Originally posted by bansan

Originally posted by Unlight
*snip*

You are mixing personal opinion with legal opinion.  To have standing to sue someone, you have to prove that you were damaged.  Now, does that include in some way potential damage, is what I want to know.  Since this is a criminal break-in, and they will likely to be found negligent or grossly negligent, it should be less promising for people who are not, in fact, damaged.

To take an extreme example, if someone threatens to kill you but doesn't do anything to that effect, you can't legally do much to them.  Even thought this person could potentially kill you, you probably won't be able to get them locked up in jail (restraining order, maybe).  You certainly couldn't sue them in civil court for "wrongful threat."

The definition of "damage" can be very open-ended, much like "mental anguish".  The mere fact that you might feel threatened enough to have to change all sorts of information online, maybe closing accounts, having cards reissued, or anything along those lines could easily qualify.  This is where Sony can be held culpable, even if no charge of negligence is ever proven.  If it can be shown that jumping through all the hoops required to ensure your identity and financial information has been made safe again is a reasonable and expected reponse to having it compromised by Sony, that alone could make the case for civil liability.

But I do agree on one thing -- this is my personal opinion and not a legal opinion.  I'm not a civil litigator of any sort so I'm just taking a guess.

I'm sure that there must be some sort of precedence set for data theft cases already.  I'm curious to see how they were handled.

Goodbye Sony, it was nice knowing you while you lasted.

Originally posted by bansan

To have standing to sue someone, you have to prove that you were damaged.  Now, does that include in some way potential damage, is what I want to know. 

I can't speak for American legal system, but for Finlands legal system:

You can't sue for potential damage, but you can sue for the costs caused by making sure there isn't damage and costs required to limit the damage. Eg. if someone tries to infect you with a disease and you need to visit a doctor and take some medicine, the doctor's bill and medicine costs are damage caused to you even if you won't end up sick. Similarly if the judge finds that people need to take ID theft protection to limit the damage of their data being stolen, the cost of ID theft protection would be damage caused to those people who took the protection.

Originally posted by waynejr2

EULA doesn't trump the law.  So even if it is in the EULA but violates law they can be in trouble.

I think you need to start reading your EULA's.  As by agreeing or accepting one you go into a type of contract with the company your clicking "accept" with.  It's no different then signing a contract with a contractor for a housing situation.  If you signed it stating you will pay the sum on the agreement, then by law your eligble to have to pay it unless the contract was voided because somewhere/somehow the contractor failed to uphold his part.

  Now in the EQ2 EULA it states and I quote:

"We cannot ensure that your private communications and other personally identifiable information will not be disclosed to third parties. For example, we may be forced to disclose information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, or third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications."

And further down stating because you accept the EULA (in order to use/play any SOE product) they are not held responsible for the above quote.  So yes, in this case because as a consumer using the product and you "accepted" it, it does trump law.  As it is a binding contract BY law.

Originally posted by angerbeaver

Originally posted by Unlight

If you thought your personal information might now be out on the street, wouldn't you go through all of the effort of having everything changed. 

 

No, I've been in the phone book along with a million other people. It has my name, address and phone number. Also available to anyone to look through. I'm not disagreeing with most things said I just sort of disagreed with that 1 sentence (depending on what "personal information" you are referring to)

If your credit card information was also published in the phone book with your name, I think that would problematic.  It sounds like this may have been stolen as well, which is something that would concern me. 

Really, if someone wanted to take advantage of you specifically, there's likely enough information out there to make it possible right now.  I feel the only real protection we have is to remain below the radar.  But once someone focuses on you because your name along with a bunch of information about you appears on a list in their hands, you no longer have that protection.  That would make me want to err on the side of caution and do something to make sure my defenses are shored up.  If you bring this scenario to your bank, they would probably advise the same.

I'm lucky enough not to be a victim in all this.  But if I was an SOE client, or ever had been, I would already have been on the horn with my bank to find out what can be done to make sure I'm a safe as I can be.  I'd rather be called paranoid than reckless.

Originally posted by Spentzar
Do they mean a billion as in 1,000,000,000? (one thousand millions) or as in 1,000,000,000,000 (one million millions) because if it's the latter they might as well just go f*** themselves because they will not see that kind of money out of Sony. Overall the case will probably be dismissed or the price heavily reduced because that is not the "cost of credit monitoring service and fraud insurance coverage for two years." Not by a long shit. It's like the lawyers in that law firm literally pulled out their shlongs and smacked it against a calculator a few times and decided on the biggest arbitrary number the calculator could handle. It must have been an expensive scientific one because a regular calculator only goes up to like 9 digits.

One million millions is called a trillion.  Canada doesn't have their own unique set of rules for numeric progression, and nobody is going to sue a corporation for national debt-levels of money (yet).

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/04/sonys-response-to-the-u-s-house-of-representatives/

It's pretty much confirmed that Anon is behind the whole thing. Theft has never really been their MO. It was all for the lulz.

