Sony Can Monitor and Share your PSN Activity, You Don’t Own Your Games

[Michael McAllister]

According to Technobuffalo, there has been much fervor over Sony's UK TOS for the PS4/PSN.  Apparently, you do not own your games (shocker!) and Sony reserves the right to monitor ALL of your activity (sound familiar?).

14. Are we monitoring PSN?
14.1. Yes but we can’t monitor all PSN activity and we make no commitment to do so. However, we reserve the right in our sole discretion to monitor and record any or all of your PSN activity and to remove any of your UGM at our sole discretion, without further notice to you. Your use of PSN and our community features may be recorded and collected by us or sent to us by other users as described in 13.1.
Any information collected in this way, for example, your UGM, the content of your voice and text communications, video of your gameplay, the time and location of your activities, and your name, your PSN Online ID and IP address, may be used by us or our affiliated companies to enforce these Terms and the SEN Terms of Service, to comply with the law, to protect our rights and those of our licensors and users, and to protect the personal safety of our employees and users.”

Not only can they collect your data, but they can send said data to "affliates" (probably advertisers).  The author notes there is some muddled language regarding the resell of physical discs.

In fact, Section 7 goes completely against what Sony had announced at E3 regarding used games sale: “You must not resell either Disc-based Software or Software Downloads, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher.”

 

 

 

Sony clarified this (I guess) to Polygon by saying:
 

 

“As we announced at E3, use of disc-based games will be similar to how PS3 works today. When gamers buy a PS4 disc, they can use that copy of the game, trade-in the game at retail, sell it to another person, lend it to a friend, or keep it forever.”

 

 

Personally, this doesn't really address the reasoning for the wording to me.  Just seems like they're restating what they had said before.

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What are your thoughts?  Is this a bonified (invoke Nancy Grace) BOMBSHELL?! *facepalm* or is this post a waste of bandwith? 

[rhyseyness]

Well PSN does kinda sound like NSA...

Could explain the behaviour?

[SteepGnomeKing]

Do they monitor? YES, They need to. If you report someone how can they enforce it if they don't have proof. PS3 and 360 did this.

 

Do you own the game? No, Every single game now you buy a license to use it and play that game. Every PC game through steam does this also. They can cancel it or ban you at any time. Will they? Not unless you hack and cheat, and than I say great, I don't want those people playing that game anyways.

 

So many things are being blown out of proportion just to get a headline, it's sad really.

[Michael McAllister]

I understand monitoring is necessary to an extent, but shouldn't there be a reason?  Sony receives a complaint, they monitor.  Monitoring everything by default just has an ick factor to it.

[SteepGnomeKing]

I understand monitoring is necessary to an extent, but shouldn't there be a reason?  Sony receives a complaint, they monitor.  Monitoring everything by default just has an ick factor to it.

 

Say I report you for saying hate speech and being a racist, Sony goes, well sorry we don't have any records of that so yea to bad sorry.

 

They record as a way to back up reports not to keep on data centres and search through it and get information on you. Not even the NSA does that. They might have it but they only access it if they see a reason to.

[Snickerzz]

Steam and Origin can do the same thing

[Michael McAllister]

So if the NSA does it, it's not okay.  If corporatations do it, it's no biggie?  C'mon on, guys.  You do not see any contradiction there?

[Blue fellow]

So if the NSA does it, it's not okay.  If corporatations do it, it's no biggie?  C'mon on, guys.  You do not see any contradiction there?

 

If a corporation does it on a product that is not theirs, then that is a biggie. But if a corporation does it on a product that is theirs, then no it's not a big deal. There's a huge difference between that and a government doing it on other people's services, and being paid to do that by the same people's taxes.

 

I have a choice in using PSN, if I don't want to be monitored by Sony, I don't use it. I don't have a choice in the NSA's services, or any other government monitoring. 

[MrPete1985]

Every EULA says you do not own your game, you just buy a license to use the software.

[Canoas]

I do not see how this is not normal. If they didn't record your stuff then how do you expect them to even ban people? "Oh, we have a hundred complain about this guy but since we don't record anything there's no way to ban him". lol, do you realize how ridiculous that is?

Every single game company monitors everything you say in their game. If you start insulting people in a Blizzard game then he mods will have chat logs to check. If you do it in LoL then Riot will have the same chat logs. If you do it here then mods also have chat logs or in this case actual posts. Why exactly would PSN not record anything? They have to if they want to enforce anything. And I quite like the fact that if someone harasses me or even shouts some death threats I have the ability to report him/her and there will be an appropriate action because those threats/insults were logged.

