Kristopher Johns is a man. A man with big, huge balls. How huge you ask? Ginormous enough to put together a class-action lawsuit against Sony and file it with the San Francisco division of the United States District Court.
As some of you may have already guessed, this is directly correlated to the recent hacker attacks on the Playstation Network that may have compromised the personal information of 77 million PSN consumers, including – possibly – their credit card info.
From what I can translate after going over the legal documents, Kristopher via his attorney is basically claiming that the failure to protect such important personal data about their consumers is an act of criminal negligence on the part of the Sony, a violation of their right to privacy and that they should have their pants sued off of them for fucking up so royally.
It goes on to say that they took too long in informing customers of the issue and in doing so did not allow them to consider options such as obtaining new credit cards or closing accounts they feel might be threatened.
The lawsuit is seeking financial restitution along with free credit card monitoring on behalf of Sony. Will it actually work? Well, I may just be a simple country hyper-chicken, but considering how monumental a blunder this really is, there's a possibility that Sony might lose this one. Add the fact that U.S Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut went as far as to write SCEA CEO Jack Tretton a letter asking why he didn't take quicker action to inform people of the issue and you can see what a big deal this really is.
One of the following two outcomes are likely happening:
A) Sony settles the matter out of court and everyone gets a free game or some PSN points; or,
B) Sony points to a clause in their Terms of Service agreement that nullifies them of any legal responsibility and life goes on.
The real winners here I think though are the 360 fanboys who now have something to rub in the face of every Playstation fanboy out there. Have fun trolling, boys!
I've never entered any credit card info on my PSP, nor do I own a PS3, so I'm able to avoid the whole thing all together, but what about the rest of you? Do you think you'll be putting your name on this class-action lawsuit? Do you feel your privacy has been violated? Let me know. I'm curious to see how this has affected you as both a consumer and a hardcore gamer.
I couldn't get this song out of my head as I was writing this article, so I thought I'd show it here so you'd have something to sing as you signed the class action.
