Sony Got Pwned!
Well, in a surprise twist, California Judge Anthony Brown has agreed that Erik Estavillo has made a sufficient enough point to prove to the court that Sony Computer Entertainment America violated his First Amendment rights when they kicked him off the Playstation Network service a few months ago for being a dickwad while playing Resistance: Fall of Man online. The trial date is set for December 19th.
I wrote about Estavillo’s banning in July (here) and mocked the fact that the 20-something shut-in with agoraphobia was representing himself in the case, figuring that he would be buried alive by Sony’s legal team. I was under the impression that the whole claim itself would have been thrown out in court, seeing as the First Amendment is only used to protect a citizen against the government, and that it probably wouldn’t apply to the PSN as it is a private company’s asset.
However, Judge Brown made his ruling yesterday that the trial will proceed to the surprise of video gamers and legal blogs alike.
Sony moved to dismiss the case, claiming the First Amendment doesn’t apply to their product and that while signing up for the PSN online service, there are several pages of “cover-your-ass” legalese that should have technically defended Sony from spurious lawsuits.
The head of Sony’s legal team, Richard Merryworth, made a startling admission following the ruling: “Well, let’s face it, no one reads that stuff anyway; we just borrowed the language of our End User agreement from somewhere else. Guess we should have read it.”
Judge Brown was quoted by Associated Press after the dismissal of court as to his controversial ruling. “I read over the PSN chat and listened to the voice transcripts. Yeah, the Estavillo kid was being a douchebag and deserved to be banned for violating the terms of service agreement. But Sony needs to be taught a lesson.
I mean, have you seen their new PSP Go? My kid wants one of those after we sunk about a grand into those stupid disk thingies, not to mention all the peripherals? Ridiculous. If I could, someone would be doing hard time over at Pelican Bay for this garbage.”
A full transcription of the proceedings can be found here.
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That’s hilarious that the judge called him a douchebag.
I believed it up until the part about what the head of legal team said. Great story!
WHAT?! He was wrong and deserved to be banned but sony still need to be punished? What kind of moron is this f**king judge?! I can’t believe there’s somebody who can accept the guy got what he deserved but the opposite party still need punishing. Eric Esatvo is a troll and letting him have he’s way is just telling him, go ahead eric treat people like crap, nobody’s going to stop you after all you have a problem and that grants you diplamatic immunity.
Seriously, what we’re you thinking by buying into the hype, the fanboyism just OOZES off of you, boy i forgive, maybe you forgot what url you really typed in. *SLAP*
And what day is it Timewarp? Is it Friday? And what happens around here on Fridays?
Click on the link at the bottom.
I love when I actually trick people on FF. Remember gang, my FF pieces are 90% based in reality, and then by the end get crazier and crazier.
Hey no need to rub it in. I didn’t click the link and it seemed believable, also i lost count of what day this was posted…
Well dosen’t matter, i got told >_<
LOL, very funny stuff.
ALMOST believable till I clicked on the link at the end of the article…..then I was like “aaaaaahhhhh….sumbitch”
He’s representing himself? WHEW! Because I had heard that Lono was representing him.
First, Sony is not an American company, but a Japanese company.
Let us check into the Japanese laws, Humm… Now the American laws… WOW! I see a big difference between the two.
Dear whatsyourname, You just failed.
Now for Nintendo!
Hmm… Updated their firmware, yeah, nothing says that they cannot do updates to anything, he’s probably suing them because he can no longer pirate games to it anymore
Microsoft, well, if he’s suing for the failboat of a gaming console, all other xBox359.95 owners need to do so as well, because it FAILS.
Activision… I just see no reason.
Thus ends this moment of dudeyoufail.fail