You say that your not a pirate, yet running roms on your emulators says otherwise. Roms are copyrighted games.

then why no injunction against Sony yet to halt the distribution of 3.21 pending legal inquiry?

touche

If hes playing rom of discontinued hard to find game that you cannot purchase anymore that doesnt make him a pirate. Roms and emulator can be a great thing, it assure that a game can live past it physic era. Particularly helpful when the developers are close or if they dont want to re-release the software on a new platform. Tough, on everything else I agree with you ;).

this is why we can't have nice things.

Pirates try to fight the big companies, but because they fight, regular customers like you and I get slapped with DRM, higher prices and the removal of features.

We as consumers should stand against pirates, it's time for them to all go to jail, after all because of them the rest of us suffer with DRM and such.

Because they are still building a case, and I suspect they want to make sure everything is iron clad. The ACCC's official response is that they're unable to respond at this point of time. Them acting prematurely would be as foolish as police arresting someone for a crime when they were still in the process of gathering concrete evidence. It's a similar situation to the end of last year where I was the victim of a violent crime. Police did not want to move until their case was rock solid. What resulted was that my perpetrator was forced to plead guilty. The same holds true with this situation.

What you're bringing up is a different issue. I agree completely that pirates do keep games prices higher (although the counter argument is that if games were about $50 on launch as opposed to $100 then there would be a reduced market for piracy) and that it does have a negative impact on the games industry with their share not going back to the games companies themselves, however 2 breaches of the law do not equate to immunity from prosecution. Furthermore, in cases such as MAME, companies need to start seeing things as an opportunity, not a threat when problems also present marketting opportunities. An I-tunes type marketting solution would for example, be the perfect solution to that problem. Again though in the case of the VC, prices should come down a fair bit again, to minimise piracy. The Megadrive games compilations for Xbox and the PS3 for example, are an exellect example of what I'm referring to, considering the number of games you get for under $40. In fact were it not for Sony pulling this, I was planning on picking up said compilation this month.

they could still ask for an interim interdict, providing that remedy is available in the jurisdiction they are filing (or going to file) the complaint against Sony.

the courts can issue it sometimes in a day if they show that they have a prima facie right exists and a reasonable apprehention that the right is being and will continue to be infringed before the main case even gets to court.

unfortunately, I don't think the above can be shown by the complainants, so now if they are going forward with this court case, it's going to be be difficult to show it's not a waste of the courts time and money.

imo.

Except that you're being overly simplistic in your analysis. The fact is that the way Sony will be able to wriggle out of this is through some technicality or loophole. If the ACCC act prematurely, they risk giving corporate high paid lawyers a crack in the armour to turn into a mile wide loophole. The law in this case is clear cut and Sony have clearly breached it. However the legal system is every bit as much about the way things can be twisted as it is about actual law. That's the reality you seem to be overlooking.

if the breach is that clear cut, the ACCC should be able to move as soon as possible to prevent Sony from distributing this software update (i.e. interim interdict).

They haven't done this.

the best they can really hope for will be for the courts to force Sony to return Other OS functionality.

I highly doubt people will be able to claim any money out of it but weirder things have happened.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it is the ACCC who should be moving faster, not Sony if the ACCC wishes to be successful, and so far they've been pretty slow. if they were serious, they would have at least tried for some form of interdict imo.

I just don't believe the ACCC has much of a chance personally, thus the stalling while they try think of something that won't get them and the case thrown out of court.

but like I've said, weirder things have happened.

also, the ACCC is just Australia based, what other organisations worldwide have seen fit take it upon themselves to raise similar actions?

*looks at google to find some*

interesting if true...

I just rang the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and they said under our [Australian] laws sony isn't allowed to do this, as it breaks the sale agreement, because it was an advertised feature... but... sony can't be taken to court over the matter by a consumer, only those who purchased direct from sony. As a consumer here we can demand a refund or remedy from the retailer but not sony