> To get the $55, a gamer "must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality." To get the $9, PS3 owners must submit a claim that, at the time they bought their console, they "knew about the Other OS, relied upon the Other OS functionality, and intended to use the Other OS functionality."
I seriously doubt very much money will be payed out to users if this settlement is approved.
I'm sure the lawyers would be happy with it though:
> The deal also provides up to $2.25 million in attorneys' fees for the lawyers who brought suit.
That payout is equal to around ~40909 users who are able to prove they used the Other OS functionality. I'm doubtful that many exist.
What really pisses me off about this is I can't provide proof anymore that I made use of OtherOS. The later updates removed that functionality.
I remember at that time I was so excited thinking I'd get to use my PS3 as my main machine, my game console, and for bitcoin mining -- and a bluray player. I desperately wanted it to be my entertainment center for all purposes.
I had a few friends making money on it - I was a dreamer for sure...
At the time I remember there was a team working on hashing functions in hand-tuned assembly for the PS3's Cell processor that would take advantage of it's vector capabilities. I wanted to take their implementations and learn assembly well enough to write my own bitcoin miner. This was long before ASICs became a thing so the PS3 looked like a big money-making opportunity. :-)
Yeah, because the guy who consistently works the hardest at getting famous should get some dough? He kind of seems like an immature prick, to be honest.
Regardless of your opinion of him he really didn't deserve the hassle Sony put him through. And now they've admitted they were wrong about the very thing he cared about.
I don't know much about him, so I won't disagree with how you feel about him but I did follow the whole Sony/other OS mess and Sony was wrong. Wrong to get rid of those features and wrong to go after the people that tried to restore them.
No kidding. I sold mine shortly after and because of the removal of OtherOS. I certainly don't have the serial number or proof that I used OtherOS (who possibly could?).
My PS3 had Yellow Dog Linux, but I hardly ever booted into it. Also, my fat PS3 died a few years ago (yellow light of death), and I don't even have it any more to look up serial numbers etc.
This is just speculation, but since I think it was installed in a special partition, perhaps there's some logging at the OS that could help demonstrate it, and Sony can release a tool for the PS3 that users can run to get some special ID and submit.
Though, given the poor excuse for remediation, I don't have strong hopes for any such tool.
From a lay person's perspective, this is a ridiculous settlement - if there's a way to detect if it was used, Sony should be required to issue a refund for the full price at the time of sale. Putting aside people looking for an easy paycheck, the few who actually were tinkering with the OtherOS option (and the labs who used it, since there were a few iirc), deserve to have a refund. $55 is hardly just given the offense and the cost to the buyers.
1. The settlement is ridiculous.
2. Instead of the settlement, Sony should be required to issue refunds.
Basically, I'm annoyed by the existence of the settlement itself, and suggesting that the legal team behind the suit is being negligent in favor of a hefty paycheck.
All that I have is an email where I complained to one of my friends about not being able to update without wiping my Linux install, so hopefully that's enough. But I eventually did update after Netflix (which is all I was really using my PS3 for other than playing with PPC Linux) required the update.
I mean, what's the alternative? It's almost certainly true that only a small fraction of the class cared about the "Other OS" functionality. Those that didn't suffered no damages when Sony removed the feature. Targeting the settlement proceeds to those people makes sense. One of the reasons you have those $2 coupon settlements is because you have overbroad classes where only a subset of members actually suffered harm, and the damages to the class are divvied up amongst class members who suffered no harm.
And $55 seems like a pretty good settlement for someone who used the Other OS functionality. Remember, that's a settlement value--the average loss of value of the PS3 to class members discounted by the probability of success at trial.
I understand the practical problems with providing the required proof, but this seems like a much more reasonable way of structuring a settlement than the potential alternatives.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that a solution which results in the vast majority of true members of a class being unable to prove their membership is not really an improvement.
What's a better solution? Giving refunds to anybody who wants one, regardless of whether they cared about the "Other OS" functionality at all, would be totally unreasonable. Who wouldn't sign up to get their $500 back for a 10 year old system?
Giving refunds to anybody who wants one, regardless of whether they cared about the "Other OS" functionality at all, would be totally unreasonable.
Why? Maybe they didn't care at the time, but maybe they would later, or their kids would, or they would get a better deal when they resold it. Why should Sony get away with robbing their customers of advertised functionality with the excuse that they "didn't use it anyway"?
Maybe someday we'll see it with car manufacturers. "Your passenger door has been disabled. Please provide proof that you carry passengers with you to get a token reimbursement for the trouble."
