The PlayStation Network Terms of Service: Revisited!
Greetings Readers!
After the huge response I have received from my post yesterday about Sony's updated Terms of Service/User Agreement for the PlayStation Network, I have decided that I should write a follow-up post addressing some of the points that have been brought up. I was trying to get in contact with somebody at Sony who could respond, but like Gamespot, I have not had any luck. Before I get into this post, I would like to thank everybody that shared the link for yesterday's post as it is now the third most viewed post on the Global Geek News Blog behind the Twitter Etiquette and Twitter Etiquette 2 posts. OK, here we go.
Probably the biggest comment I have received so far is in regards to the protection of children from online predators. This is certainly a valid point, which lead to Sony adding the following statement to the new Terms of Service.
You may not provide anyone with your name or any other personally identifying information other than your own Online ID, or the name, password or personally identifying information of any other person or business through any means, including messaging, chat or any other form of PSN communication.
While I agree with the purpose behind this statement, I think it goes a bit too far. I think giving this information should be up to the users and their own personal judgment or that of their guardians. I have met countless people online, and if I was restricted by this rule, I would not have many of the great friends I have today. I also play online with friends, and I don't to risk banning because I refer to somebody by their actual name rather than their Online ID. Protecting the children is a honorable goal, but restricting everybody to protect a few is going too far.
Another popular opinion that I have seen is that this Terms of Service is no worse than most of them that are out there. When I am bored, I am known to read Terms of Service type documents, so I know this is not the case. While I will agree that many Terms of Service are overly restrictive and often rarely enforced, to say this is no worse than others is just plain wrong. When Google did something very similar when they launched Chrome, trying to say that everything created through their browser was essentially theirs, they were immediately called out on it and they backed off. That is what needs to happen here. It is time that Terms of Service are not so one sided, and many such documents are beginning to reflect that as technology becomes more open. I know that my legal section for this site is nowhere near as ugly as this terms of service. In the interest of fairness and to show that I am not out to destroy Sony, I will be reviewing the ToS of the other consoles and writing about them later this week.
Another hot button topic seems to be the giving of information to third parties. From what I have read, many people seem to be against it, especially when they realize that it is personal information that is being given. Personally, I generally don't much care if companies gather anonymous usage statistics on things I do. As long as no personally identifying information about me is not sent, especially in an insecure manner, I don't mind contributing to make a product better by allowing companies to see how I am using a product for future improvements or what bugs I am running into that need fixed. When my personal information is sent, especially to third parties who can also distribute it to whomever they choose, that is when I have a problem. It is even worse when there is no way to opt out of such a policy. With the way it stands now, if I don't agree, I don't get to use my PS3 or PSP, and that is that. Giving personal information out in such a manner is a huge security and privacy problem. The more people that have your information, the higher your chances of identity theft. Also, such information transfer is illegal in some places.
The last major point that has been made that I want to talk about is that these are just meant to cover Sony's butt if somebody decides they want to sue them. While I will agree with that, I believe they went much farther than that, especially when they refuse to do anything about lost data purchased from the PlayStation Store, even when they are the one to have caused the problem. As I stated before, protecting children and stupid people in general is certainly an admirable goal, but there are better ways to go about it than doing something like this. Courts have thrown out Terms of Service in the past because they are overly restrictive and just plain bad that no reasonable person would accept them, something that could very easily happen in this case. A balance must be struck between Sony protecting its hardware, network, and contracts and the consumer and allowing them to use their system in the way that they choose.
Don't forget to check back later this week as I will talk bout the Terms of Service that come with the other consoles and the possibility of comment from Sony on this issue! I am also likely to talk about this on the next Global Geek News Podcast, so keep an eye on that! Like always, follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed if you want to be notified of when new posts go up. Until next time, don't forget to comment (And be a constructive commenter)!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Sony Says All Your Actions Are Belong to Us!
Greetings Readers!
Being a member of the Playstation Network and various Playstation related programs (Gamers Advisory Panel), I recieved an email on Friday informing me of changes to the Terms of Service and User Agreement for the Playstation Network. Since it was a slow day at work, I decided to read the changes to the service, most of which are beyond disgusting.
