to ban class-action lawsuits against Sony.

"Any dispute resolution proceedings, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative action or as a named or unnamed member in a class, consolidated, representative, or private attorney general action unless you and [Sony] agree to do so in writing," states the updated terms.

Users have the ability to opt out of these new terms of service if they wish to, but they must do so in writing within 30 days of the day that they accepted the agreement. Users that wish to opt out of the agreement must send in their name, address, PSN account number, and a statement that clearly lets Sony know that they do not wish to resolve any issues with Sony via arbitration. All of this information must be sent to 6080 Center Dr., 10th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

Some Sony users will not even realize that they are clicking away their right to a class-action suit. Maybe some users don’t care, but it is definitely something that PSN users should be aware of.

According to TechDirt, these agreements where users agree to not sue a company are pretty darn common, but the blog says that “it is debatable how enforceable some of these clauses are.” The blog goes on to say that “the terms also bar participating in class action lawsuits, which seems much more questionable.”

"Where Sony gets ridiculous is in claiming that this change 'is designed to benefit both the consumer and the company by ensuring that there is adequate time and procedures to resolve disputes.' That makes me think of a two syllable word whose first four letters are bull," TechDirt wrote. "Come on. At this point, everyone knows that binding arbitration between a company and a consumer wildly favors companies."

Gamasutra, however, argued that the update "really seems to be more a case of the collective gaming public getting riled up over something that has little, if any, consequence for them."

These new terms are a result of several class-action suits that Sony is currently dealing with concerning the breach of the PlayStation Network earlier this year. In April there was a suit filed that claimed Sony failed to protect, encrypt and secure its customer information. The suit is looking for compensation for the data loss and the time that the PlayStation Network was down.

Lesson to be learned: before you just click okay on the next user agreement that you come across, it might be a good idea to at least scan the document and see what it is that you are agreeing to.

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Sony Exec Describes PlayStation Network Outage as "A Great Experience"

On Wednesday, July 13 Tim Schaaff, the president of Sony Network Entertainment, was discussing the PlayStation Network outage that lasted four weeks. During the chat, he proceeded to describe the outage as a “great experience.” Sound crazy to you? Well, here is his justification for the comment.

On Wednesday Schaaff sat down with the executive editor of VentureBeat Dylan Tweney for a chat at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco. They discussed a variety of things, but Tweney received surprising answers to his questions concerning how Sony has been able to recover from the outage of its Network.

"We're back online, everything's live again around the world, and the amazing thing through all of this is that the customers have all come back, and network performance is better than ever, sales are better than ever, and we've been very, very pleasantly surprised by the experience," Schaaff said. "And we're in a place where we're really looking forward again to what's next, what's new, and how we can keep growing the network. It's a pretty crazy event that we went through but we survived, and we're back strong, and ready to go."

During the discussion, Schaaff confirmed that more than 77 million PlayStation Network accounts were without service for a total of six weeks. He also said that the outage cost Sony close to $171 million plus the complete frustration of millions of Playstation Network customers.

"It's dramatic but the lesson we learned from this process is that there are some crazy things going on in the world right now, and in the beginning we were very concerned that we were the focal point for this attack, and it was all about Sony, and what was Sony doing," Schaaff said. “But over time, the company learned that a wide variety of sites had been hit, including government institutions and other companies.”

He went on to say that he believes that Sony has learned some valuable lessons from the outage.

"I think for people running network businesses, it's not just about improving your security, because I've never talked to a security expert who said, 'As long you do the following three things you'll be fine, because hackers won't get you…', the question is how do you build your life so you're able to cope with those things," Schaaff said.

He concluded saying, "It's been a great experience.”

Tweney seemed to be as confused as you and I most likely are about this statement. "A great experience?" he asked. "A great experience," Schaaff answered. "I would not like to do it again. One time was enough. Great learning experience."

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PlayStation Store Back Online

Sony announced on the evening of Wednesday, June 1st that the Sony PlayStation Store is back online! After being down for more than a month, this is big news for PlayStation owners.

According to a blog post, Sony promised that when the store got back online there would be a “huge lineup” of new downloadable games, demos, add-on content, themes, avatars and videos, and they have definitely followed through with their promises. Sony added full game trials, free games and DLC, free avatars and even more discounts.