Originally posted by grukmuck

Originally posted by waynejr2

EULA doesn't trump the law.  So even if it is in the EULA but violates law they can be in trouble.

I think you need to start reading your EULA's.  As by agreeing or accepting one you go into a type of contract with the company your clicking "accept" with.  It's no different then signing a contract with a contractor for a housing situation.  If you signed it stating you will pay the sum on the agreement, then by law your eligble to have to pay it unless the contract was voided because somewhere/somehow the contractor failed to uphold his part.

  Now in the EQ2 EULA it states and I quote:

"We cannot ensure that your private communications and other personally identifiable information will not be disclosed to third parties. For example, we may be forced to disclose information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, or third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications."

And further down stating because you accept the EULA (in order to use/play any SOE product) they are not held responsible for the above quote.  So yes, in this case because as a consumer using the product and you "accepted" it, it does trump law.  As it is a binding contract BY law.

I think you've probably focused on exactly what SOE will be using for their defense.  It will also probably be exactly what will be targetted by the attorney's bringing the suit.  Just because it's in an EULA doesn't mean it can't be struck down by a judge.  I'm interested in seeing how well it will hold up.

Originally posted by Spentzar
Do they mean a billion as in 1,000,000,000? (one thousand millions) or as in 1,000,000,000,000 (one million millions) because if it's the latter they might as well just go f*** themselves because they will not see that kind of money out of Sony. Overall the case will probably be dismissed or the price heavily reduced because that is not the "cost of credit monitoring service and fraud insurance coverage for two years." Not by a long shit. It's like the lawyers in that law firm literally pulled out their shlongs and smacked it against a calculator a few times and decided on the biggest arbitrary number the calculator could handle. It must have been an expensive scientific one because a regular calculator only goes up to like 9 digits.

LOL - What are you talking about?  A billion is a billion dude, there's only one.  And I'm sure it was a good calculator.

Originally posted by Xzen

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/04/sonys-response-to-the-u-s-house-of-representatives/

 

It's pretty much confirmed that Anon is behind the whole thing. Theft has never really been their MO. It was all for the lulz.

Hopefully that means that Sony's clients aren't as bad a shape as they could have been. 

I just hope Anonymous sticks to harassing Scientology after this mess has blown over

it's probably right action is taken by that $1bn is probably excessive. I can see the claim for the identity-protection thing- that costs £7.00/month here. If someone's calculation of $1000 dollars per person that almost appears to be 10 years worth..

Originally posted by Gajari

"Ohhh SOE brought down my precious PSN for a couple weeks to best resolve the issues, rebuild the network and implement enhanced security features so something like this will never happen again! WHAAAAAAA! Terrible company!! Can't be trusted!

What's that? They're only giving us a free month of PSN Plus and some downloadable content for free? SHIFTY ASSHOLES!!

1 billion bones bitches! PAY UP!"

You forgot to mention the part about not encrypting your information and losing millions of people's personal data to theft - which can result in several different scenarios, from obnoxious behavioral marketing, to increased malware/viruses/spyware, to outright identity theft.

Originally posted by grukmuck

Originally posted by waynejr2

EULA doesn't trump the law.  So even if it is in the EULA but violates law they can be in trouble.

...So yes, in this case because as a consumer using the product and you "accepted" it, it does trump law.  As it is a binding contract BY law.

The contract can only bind to the extend determined by the law. Normally when the law saying that contracts do bind and any other law collide, the other law is followed and the contract ignored. Only when it's specifically stated in legislation that parties may agree otherwise a contract can trump the law, and even then if the agreement is found to be unfair or unbalanced it may be nulled or changed and the law enforced instead.

EDIT: My info is about my country's legal system, I'm not sure if it's similarly in America/EDIT

One can only hope that all suits will go out empty, not cause i like sony so much but because this will set the standard.

If the standard becomes if anybody gets knowledge of a database breach in your system you can be sued back to the stoneage noone will tell you if they had a breach.

Bank lost its whole database? Well, they will never tell you once this gets through.

Originally posted by Raizeen

I speak for everyone when i say lets pray for SOE to die.

yay seconded :)

Originally posted by lthompson94

Originally posted by Spentzar
Do they mean a billion as in 1,000,000,000? (one thousand millions) or as in 1,000,000,000,000 (one million millions) because if it's the latter they might as well just go f*** themselves because they will not see that kind of money out of Sony. Overall the case will probably be dismissed or the price heavily reduced because that is not the "cost of credit monitoring service and fraud insurance coverage for two years." Not by a long shit. It's like the lawyers in that law firm literally pulled out their shlongs and smacked it against a calculator a few times and decided on the biggest arbitrary number the calculator could handle. It must have been an expensive scientific one because a regular calculator only goes up to like 9 digits.