While these agreements are made primarily for the company to cover its butt in the biggest way possible so that it can avoid dumb lawsuits from Jack Thompson impersonators, the new changes went much farther than that. There are a few new rules in there that are to be expected, basically trying to keep people from exchanging personal information and trying to protect children which is all well and good, but they did not stop there.
Lets get right into the bad stuff with the fact that basically you no longer have any privacy on the PlayStation Network.
However, SCEA reserves the right to monitor and record any online activity and communication throughout PSN and you give SCEA your express consent to monitor and record your activities. SCEA reserves the right to remove any content and communication from PSN at SCEA's sole discretion without further notice to you. Any data collected in this way, including the content of your communications, the time and location of your activities, your Online ID and IP address and other related information may be used by us to enforce this Agreement or protect the interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors.
Unless you want to risk termination of your service and have very little functionality out of your PS3, you will now have to be very careful about what you do as Sony is watching and listening for TOS violations so they can disable your account. But, if you thought that this is all they are using your information for, you would be wrong. It is being shared with third parties.
Third parties, including publishers may administer access to some content, including delivery, gameplay or customer service. To enable third parties to provide such access to you, we must provide them with your personal information. If you do not consent to allow us to share your personal information with third parties for the purpose of providing you with access to PSN content, you will not be able to participate in PSN.
So now, all of your private information is now at the hands of third parties and whatever they choose to do with it. You have no say in what personal information they get, and if you don't like it, you aren't allowed to use the PlayStation Network. I suspect this is the first step in finding ads on the PlayStation Network outside of promoting new items in the store.
Of course the fun doesn't stop there. Stories have been floating around for some time about the horrible DRM and stuff related to downloading store content and that you basically get one shot with content and thats it, but now, if something happens, even if its Sony's fault, you are out of luck.
You bear all risk of loss for completing the download of any content and for any loss of content you have downloaded, including any loss due to a file corruption or hard drive crash.You are solely responsible for the storage and safekeeping of your content. SCEA is not responsible for providing you with replacement copies for any reason.
If that doesn't sound bad enough, they state earlier in the terms that they can update your system at any time and can remove functionality or cause data loss, leaving you with nothing to do but twittle your thumbs.
Some content may be provided automatically without notice when you sign into PSN. Such content may include automatic updates or upgrades which may change your current operating system, cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities.
So if Sony fails to properly test an update and it hoses your console, you can kiss all your downloaded content goodbye. If you want it back, you will have to buy it all over again.
Speaking of DRM, hacking your PS3 or PSP to give yourself more control over your content is no longer allowed.
You may not bypass, disable, or circumvent any encryption, security, digital rights management or authentication mechanism in connection with PSN or any of the content offered through PSN.
Nope, we still aren't done yet, there is even more bad news. Sony has also decided to pull what Google did with Chrome and own everything you create.
To the extent permitted by law, You authorize and license SCEA a royalty free and perpetual right to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your User Material for any reason without any restrictions or payments to you or any third parties. You further agree that SCEA may sublicense its rights to any third party, including its affiliates and subsidiaries.
These are the biggest problems with the updated Terms of Service for the PlayStation Network, but certainly not all of them. If you are a PSP or PS3 owner, or just really care about privacy and consumer rights, I highly recommend reading the rest of the Terms of Serivce here. The updates are all in red.
The changes are disgusting on many levels and should be fought. The more attention this issue gets, the better the chance we have of changing it, so make sure to forward this to everybody you know! Until then, all your actions are belong to Sony! Don't forget to post your thought in the comments as well.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
I have been BANNED from Digg.com!
Greetings Readers!
I have some rather suprising news for you today. I have been banned from Digg.com! For those who don't know what happend, I will catch you up to speed before I post all correspondence that I had with Digg support.
Last week I made a wrote one of my insightful blog posts about Cisco's predictions on internet traffic in 2013. It happened that a similar blog post from Om Malik made it to the front page of Digg about the same story. To give Digg readers another view, I posted my link into the comments on I believe it was Thursday. Due to my inability to link properly, I only got a single person to visit my blog from posting the link in the comments. Saturday morning I woke up and went to Digg a story that I saw on my Digg RSS feed to find that my account was invalid. I did some searching to find that all signs of my existence on Digg had been completely removed. Being completely confused as to what was going on, I contacted Digg support only to find out I was banned. The following is all of the emails exchanged between myself and Digg support with a few thoughts thrown in. At the end is my thoughts on the whole issue and I will discuss it further on the next Global Geek News podcast.