"The PlayStation Store is back online,” said Sony, “and thank you, everyone, for your patience."

Now unfortunately, Sony’s promised “Welcome Back” package is not live yet. Last month, the company promised all of their users access to free games, movie rentals and virtual items. This was an attempt to make up for the fact that they were without service after the huge Sony PlayStation Network hack. On Wednesday Sony said that the offer "is currently in the final stages of testing and will be available to download soon; we'll be sure to let you know when."

On Thursday, June 2 Sony is releasing the next PlayStation Store and PlayStation Plus updates. Sony also said that they will be releasing some “special” releases right before the start of the E3 gaming conference in L.A.

For users who were PlayStation Plus subscribers, Sony says that they will receive access to full game trials of both “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2” and “Dante’s Inferno.” There will also be almost another dozen featured games and DLC that will be free for PlayStation Plus subscribers and range from $2.99 to $9.99 for all other PlayStation users. For a full list check out Sony’s blog.

Meanwhile, while Sony can celebrate that the PlayStation Store is back online, they still have to deal with discussing the hack with the U.S. Congress. The House Energy and Commerce Committee said on Wednesday that they will be conducting a “thorough review” of the data security and electronic privacy issues that Sony has encountered during this hack.

“In this digital age we must all remain vigilant against the dangers lurking online," said Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI). "Illegal hacking has become one of the fastest growing crimes worldwide. As cyber-attacks become more frequent, our first step must be to strengthen data security to ensure protection of information that consumers choose to have collected and stored. Only when basic data security is addressed can we move forward to address the more complex questions about individual privacy in the digital era."

Most of the criticism that Congress has about the Sony hack is the reaction that the company had. Many members of Congress questioned why Sony took so long to notify its customers about the hack, and of course, Sony defended itself and its actions.

"On Friday, April 22nd we notified PlayStation Network customers via a post on the PlayStation Blog that an intrusion had occurred," Tim Schaaff, president of Sony Network Entertainment International, said. "That blog, by the way, has been rated one of the top-twenty most influential on the Internet, right behind the White House's blog. It has a highly visible and deeply engaging relationship with our customers and is one of the best, fastest and most direct means of communicating with them."

He continued saying that if you issue "vague or speculative statements before you have specific and reliable information—you either confuse and panic people, without giving them useful facts, or you bombard them with so many announcements that they become background noise."

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Updates on the PlayStation Network

It’s been twenty days now since PlayStation has been down, and according to a report from Bloomberg, Sony’s PlayStation Network, as well as their Qriocity online service, could be down for a little while longer. Users will be without these services until at least May 31, but it could be even longer.

In an interview that was conducted by Bloomberg, Sony spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida said that the company is currently working to install an improved security system and will have its services fully operational by May 31.

The Sony PlayStation Network has been down since April 20, and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) went down on May 2. Sony hosted a press conference in Tokyo on April 30. There the company said that it planned to have everything running again within a week, but with the outages of its SOE services as well, they simply need more time.

"We won't restore the services until we can test the system's strength" when it comes to security of the network and the safety of users' data, Sony said in a blog post on Friday. "We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system."

The company also stated on Friday that they had found and removed a website that had posted more than 2,500 names and partial addresses of participants in one of their 2001 product sweepstakes. According to Sony, "the website was out-of-date and inactive when discovered as part of the continued attacks on Sony.” However, the only information listed on the website was names and bits and pieces of addresses. Sony says, “No one’s credit card, social security number, password or other personal information beyond name, partial mailing address and three unconfirmed e-mail addresses were on the list.

Last week, the chairman and chief executive at Sony Howard Stringer offered an apology to all users that were affected by the massive hack. "As a company we — and I — apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack," Stringer wrote in a blog post on Thursday night. "Under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai, we have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible."

He also offered all individuals involved a year of free credit monitoring and an ID theft policy. This is a precautionary measure, because it is possible that whoever hacked the network could have obtained credit card information from PlayStation Network users.

Analysts are saying that the hack that Sony has suffered could cost the company up to a $1 billion in damages.

Sony said in a letter that the company sent to Congress last week that they did not know who the hackers were yet; however, the letter went on to say that Sony had found some sort of evidence from the SOE server that the Web group Anonymous was involved in the hack. The group denies the accusations.

