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Sony BMG is being sued in the US for collecting data on children without their parents' consent. A $1m payout to settle the suit is reportedly close to agreement, Bloomberg reports.

Information on 30,000 kids under 13 was allegedly collected by music label Sony BMG Music Entertainment in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. A lawsuit, filed by US consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission in a New York court on Wednesday, seeks an injunction against Sony and unspecified damages.

The legal claims that Sony collected the information from youngsters registering with any of the 1,100 music and band-related websites it has run since 2004, despite claims that pre-pubescent teens weren't allowed to sign up. Potentially sensitive data including names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth and even mobile phone numbers was reportedly logged.

Citing unnamed insiders as a source, Bloomberg reports that Sony BMG is on the verge of agreeing a settlement. Sony is reportedly offering to hire a compliance officer to establish procedures to prevent the collection of data on kids, and pay $1m in fines, in order to settle the lawsuit. ®

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Latest Comments

As I understand it...

I am not a lawyer, etc.

It is Sony's fault if they collected the data without the obligatory 'you must be over thirteen' checkbox.

If the person lied about their age, Sony isn't at fault.

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Anonymous Coward

the age of child abuse and lust for money.

What's a "pre-pubescent teen"..and how is that sexual status judged?. If only Australians could rise above "low brow" American language and a.d.h.d .-provoking entertainment how well off we might be rather than having a generation which has lost sight of how to properly use its own language.

As for the morals and integrity of Sony...appalling , despicable, one should tell them so. At the same time cultivated ignorence and intellectual-distancing is a feature of the new world order.

Children are deliberately alienated from parents and wisdom as early as possible so as to turn them into disatisfied and greedy individual consumers. A new culture has been created for them by the various cash-seeking media. That culture revolves around myopic fixations of "self".

Having said that ,they are no worse than being younger victims to Sony and numerous others as we all are to the betrayals of trusting internet users by Yahoo and Google or the disingenuous invasions and genocide of Iraq and Palestine.

In an age of blatant agression and relentless lying by our banker/financier captive cultures I suppose the children of it see nothing but their own hedonism and a mature reality seems far away. Companies have no real integrity or decency, so whatever works is what fills their pockets.

It's up to us to drag these companies down through voting with our wallets rather than lazy-mindedly rely on he legal process in the courts. A million dollars to Sony isn't even a tiny dent, a hundred million might make it think a little.

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Whose fault??

So it's everyone's fault rather than Sony?...who provided the system to collect the data? who saw it as again for sale?

With corruption suffocating us and conspiracies which include our present economic downturn deliberately, not acidentally, created by banks now being rewarded for dragging us all into shattered lives for their own greed, to bring the new world order into its final days of long-recorded implementation you want to say "it's not Sony's fault".

In answer to one question raised ....it's not run from Tokyo, Japan is simply a willing agency in the mind meltdown of those who have no better life than obsessions with vile and violent computer games. Only 5 Nations remain whose central banks are not owned by the same business which owns the Bank of England and the Federal reserve....and obviously numerous others. Those 5 nations which have resisted enslavement are called by Bush "the axis of evil" which is rather a line between Washington and tel Aviv, when one understands fact.

There were six ideologically uncorrupted central banks but iIraq was invaded and so far nearly 50% of its population has been murdered ..and its central banking system looted whilst we sit around navel gazing.

The disaster of which Sony's actions are merely the dop in the ocean in stealing people's privacy and "democratic rights" revolves around the enslavement of people's minds and money through what is termed "globalisation".

To find why corruption is endemic begin with 1743 then move forward to Amschel Rothschild in 1777 and then continue work forward.....find who does in fact control the world. It might open your eyes to the indoctrination of children by the forces of evil and the capturing and storage of all of our personal information since the 1980's through 'Promis' and 'Echelon', the two most common assassination based programmes.

Your government bought Promis to spy on you in the late 80's and early 90's but it was sold already trapdoored to Israel and soon after to Washington. It's purpose is primarily assassination but governments use it to collect data on your transactions. Echelon is an american spy programme which reads for "key words" in every piece of electronic mail and every satellite assisted phone call .These programmes have been used to target scores of thousands of people, their mobile phones are used to "gps" them and track them and then laser guided or other assassination takes place as required.

This is your brave new world. It's comprised of "Sony"s and a vast array of immoral companies which make money from breaching your privacy. This letter could well end up on the web without my knowledge or agreement as who know whether the register has integrity? Websites think they have the right to do as they please without accountability...even if accountability were practical and enforcable.

You may be happy with that short sighted view of the right to privacy but I am not. You maay be happy to be a pawn of the new world order, I am not, nor am I happy to be a pawn because you don't care or because you think we should all be happy to be controlled by central data bases, banks,financiers and fore-lock tugging governments.

Perhaps some education in the reality of enslaved political systems, enslaved because "who controls the money supply, irrespective of any government or change of government, rules the Nation and the world, might lead to a reviewing of the concept that a company which sets out to take and use your information or your children's information is innocent of any crime against us.

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