A federal judge has fully dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against Sony over the electronics giant's decision to axe "Other OS" support from its PlayStation 3 console.

US District Court Judge Richard Seeborg granted a request by Sony to dismiss the case under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because there were insufficient facts to hold the company liable, CourthouseNews reports.

"The dismay and frustration at least some PS3 owners likely experienced when Sony made the decision to limit access to the PSN service to those who were willing to disable the Other OS feature on their machines was no doubt genuine and understandable," Seeborg said in his ruling.

"As a matter of providing customer satisfaction and building loyalty, it may have been questionable."

But "as a legal matter... plaintiffs have failed to allege facts or articulate a theory on which Sony may be held liable," he concluded.

The Lawsuite was filed back in April 2010.  Good to see it dismissed.

What do you mean, "good?" It was immoral, in the legal opinion of the judge it was immoral, he simply didn't find it legally actionable due to the plaintiff's failure of articulation

Sony shouldn't abuse their position as sole content provider to simply force people to give up functionality in one area to gain functionality in another, if the earlier functionality was something they paid for as part of the purchase of the initial device itself and not related to the network service, which is discrete from the purchased device. Despite the legal fantasies and fairy-stories Sony attempts to weave, claiming that they own your copy of the operating firmware on the device and have the right to alter it at will is just that: fairy stories and contrived bullshit in an attempt to circumcede established consumer law

Why do you think they bullied geohotz into submission, and screamed like mad to try and twist that case to their favor at every step? This disputes the same underlying principle, whereby they know that if they were actually brought to trial on any of this, they would get their asses handed to them so hard that Stringer wouldn't be able to sit down for a year.

I mean "Good" Sony did nothing illegal, and anybody who thought these lawsuites would result in anything different were jsut hoping for it becasue they have blind hate for a company who did nothing wrong in taking away a feature almost nobody used and not exactly a "key" feature of a gaming console. Anybody who bought one purely for the use of Linux had 4 years of good use, sell the playstation and move on.

"claiming that they own your copy of the operating firmware on the device and have the right to alter it at will is just that"

actually thats not really accurate it was never stated that they have the right to modify your software ( the user does that voluntarily ), in fact i would say that indeed the user has control over the current version of software on the system

...but the fact still remains that for continued access to their network you have to download their software updates 

Sad sad day when a company gets away with ripping it's fans off and they defend it :(

Good, because the argument was moot. If they still wanted to use Linux, they simply shouldn't update past the update where it was removed, simple as that.

You say it as though people had a legitimate choice.  They didn't.

That's an ultimatum.

Sony got away with telling people, DO THIS OR ELSE.

On principle, Sony should have lost this.

No, Sony said that you can continue to use Linux, but if you do, you can't use the PlayStation Network

It is very simple, and this is why Sony make consumers agree to things, so that they can keep control of the system

Completely reasonable what Sony did. They had no chance of winning nor did they deserve to.

People had a choice to continue playin games or remove otherOS. ps3 firmware updates also come on game discs not just when you connect to the psn. The choice wasn't otherOS or psn, it was otherOS or playing games.