In light of the nearly week-long PSN outage, an ongoing battle with hackers and stubborn class-action lawsuits, some hyperbolic detractors believe Sony's presence in home gaming is in serious trouble. The last -- a near-continuous legal push in various countries against Sony for its abrupt removal of the OtherOS feature -- recently garnered some support from a consumer complaint board in Finland.
Is it safe to say the company's attempt to avoid settling is...finnished? (Sorry!) Or do the class-action suits against the corporation lack legal merit?
A Finnish consumer complaints board said in its ruling that Sony should pay a PlayStation 3 owner €100 because his purchase of the console hinged on the inclusion of an OtherOS option.
Once that functionality is disabled via a firmware update, it can't be recovered -- at least not without hacking the console. And Sony has made its stance on that matter known quite well over the past few months.
However, the Finnish board has absolutely no enforcement ability on the matter.
The group issues a ruling, which is then administered to a court for consideration. While an important aspect of the case and certainly a boon to the aggrieved party, the CCBs opinion doesn't necessarily mean anything; a judge could just as easily dismiss its recommendation.
Shortly after reaching a settlement with Sony over his PlayStation 3 jailbreaking, George "GeoHot" Hotz said that following OtherOS suits would be "a new focus." He has yet to offer an opinion on the Finnish board's decision. (After Dawn via TechDirt)