LOL - What are you talking about?  A billion is a billion dude, there's only one.  And I'm sure it was a good calculator.

Some countries use the short scales to messure billions, others use long scales. They are different values just like Spentzar pointed out. In Canada its especially confusing because the English speaking contingent uses short scales while the French speaking contingent use long scales.

Its a big world out there, I suggest you do a little research before essentially telling someone yours is the only perspective that could possibly correct.

More about short and long scales HERE

Initial lawsuits get attorney's names in the paper. It's a publicity stunt more than anything else. Others will sue for a LOT ore once the actual damage is tallied up. Right now while a very bad thing happened, no one knows what the final body count will be.

Originally posted by Vrika

Originally posted by bansan

*snip*

I can't speak for American legal system, but for Finlands legal system:

You can't sue for potential damage, but you can sue for the costs caused by making sure there isn't damage and costs required to limit the damage. Eg. if someone tries to infect you with a disease and you need to visit a doctor and take some medicine, the doctor's bill and medicine costs are damage caused to you even if you won't end up sick. Similarly if the judge finds that people need to take ID theft protection to limit the damage of their data being stolen, the cost of ID theft protection would be damage caused to those people who took the protection.

That's reasonable.  It is probable that the US precedents will bear the same, but I wasn't sure.  It is one of those things that may be more subjected to judge interpretation.

In your example, the person intentionally tried to infect someone, so they are criminally responsible, which in the US makes it much more likely for civil suits to be successful.  In this case, I don't think we can say that Sony intended to get hacked, so it is more of a gray area. 

Originally posted by Reizla

Canadian Natasha Maksimovic thinks Sony owes C$1 billion in damages to PSN users.

But those aren't US dollars, they're Canadian ones.

The second suit was announced on Monday by the Toronto law firm of McPhadden Samac Tuovi LLP, with Sony ...

Not sure if anyone mentioned this or not as I've read the first page and didn't think it worth reading all 6 pages, but a little factoid for all who have their heads in the sand and think everything is peachy fine with good ol'USA and yes, its still within context of this thread.  I bolded and marked in red text what I'm referring to.  

As of right now, this very second as I type this, $1.00 Canadian is worth $1.05 US.  For those who can't see the immediate implication, the Canadian dollar is WORTH MORE than the US Dollar by a margin of 5%.  In 1991 at approximately the same day of the year, a US Dollar was worth 1.15 Canadian.  To put that into more meaningful context

Today   100,00 CAN =  104,987 US

1991    100,000 US =  115,000 CAN

A total differance of 19,987, or put another way, a swing of nearly 20% which IS a big deal.

So what that lawsuit ammounts to is a class action amount equal to 50 million MORE, so lets not disparage our Canadian neighbors to the North, they're running their country far more effectively than we are.

Now in context to this lawsuit.  Did you for one moment think something like this wouldn't happen as a result of the hack?  Its the reason why Corps spend as much money on internet security.  No corperation gives a fig about your feelings or thinks you're a special little snowflake to be regarded with awe and reverance.  You're just a set value number to them, and their small army of accountants tell them that they get to keep more $$$ if they spend $$$ on security.  The price of complacency for a corperation Sony's size is litigaton on this scale when the opportunity presents itself, and honestly, they're getting off lighter than I expected.  Punitive damage fees are typically scaled towards the ability to pay more than the worth of the damage itself, Sony is a multi-billion dollar corperation that won the DVD format war, this action and others to follow will sting, no doubt, and sting enough to put several heads on the chopping block, but it will not destroy the corperation or cripple them.

And just a final note.   I am a American Vet and love my country dearly, but the above ignorance and presumptious arrogance about relative currency values and placement within the world scale of economy irritates me to no end.  Edited to be less abrasive than the first run.  My apologies.

Originally posted by Tardcore

Originally posted by lthompson94

Originally posted by Spentzar
Do they mean a billion as in 1,000,000,000? (one thousand millions) or as in 1,000,000,000,000 (one million millions) because if it's the latter they might as well just go f*** themselves because they will not see that kind of money out of Sony. Overall the case will probably be dismissed or the price heavily reduced because that is not the "cost of credit monitoring service and fraud insurance coverage for two years." Not by a long shit. It's like the lawyers in that law firm literally pulled out their shlongs and smacked it against a calculator a few times and decided on the biggest arbitrary number the calculator could handle. It must have been an expensive scientific one because a regular calculator only goes up to like 9 digits.

LOL - What are you talking about?  A billion is a billion dude, there's only one.  And I'm sure it was a good calculator.

Some countries use the short scales to messure billions, others use long scales. They are different values just like Spentzar pointed out. In Canada its especially confusing because the English speaking contingent uses short scales while the French speaking contingent use long scales.

Its a big world out there, I suggest you do a little research before essentially telling someone yours is the only perspective that could possibly correct.

More about short and long scales HERE

Interesting.  Sorry.