 

Of course, this can have some negative impacts, like the guy who was playing lol and jokingly said he was going to commit mass murder at his school only to be arrested. On the other hand, if he was indeed being serious then you'd very much applaud that he was arrested.

I also remember a somewhat similar case in WoW where a few guild members suspected that other two members, a young girl and a old guy, were going to meet IRL. They found it a bit "weird" so they contacted a GM which then checked the logs and also found it unusual. This escalated and they found out that the guy was actually a registered sex offender and thanks to the new regulations set in place due to 9/11 they were legally allowed to disclose the information to the police.

I think it was in WoW, but now I'm not entirely sure. Either way the point stands, all the info needs to be logged for moderation/rule enforcement purposes and they need to be able to disclose the information if needed.

[MbV93]

This is completely normal...

[Ethnod]

While this sounds extreme, companies have had this access before and now they are making it clear that they are and will be doing it and this might mean that they are going to be taking harsher action with bullying and anti-social activity on PSN. If that is the case then great, if its a move for US law enforcement only... not great tbh

[Michael McAllister]

I do not see how this is not normal. If they didn't record your stuff then how do you expect them to even ban people? "Oh, we have a hundred complain about this guy but since we don't record anything there's no way to ban him". lol, do you realize how ridiculous that is?

Every single game company monitors everything you say in their game. If you start insulting people in a Blizzard game then he mods will have chat logs to check. If you do it in LoL then Riot will have the same chat logs. If you do it here then mods also have chat logs or in this case actual posts. Why exactly would PSN not record anything? They have to if they want to enforce anything. And I quite like the fact that if someone harasses me or even shouts some death threats I have the ability to report him/her and there will be an appropriate action because those threats/insults were logged.

 

Of course, this can have some negative impacts, like the guy who was playing lol and jokingly said he was going to commit mass murder at his school only to be arrested. On the other hand, if he was indeed being serious then you'd very much applaud that he was arrested.

I also remember a somewhat similar case in WoW where a few guild members suspected that other two members, a young girl and a old guy, were going to meet IRL. They found it a bit "weird" so they contacted a GM which then checked the logs and also found it unusual. This escalated and they found out that the guy was actually a registered sex offender and thanks to the new regulations set in place due to 9/11 they were legally allowed to disclose the information to the police.

I think it was in WoW, but now I'm not entirely sure. Either way the point stands, all the info needs to be logged for moderation/rule enforcement purposes and they need to be able to disclose the information if needed.

 

I could be completely wrong in my interpretation of the article, but it seems like Sony would be actively monitoring those conversations.  It's one thing to keep chat logs for settling harassment cases.  It's quite another to have those conversations constantly monitored.

I'm not really all that concerned with the software licensing in terms of game ownership.  That has unfortunately been the reality of software for a while.

[Canoas]

I could be completely wrong in my interpretation of the article, but it seems like Sony would be actively monitoring those conversations.  It's one thing to keep chat logs for settling harassment cases.  It's quite another to have those conversations constantly monitored.

I veeeeeeeeeeeery much doubt they'd actively monitor anything, just imagine how many moderators that would require. But even if that is the case then what exactly is the problem? They're not monitoring your private conversations, they're monitoring the chat/voice in games, it's very much public. Having them actively moderated would just mean a faster response and rule enforcement. Instead of you hvaing to report someone and after a week he gets a ban the dude would be banned by the moderator on the spot. That's it. They're not listening to your phones or private conversations, they're listening to what you say to the other 63 players in a public game.

[alepodj]

tell me again,,, why are we buying a console? cant remember?

[JAKEBAB]

"Yes but we can’t monitor all PSN activity and we make no commitment to do so. However, we reserve the right in our sole discretion to monitor and record any or all of your PSN activity and to remove any of your UGM at our sole discretion, without further notice to you."

 

This line really confuses me they say they cant monitor all psn and then say they reserve the right to monitor all psn activity? contradicting much?

[WanderingFool]

"Yes but we can’t monitor all PSN activity and we make no commitment to do so. However, we reserve the right in our sole discretion to monitor and record any or all of your PSN activity and to remove any of your UGM at our sole discretion, without further notice to you."

 

This line really confuses me they say they cant monitor all psn and then say they reserve the right to monitor all psn activity? contradicting much?

 

It isn't really contradictory....the key is in the slight word changes that change the meanings drastically.  The first sentence they are merely saying they will have no plans to monitor all of the PSN activities (this is for me, you and everyone else who uses PSN).  The second sentence changes quite a bit with the word "your"  They are basically saying that they might start recording a specifics persons activities, whether it is a particular activity or all activities....not for all people.