Who knows how long it will be before the PlayStation Network is back up. It definitely sounds like it won't be within the next week or so. I'm sure that Sony is doing everything that they can to get things up and running again, so hopefully gamers won't have to wait too much longer.

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No Timeline for PlayStation Network Restoration

So, if you have had any part of your ear in the gaming industry news recently or if you are a PS3 owner and avid online gamer on it, then you have undoubtedly noticed that the PlayStation Network, or PSN, is down and you will have also heard that the reason for that is because the entire service got hacked by one very crafty hacker.

The attack has left the PlayStation Network offline since May 2nd and also leaked millions of users' personal data. Sony Online Entertainment, or SOE, has yet to provide a clear timeline for exactly when the PlayStation Network will be restored to full working order. The PlayStation Network is supposed to be up, partially, sometime this week, however, SOE has only stated that services would be back up "soon".

Sony is notifying customers who may have been affected by the hack via email sent by a third-party distributor. Sony has stated that emails from SOE will contain either "soe.innovyx.net" or "soe.sony.com" in the sender field.

To go into more detail about the attack Sony has stated that the SOE incident was not a new attack but rather another similar attack that was discovered in the course of investigation into the PSN breach. SOE originally reported that no customer data whatsoever had been extracted in the attack but then, however, changed their story in a statement released on May 2nd.

SOE has stated that the hackers used sophisticated techniques in order to cover their tracks. SOE also stated that this was the reason that Sony did not initially know that SOE data was also stolen.

Both the PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment have announced "make good" gestures for their customers in the form of a month of some services to all members as well as additional free days for subscribers to make up the days lost while the company investigates the incident.

Sony Online Entertainment has also outlined a plan to compensate players utilizing its DC Universe Online game. In addition to 30 days of subscription credit and compensation for days the network is down, players will also be able to receive a Batman-inspired mask when the game is up and running again.

The seriousness of this attack speaks for itself and I do not think that Sony is doing enough in terms of compensation. The free 30-day subscription for DC Universe Online players is nice.....for DC Universe Online players, however, they seem to be the only ones getting anything worthwhile out of the deal. The PS3's online services may be free but I, for one, am more than willing to pay the $60 a year for Xbox Live, so stuff like this DOESN'T happen to me.

Source: The Washington Post - Sony details PlayStation Network attack, but no timeline for service restoration

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PS3 Gets Hulu Plus and NHL Updates

Sony announced Wednesday, November 10 that Hulu is now available from the PlayStation network to all of their PlayStation 3 users. They also said that PlayStation 3 will now support the new NHL GameCenter application that had been unavailable previously.

Before Wednesday, PlayStation 3 users needed a PlayStation Plus subscription to be able to access Hulu Plus content, but a PlayStation blog stated that this is no longer true. On Thursday, November 4 Hulu announced that their Hulu Plus subscription service was no longer invite-only. This means that anyone using the PlayStation Network can sign up and watch anything on Hulu Plus via their console. A subscription to Hulu Plus costs $9.99 per month. It provides full access to whole seasons of TV shows. If you don’t want to shell out a monthly fee, you can still enjoy free access to Hulu.com and all of the recent episodes of your favorite shows.

When Hulu Plus first came out in June, those who were interested in the service had to first be invited by the company before they could purchase a subscription. Director of product at Hulu Rob Wong said, “As we scale our infrastructure throughout the preview period, we want to open the service to a larger subscriber base.”

For PS3 users interested in Hulu Plus, users can download the app by visiting the PlayStation Store and ps3.com/hulu. Hulu Plus is also offered via other devices such as Sony’s Blu-ray players and Bravia TVs. Users are able to access Hulu via Internet connections on the Blu-ray players and TVs. As of right now Sony says that certain Bravia TVs are offering $20 towards a Hulu Plus trial so that customers can give it a try and see if they are interested in it. Hulu is also offered on the PC, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPhone 4, third generation iPods, and certain Samsung TVs.

On a side note, Hulu has just recently added some new TV shows to their Hulu Plus including: “Raising Hope,” “No Ordinary Family,” and “The Event.” They also have added past seasons of “Monk,” “Psych,” and “Battlestar Galactica.”