Support,
This morning I woke up to find myself logged out of Digg when I went to Digg this story: http://digg.com/space/Giant_Tsunami_on_the_Sun_Captured_By_NASA_s_STERO_Spacecraft
Figuring Firefox just deleted my cookies as it does on occasion, I went to login only to have the strange error claiming my account, pcnerd37 is invalid. Can you shed any light on what is going on? Thanks for your help!Sincerely,
Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Digg's Response:
Thanks for getting in touch with us at Digg.com regarding your account.
Your account was reported to us for abusive activity in comments. Specifically, spamming Digg comments with your blog "Global Geek News has a great blog post about this story, www.globalgeeknews.com/blog"
As explicitly stated in the Digg.com Terms of Service located at http://digg.com/tos section 5.1 USER CONDUCT:
5.1 By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services: to abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Digg users;
Also, note that in our Terms of Service, we reserve the right to, “Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all.”We are willing to unban your account once we receive notification from you that you have reviewed the Digg.com Terms of Service and re-affirm your agreement to those terms.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions.
Thank you,
-The Digg Support Team.
Ok, so I screwed up in two ways on the linking, not only did it not link but I apparently forgot to link to the direct article, but with the story remaining the top post on the blog, the main blog link will still take them to the right story.
Digg Support Team,
I have reviewed your terms of service, which I have always agreed to, and find the complaint without merit. The link which I failed to copy correctly, leaving off the part to the direct article (oops), was for more information on the post in which the comment was left. As a service to my fellow Digg users, I attempted to post a link to a blog post where more information on the dugg story could be found. It was not intended in any way to be "spam". If you want to get real technical about it, since I left off the http://, it was not even hyperlinked in the comments.
The Terms of Service section you quoted me seems to lack application here as I was not trying to abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other digg users. I was merely trying to give them a link for more information on the story which I believe to be in the spirit of Digg. Furthermore, I find actions taking against me were overkill. The appropriate response would be to delete the post and send a warning email, not delete or ban the account. Banning would be understandable if it was a case of repeated "abuse". I would suggest it is time to review your policies for interacting with loyal Digg users.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I will be podcasting and blogging about this experience on Global Geek News.
Sincerely,
Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Digg needs to better define the terms such as "abuse" that it uses in its terms of service to help avoid confusion. Everything else here is fairly self explanatory.
Digg's Response:
Hi Jeremy,
In addition to section 5.1 on the Terms of Use, we would also like to specifically direct your attention to section 5.7 which states that you agree not to use the Services:
to submit stories or comments linking to affiliate programs, multi-level marketing schemes, *sites/blogs repurposing existing stories* (source hops), or off-topic content;
Also, the Digg FAQ directly addresses this policy as well:
Is it ok to put my website link as a signature in comments?
No, it is not okay to advertise anything of any kind in the comments section. We ask that, as a story commenter, you keep your comments on-topic to the story you're currently on. Any irrelevant links, spam, etc. could result in an account ban for the offending user.-Digg Support
Digg is trying to pull relevant policies out of its butt, but they aren't doing a very good job as shown in my response email.
Digg Support,
Thanks for your response. As far as your Section 5.7, had I posted the correct link that I meant to (again, oops), It would clearly not be repurposing the story any more than the Digg story which was just a repurposing of a release from Cisco. In regards to your FAQ, there are two main things. First, It states IRRELEVANT links! The intended link, which I will include was not irrelevant. Second, asking and requiring are two different things. Asking implies a courtesy, not a necessity. If you are going to quote it, please reword it to say what you mean. Last, I noticed you completely avoided the issue about how you deal with these situations and Digg users. I find this very curious as most companies that care about their users would have a clear and consumer centric policy when it comes to dealing with users. It is best to keep in mind that it is the users that keep you in business and relations with them should be as plesant as possible. If you look at product surveys, people believe that a large part of product satisfaction is customer service, something that Digg needs to work on. The Townhalls are a great step in the right direction but not enough to create a great user experience with the company.