Because the purpose of a civil suit is to make consumers whole for actual damages. This isn't about punishing Sony for misleading advertising. You measure the difference between what people paid, and what they would've paid without the removed functionality, summed up over the whole class. That's the damages to the class. And because very few people who bought a PS3 wouldn't have done so at the same price without that advertised feature, it's not a big number.
You're the lawyer, but how does Gore v. BMW of North America, Inc. fit into that? Even after the decision by the supreme courts, the plaintiff got $4k in actual damages and $50k in punitive damages, even after the SCOTUS found no evidence of bad faith. What makes this case different?
In fact, what's the point of punitive damages in general if not to punish the defendants in civil suits?
Umm, hmm... Somewhere I have my old hard drive with Linux on it, maybe, if I didn't wipe it and reuse it. Can I file a class action lawsuit against this one for having unreasonable terms?
I specifally followed the PS3 market carefully, and made sure to buy a used PS3 that had the capability to install Linux. Installing it was a fun side-project, although I didn't use it much. Then I bought a game I really wanted to play, but it required the firmware update that would destroy the Linux. I've been upset, and was seriously considering buying another used PS3 just to be able to play my game on that.
So, I'm glad this finally won. I was disenfranchised by their obnoxious actions. Guiltily, I admit that the $55 I get back will probably go towards a used PS3 so I can play the game alongside my Linux-enabled PS3 :)
Sony is the best example that I can think of for manufacturers whose products have fewer features over time. Remember that PS3s also had PS2 compatibility?
The current console cycle should drill into everyone that each console is its own mutually exclusive walled garden, with no expectations of compatibility between them. I think everyone got spoiled with PS1 games compatible on PS2. Since then, backwards compatibility (outside Nintendo) has generally been spotty at best, but usually gone.
Nintendo has an advantage in that their hardware is generally cheaper than the competition so they don't have to muck around with software based backwards compatibility. They just put the hardware from the old console inside the new one. The Wii is a Gamecube. The DS is a GBA.
> They just put the hardware from the old console inside the new one.
That's pretty easy to do when you don't switch CPU architectures every generation, and the new chips are (mostly) a faster version of the old ones. Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U all have a PowerPC CPU in them, with an AMD (ATI) GPU.
For a controller, sure. The current controller has all the buttons the old controller has. They are both USB/bluetooth. Most games need a one or two sticks and the standard buttons. There is no reason they couldn't develop a system to cover a grand total of two controller specs, both of which they created and which probably have a 90+% overlap.
I'll stick to my PC, where every controller works.
Nintendo does backwards compatibility a lot better than Sony. Consoles have been compatible with the previous generation since the Wii (which would play Gamecube games) and handhelds have always compatible with the previous generation, from the Game Boy Color all the way to New 3DS.
It would have been better if Sony had to put the Linux support back in. What good are $55 (after jumping through lots of hoops) if you want to run Linux on your PS3?
I would buy Sony products again if they would just allow that functionality again. I still have my PS3 which I used as my primary desktop for a while, and the data is still there, but inaccessible, so it should be sufficient proof. The money is kind of nice, but by now it should be clear that it poses no threat to Sony to allow people to run their own software, especially with the hypervisor intact. I'm not aware of any new vulnerabilities that came up in the last six years because of OtherOS, and people have even managed to get Linux running unofficially on PS4s without causing any problems to Sony's business.
Imagine if Apple did something like this and decided to disable Bootcamp on all Macs and make your Windows and Linux installs inaccessible if anyone updated your computer. This is probably the most anti-consumer and anti-developer move I can think of in computing history (although the rootkit Sony CDs were pretty bad too). Sony had a whole developer community working for them for free, making software, supporting their system, and evangelizing for them before they decided to shut them down and even pursue them with legal threats for doing what Sony asked them to do, experiment and create.
Even if they somehow can't fix the PS3, just adding some official support for OtherOS on PS4 which uses conventional hardware would send a huge message that they actually care about their fans and would help to counter Microsoft's move opening the Xbox to Windows apps for expanded utility.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony couldn't fix their hypervisor. They may have lost the source code, or perhaps the person who wrote it was transferred to the pachinko division.
I'm sorry, but I think this comment severely misrepresents what happened and the precedent it helped establish.
First, the firmware update didn't remove support for a feature, it explicitly blocked certain user space software. It forced consumers to use Sony's PS OS rather than an alternative like Linux.
