Sony Reserves Right to "Monitor and Record" PS4 User Communication

[Keiichi Morisato]

you guys want a police state? Mii Verse is the place to go. also guys, even escapist does this.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

You know Sony, you're failing miserably at selling me on your console. In fact you're doing a wonderful job of ensuring I never buy one.

then stop using the internet, or going on Escapist, because even escapist does the same thing, how do you think they ban people?

Not the same thing and you know it.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

and suddenly the PS4 isn't looking so hot now. Looks like first year issues are cropping up already and the thing isn't even out yet.

 

[Strazdas]

Ah, the big borther watching you, you just cant escape it now can you?
Well, theres only one platform that remains anonymouse, PC. Just so happens i have one, oh my!

Pretty sure this violates a few wire-tapping laws.

It doesn't, you are using their network to send messages to other users on their network. They can monitor it all they want.

well google lost the court about wire taping gmail because the content of messages you send with thier network arep rivate and cannot be read by the company even if its a robot searching for spam. so Sony is definatelly in the wrong here. question is, will they get called on it?

Meaning you either agree to be monitored or you don't use their software. It's a contract that you agree to, meaning everything you posted above is irrelevant.

Do you sign (and i mean phyiscally put down a signature) the contract before buying the console? If the answer is no then the contract is void and irrelevant.

It's cool it's Sony these guys can do no wrong!....................right?

Sony wins not becuase it does something amazing or that it fights for the consumer. Sony wins because it does the least shit in comparison and often keeps statusQ where other companies go downhill. Sony is not great, its just better than others.

Are they breaking any laws? No, not really.

They are if EU court against google is anything to go by.

Which is funny because that is from the EU's EULA. The NA EULA hasn't been officially released yet.

Oh, they always make those Eulas, because they dont know any better and hope costumers wont know any better. It also allows easy jutification for banning users from their network (they can ban them for breaking Eula, they cant however sue you or do anything illegal because of it). EULAs and TOS for games in europe are mostly a "we go a right to block your game for X" type of deals.

This is once again much ado about nothing. Pretty much any online service these days will have similar understandings. This is part of their enforcement mechanism to stop things like cyber stalking and criminal activity over their networks. Things like "real world threats made over PSN will be handed off to appropriate police agencies." I don't think we have any reasonable expectation of total privacy of voice or text communication over a privately owned gaming network. The trick is that we have assurances that any such data will be used exclusively for TOS and law enforcement purposes, and not direct targeted marketing.

Normally voice chat was pretty safe because good enough voice recognition robots were pretty much non-existen and manual labour would require them to hire half of the worlds population to work though it. Now as voice recognition improves however....

Isn't this the same as facebook or other messaging services recording conversations? I'm pretty sure this is SOP for messaging services that don't advertise on the basis of anonymity and "untraceable" conversations.

It's probably a security system put in place so they can actually catch bad people.

Actually most games with built in conversation record your conversations. Why? So we can ban them and find out if they're doing illicit things. This is nothing new at all.

It is and i dont use facebook. Skype which i am forced to use has server logs which cant be deleted. you can make sure you wont see them but they got all of what i said 10 years ago.
Most games have a settings whetrher to turn on or off text logging. voice logging is nonexistent unless you record it manually.

This is hardly new. Even going back to the Billboard dial in days, or IRC networks, the server controllers have always been able to monitor stuff.

thier level of monitoring was "x neighboarhood is calling to X city, i should connect this wire". if anything, now they have much higher monitoring ability in there. of course the "operators" (really, you had those, we never had those in my country, almost make me jelous) could talk to the person calling in if one was used.

Seriously, monitoring text and voice comments? How do they even know the difference between friendly banter and actual threats?

How 'bout, the latter gets reported while the former doesn't. That's how I'd handle it, at least: record everything so it can be used as evidence, but don't look at it until someone speaks up and says something wrong went down. Sony's approach will probably involve more ignoring reports because hiring a decent moderation staff costs money.

and then you get the situations where two friends talk together and oen of them calls the other "my nigga", a bystander not related to covnersation gets insulted and gets the guy jailed for racism. True story. Now imagine the bystander is a griefer in a match. yeah.....

you guys want a police state? Mii Verse is the place to go. also guys, even escapist does this.

If the laws of such state are fair, why not?

 

[Church185]

well google lost the court about wire taping gmail because the content of messages you send with thier network arep rivate and cannot be read by the company even if its a robot searching for spam. so Sony is definatelly in the wrong here. question is, will they get called on it?

They are if EU court against google is anything to go by.

Oh, they always make those Eulas, because they dont know any better and hope costumers wont know any better. It also allows easy jutification for banning users from their network (they can ban them for breaking Eula, they cant however sue you or do anything illegal because of it). EULAs and TOS for games in europe are mostly a "we go a right to block your game for X" type of deals.

According to Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/us-google-privacy-eu-idUSBRE89F10620121016]: "That led the national regulators to issue 12 recommendations for Google to bring its privacy policy into line, including better informing users on how data will be used, and setting precise periods for data to be retained."

Sony has complied with those standards, by informing customers through EULA that they will be monitoring messages (and only messages) sent on PSN.