“No reasonable consumer could have been deceived.”
A US district judge has cleared Sony of any charges of wrongdoing in a class-action lawsuit filed against the publisher for its PSN outage in April 2011.
Not guilty! Now get out!
According to Courthouse News Service, the class said Sony “negligently failed to provide adequate firewalls and safeguards” putting more than 69 million PlayStation users’ personal information at risk.
Judge Anthony Battaglia found that Sony did not violate any consumer protection laws and dismissed claims of negligence, unjust enrichment, bailment, and violations of California consumer-protection statutes.
Furthermore, none of the named plaintiffs in the suit actually subscribed to PlayStation Network Plus, “and thus received the PSN services free of cost.”
While the class claimed that Sony misrepresented the quality of its security, Battaglia found that all users signed a Sony Privacy Policy that included “clear admonitory language that Sony’s security was not ‘perfect,'” therefore “no reasonable consumer could have been deceived.”
So sure, the PSN hack was irritating, but there was nothing illegal about it from Sony’s end. Plus, the publisher gave away a lot of free games and a free month of PlayStation Network Plus as part of its “Welcome Back” program upon the service returning.