Second, it helps establish precedence that hardware vendors can have control/part ownership of hardware after you purchase it. Gone are the days where the computer you purchase pre-assembled is your own. Now vendors can apparently control what you decide to do with hardware that you purchase. Sony isn't alone in this, Microsoft has been moving towards this for a long time, and Apple is probably the worst offender, but they are joined by most hardware vendors at this point.
It's anti-consumer behavior. It probably shouldn't even be legal, but yet corporations can get away with it, so they continue to do it since it aligns with their best interests (barriers to competition).
How does it imply any sort of loss of ownership? They removed Linux support in an update. The update was not forced. You got the choice to install it or not.
If you wanted to decline the update and keep using Linux, you could. All your existing games would continue working, too, but you couldn't play games released after the update (which require the newer firmware). Nor could you play online, as having all updates is a requirement of connectng to their online service.
I have a 60GB PS3, but I agree with the grandparent that a legal obligation to maintain support indefinitely would set a bad precedent.
> The update was not forced. You got the choice to install it or not.
Some choice:
> However, without updating, console owners couldn't connect to the PlayStation Network, play any games online, play any games or Blu-ray movies that required the new firmware, play any files kept on a media server, or download any future updates.
If you buy a product on a claim that it performs N features, and a future update forces you to choose which subset of N features you would like to keep, the company has still failed on their claim.
Those things also all happen when a platform is no longer supported. So, if Sony wanted to shut down their games division tomorrow, how many new games would you require they release for the PS4 and how long should they be required to keep running their servers?
While I think there's an argument for being required to allow online access to those within warranty, it makes way more sense to just guarantee it plays the games it played when you got it. It's something that consumers could easily understand and depend on.
> Those things also all happen when a platform is no longer supported.
That's not a given. Some of the features require no ongoing support, like playing media from a local server.
> So, if Sony wanted to shut down their games division tomorrow (...) how long should they be required to keep running their servers?
Leave the concrete numbers to the judges and juries. But if today I bought a $700 console from an authorized dealer, and tomorrow it was a brick, I'm pretty sure I'd have a case for getting a big chunk of that money back. If in a year it was mostly a brick, I'd expect less money back. Exact numbers in these cases come down to negotiation.
All this is tangential of course because Sony didn't stop supporting the platform.
It's placing an artificial barrier on user software choices at the firmware level. There was no reason Linux couldn't run on a PS3, except Sony said so.
Second, it wasn't optional for people, like me, who bought a PS3 after the update. Since I bought a console with the restriction, I don't remember exactly whether people could refuse the update. But your points, about not being able to play future games or playing online are also arbitrary restrictions which, while not outright preventing you from refusing the update, are designed to arbitrarily handicap you to the point that not updating is more of a hindrance than not.
The entire console market is built on arbitrary restrictions. Running only signed code is a part of the business model of every console. Even when the PS3 supported Linux, there were arbitrary restrictions on access to the GPU to ensure it could not be a good gaming platform.
Why should it be illegal to sell a product on whatever terms you want? Sony got sued because they advertised one set of terms but changed them after the fact. That's reasonable. But it's not like Apple purports to do anything other than sell a locked down device. What's wrong with that?
Since you brought up Apple... How is it that Apple was legally bound to sell the FaceTime app for Mac OS X, or the 802.11n update, because adding new features to an already sold product crossed some weird accounting issue, but Sony had to be sued when they removed an advertised feature and forced to compensate for the loss?
A property right is a "bundle of sticks."[1] It's a bundle of things you're allowed to do with respect to a piece of property. It is wholly legitimate to sell bundles with a subset of all possible sticks. E.g. a railroad might keep the surface rights to some land, but sell the air rights so a building can be built over its tracks.
Apple selling you a locked-down piece of hardware does not undermine your property rights. You get to freely exercise all the rights you purchased. Nothing is forcing you to buy a bundle of sticks that doesn't have the specific sticks you want.
DRM claws back property rights; breaking it is illegal, regardless of whether its protecting something that you would otherwise have the legal right to do.
I call bullshit. Up, down, right, left and center. So much bullshit.
Sony should adopt Linux and Vulkan already (maybe for PS4 Neo?). It needs to be able to tout some compatibility with other platforms, in the same way Microsoft is doing it now with Xbox/Win10/DX12. Sony could tout Android/Linux/Windows 7+ compatibility with Vulkan.
I seriously doubt very much money will be payed out to users if this settlement is approved.
I'm sure the lawyers would be happy with it though:
> The deal also provides up to $2.25 million in attorneys' fees for the lawyers who brought suit.
That payout is equal to around ~40909 users who are able to prove they used the Other OS functionality. I'm doubtful that many exist.