that a company the size of Sony has not already got several dozens of "compliance officers" working in EVERY country it is present in ensuring that they comply with local and national laws.

"Sony is reportedly offering to hire a compliance officer to establish procedures to prevent the collection of data on kids"

Do they think they are so large that national laws not not apply to them. Corporate narcissism, anyone?

bloody bunch of paedophiles!

mines the one with the daily mail in the pocket ;)

gets the same total award as 30,000 CDs siezed in a raid is said to be worth.

Anyone else see the idiocy here?

The clueless media will be in a feeding frenzy ranting about something they know little about, the Sony haters will doing likewise, along with creaming their pants.

But am I the only one who thinks part of this should be on the parents of these kids? Sony should have software or something recognizing an age when someone enters their birth date (I would be surprised to find out if they didn't already). But yes that's limited because kids are going to lie but again.....that falls on the parents NOT Sony. Companies are keeping records of adults as well and I find it hard to think that they should be held responsible when/if kids are lying. If Sony knew they were holding records on minors then they're at fault, if it's a matter of kids lying on their ages to access these sites Sony's not at fault.

In their own way, of course.

I'm thinking here of, first, their disastrous DRMed CDs from a few years ago, now this, with a few other dimly documented faux pas along the way.

What's the common thread? The view that customers' computers are there for the corporation's benefit, not the customers'. I won't even hazard a guess whether this is some evil, deliberate corporate ploy, or merely a sign of stupidity and disorganization within the corporation.

Or is it that everything is run from Tokyo and the bigwigs there don't bother to inform themselves about lowly gaijin laws and customs?

> am I the only one who thinks part of this should be on the parents of these kids?

Yes. The green lawn-mowers will be round at your place shortly.

It wasn't *just* rootkits. It was wide-scale, for-profit piracy! LAME? GPL'd. Used against the license for the profit of the people committing the infringement.

I agree, unless there's some kind of law that I haven't heard of, it sounds like it's the kids fault here. I know that I lied about my age just to register on some websites a few years ago, that certainly doesn't make it the organizations fault, it was my fault.

Sony should delete the information, yes, but I don't think that they should lose money for it.

"30,000 kids under 13 "

Who gets the settlement?

$1 million split up among the 30,000 children is $33 each. Are they all going to get this settlement?

Yes there is a measure of blame to be laid at Sony's doorstep over this. However the bulk of the blame for this has to lay at the parents feet. I'm no Sony fanboi and have been vocal about their other screw ups but in this case having them pony up over this mess I think is punishing them for the wrong reasons.

If the kids lied about their age, then Sony are NOT holding birthdates.. at least, not the ones belonging to the little tykes themselves?

Leeds Councli who lost a memory stick with thousands of kids' information.

Perhaps some American lawyers could find rich pickings here in the UK where government, central and local, has turned gathering and losing information into an art form.

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.

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.

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.