Again, I would like to reiterate that I have no problem with your terms of service other than some poor wording, but attempting to scew it to a situation it does not apply is simply childish. I would like to give you the opportunity to publicly address these issues, especially how you deal with users on your site on the Global Geek News podcast. I do not have an exact time yet, but I will be bringing up these issues and believe it is only fair and in everyones best interest if I invite a representative of Digg onto the show to state their case and join in on the discussion. If you would be interested, let me know and I will set everything up.
Here is the link to the story that I meant to put in the comment but didnt realize until after the edit period was over that the link was incorrect: http://globalgeeknews.com/blog/?p=39
Sincerely,
Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
They seem to be having a hard time explaining themselves so I give them the opportunity to explain themselves and have a civilized discussion on my podcast. As it appears in the end, they don't have enough interest to respond to that request. Thy didn't respond after this email ripping into them, so I figured its time to email them to see what is going on.
Digg Support,
What am I to assume from the fact that you did not return my last email? I have stated I have no problem with your terms of service, yet I am still banned. Why? Unless I hear otherwise, I will assume your lack of a response means that you realized you have screwed up but aren't willing to admit it. When it becomes apparent that this email conversation is over, that is when I will post my blog about this experience. My offer allowing somebody from Digg to come on the podcast to discuss various issues including its policies for interacting with users and how it defines its terms of service is still open. We typically record live on Thursdays if somebody would be interested in joining us. I finalize all show guests by Wednesday night, so you have until then to make arrangements to be on the podcast if you choose. Whether or not you are there, this will be discussed and I feel it is better for digg to be upfront and deal with this issue in an intelligent and civilized manner. If you choose not to take that path, I wish you luck with the bad publicity that results from the podcast and blog. I look forward to futher communications to resolve this issue in a way that can satisfy both parties.
Sincerely,
Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
I again ask Digg to have somebody on the podcast to talk about these issues but they still don't respond to the idea.
Digg's Response:
Hello Jeremy,
Sorry we didn't get back t you sooner. We have unbanned your account. Please note, however, that your account will remain under review, and any violation of Digg’s Terms of Service may result in a permanent ban of your account.
For more information, please see http://digg.com/faq and http://digg.com/tos.
--Digg Support
Getting unbanned is a partial victory. Since this was the last email they sent to me, I have no idea how long I will will "remain under review." There are still many other issues that need addressed but at least I can now Digg stories and leave comments (Not that I couldn't as I do have multiple accounts).
Digg Support,
Thanks for getting back to me. I greatly appreciate being unbanned from my favorite social news website. How long will my account remain under review? All of my points from my previous two emails still stand including my invitation to be on my podcast. Thanks again!
Sincerely,
Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
That is basically everything that has transpired as of this time as it appears they don't want to email me back or appear on the podcast. There are still some major issues here, mainly revolving around how Digg interacts with its users. Banning users with no warning and only giving the error "Invalid Account" is not how to deal with users. If that wasn't bad enough, their pathetic attempts to hide behind their "Terms of Service" and "FAQ" is laughable. Unless there is a huge demand, I will reserve further comment for the next Global Geek News podcast since this is already an extremely long post. If anybody from Digg reads this, the invitation to be on the podcast is still open but you don't have much time to respond! While I am not yet calling for a boycott of digg as I am still a loyal Digg fan, I will say becareful and when you have to deal with Digg, demand a higher level of customer relations than this pathic thing they have now!
Stay tuned for the podcast where I will talk about this in greater detail!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Changes on the Global Geek News Blog
Greetings Readers!
I just thought I would post to make everybody aware of the new changes in out legal section. I have adopted new Terms of Service which I recommend reading. They can be found by clicking on the Legal tab at the top of this page.
The Global Geek News podcast will be coming back very soon.
And finally, expect a big post coming regarding my issues with Digg.com since I found myself banned this morning. I will be posting all correspondance with Digg.com and am trying to get them to come on the podcasts to defend themselves. Depending on how much longer the correstpondance continues, the post could be up as soon as tomorrow.
That is all the updates I have for now, but do expect a greater number of blog postings as I have been doing the past couple of days.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
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