As of Wednesday PS3 users now also have access to the National Hockey League’s new GameCenter Live app. This allows users to instantly stream up to 40 different out of market NHL games each and every week. Users will also be able to access replay highlight moments and classic games.

If you have already purchased the $169 annual NHL GameCenter Live subscription, you can download the NHL app for PS3 for $9.99. If you have already subscribed to PlayStation Plus, you will be able to download the app for free. The app will be available to download under the video category on the XrossMediaBar.

This app is also available for users with the Boxee Box or Roku for free. The NHL has said, “Simply link your existing subscription to the NHL GameCenter LIVE app on either Roku or Boxee platforms, and you're ready to enjoy live and on-demand hockey action.” They also are promising that a version for the iPad will be available within a few weeks.

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New DLC for the New Year

We are drawing close to the end of the first month of the new year and already we have tons of downloadable content available to us for some of the hottest games out right now. For those of you (if there are any) who are unfamiliar with downloadable content, or DLC, its simple. DLC is anything created by a game developer that the player can download via Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network or the internet to further expand, enhance or enrich a certain game. Sometimes DLC is content originally intended to be in the game that, unfortunately, got cut before release or just something extra the developers wanted the gamer to have. Well some of the hottest games out right now are getting the DLC piled on so you can keep tearing through level after level as long as possible.

The first game up on the list is Borderlands. The FPS for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC has a slew of DLC either out or coming out which is sure to leave you stomping around Pandora for a few more hours. The first piece of DLC came in as The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. This addition to the game had players investigating a doctor in charge of keeping workers alive but instead turned them into zombies. The next piece of DLC for Borderlands comes to us in the form of Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot. This one wasn't so much extra missions as it was an arena fighting mode Gladiator style. Players do not earn experience by fighting in the arena but they can earn achievements and challenges. If those two aren't enough for you then you will be happy to hear that Gearbox has just confirmed its third piece of DLC entitled The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. This DLC promises to add in new enemies, like a giant mechsuit enemy as well as a giant spider thing. New weapons and items are also said to be included along with a huge new environment to explore and the promise of increasing the level cap above 50. No word about a release date has been said but I already want to sign up.

The next game toting some solid DLC comes in the form of Ubisoft's hit Assassin's Creed 2. The first piece of DLC for AC2 was released yesterday in the form of The Battle of Forli. Anybody who has beaten AC2 knows that, in the game, your memory strand jumps from memory 11 to memory 14 with strand 14 ending the game. The Battle of Forli DLC comes in as memory strand 12 and hopes to fill in some of the gaps in the story arc that may have left more than a few gamers scratching their heads. The Battle of Forli was originally supposed to be in the game but got cut as the final deadline grew closer. The DLC itself is said to add over an hour of extra gameplay and missions and even another glider mission for all of us who did not get enough time on DaVinci's flying machine. However, Ubisoft is not stopping there. The company plans to release another piece of DLC which will essentially be memory strand 13 so the plot flows and is complete. And if that isn't enough for you, another piece of DLC has been rumored that could feature a multiplayer mode for AC2 but there is no further word on either of these two just yet.

Probably the biggest game to launch since Modern Warfare 2, Mass effect 2 is toting its own slew of launch DLC. If you buy the game new, you will receive a voucher code to input that will give you access to the Cerberus Network an in-game store that allows you to purchase different things. In addition to that players will be able to download a new player to recruit to your team named Zaeed Massani. This DLC also adds new missions and items. Another piece of DLC is also planned that is said to feature new missions, weapons and a hovering tank known as the Hammerhead. Immediately available on release is the Normandy Crash Pack DLC which allows players to investigate the remains of the SSV Normandy SR-1, your characters ship from the first game. Bioware has also released word that another piece of DLC involving a human thief named Kasumi will be coming out at a later date. With the already extensive campaign along with all this extra DLC, I don't believe people will be putting down Mass Effect 2 any time soon.

This content just barely scratches the surface of all the DLC available. Games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are continuously releasing new track packs and survival horror game Resident Evil 5 has just added some new characters and costumes to the game's Mercenaries mode. There is definitely enough DLC out there to keep your games full and your pockets light so be sure and grab some of this content, especially the free stuff, before its too late. All DLC is available through the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for the 360, the PlayStation Network for the PS3 and Steam for the PC.

Source: G4TV

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