"and the British judicial system that found against them."

They are just as guilty. Commence American vs. European bashing!

/sarcasm on the whole country bashing thing.

Love or hate Sony, they have a point.

I like how Brian seems to sympathize with Lik Sang violating their own privacy policy. No where in does it say that they can use your information to attack the company you respresent.

This better build up to some genius Sony statements or I'll cry. I need stupidity from Sony.

"Lik-Sang did not contest this case (i.e. they did not turn up and therefore incurred no legal costs). We have been awarded substantial costs against Lik-Sang which have not been paid," the statement claims."

Didn't they just answer their own querstion there? They say they have been awarded substatial costs that have not been paid. Meaning Lik Sang owes them. And if Lik Sang can't afford these "substantial costs" then they would have to close up shop. Which appears to have happened. Did I miss somthing in my train of logic, or is Sony realy just that stupid?

"Love or hate Sony, they have a point."

They sure due.

Hey Kotaku, where is the hatorade against Lik Sang for releasing private information? You were all over Sony. What Lik Sang did was something knowingly unethical and wrong on many levels with online etailers code of conduct.

Although I ought to be objective, Sony can, and should, go to hell. I rule in favor of Lik-Sang sympathy. There is no heart in the Sony Empire. There is only black ooze, thick and viral.

True Gloominati. And this should be a lesson to everyone, there's always two sides to every story.

I think that if it was part of the case against them, they would be allowed to mention that the executives bought them. After all, Sony brought that fact public by themselves.

Two men enter! One man leaves!

No, but you have to appreciate the irony of Sony using privacy as defense...

-cough- rootkit -cough-

What did they need to investigate? Maybe it's because PSPs aren't selling so they needed to investigate to see if they are even on the market.
ZING!

Purchased for investigatory purposes lol yeah, right ... how many do you have to buy to do that? And, why would you use your executives names? That's lamest excuse I've ever heard ... wouldn't it be their legal department that purchsed the units?

yeah Sony, you tell'em, they are bad people.

I agree Lik-Sang is just being a bitch. And releasing private customer information is retarded. I mean, wtf?

They may have been well within their legal rights going after Lik Sang but it seems that they have better things to do than spend all this time and money in litigation. The fact that Sony responded so quickly and bitterly tells you that they do feel the burn.

For all the anti-Sony ranting and raving, this is still essentially Sony's free PS3 marketing division. If a Sony exec so much as farts, Kotaku is there to tell you how this affects the European release date.

Lik Sang IS being a bitch - That's just juvenile, "We are mad so we are just gonna start throwing personal information of our customers we obviously don't give a sh*t about." Excuse Sony for acting within the law.

'investigation purposes '

??? kinda like the time i downloaded a XXX movie thinking it was a prequel to the van diesel movies.

The investigation paid off, didnt it sony? :)

Gloominati: Love or hate Sony, they have a point.

And what point would that be? That you can force a smaller company you dislike out of business by spamming the EU legal system with less-than-honest lawsuits and hoping something sticks?

can someone explain the legal implications of importing to other countries, im pretty sure anybody can get away with it on eBay, why is LikSang any different?

Corporate spin at it's finest.

*www.paulvsdave.com

I believe Lik-Sang has already responded. They're newest press release on their site states something along the lines of Sony making games, but the way their mom is a whore being a dirty shame.

Sony's legal team is preparing a counter-response referring to the smallness of Lik-Sang's penis, and their lack of prowess in using it on their own (Lik-Sang's) mother.

Sony sinks their company, damn right they're bitter.

@ Fuzz

They say they have been awarded substatial costs that have not been paid. Meaning Lik Sang owes them. And if Lik Sang can't afford these "substantial costs" then they would have to close up shop.

I agree with your logic. So technically Sony did bleed them. They did catch Lik-Sang with revealing customer information, which I assume they can sue them for that too.

well, here is their privacy policy:

http://lik-sang.com/master.php?navbar=Privacy&inc=privacy....

They don't realy say anything about not sharing that information (although they don't say they make it available either). Because they don't expressly SAY that they won't share customer information, I think they are on safe ground. Not totally moral, but safe legaly perhaps. Of course, IANAL.

I'm sure they did it becuase of sour grapes, but who amoung us wouldn't be heartbroken right now if a company you built up over the years with a solid reputation, supllying a niche market with what they wanted gets taken to court and shut down by the very company that you are supporting by reselling their product? I'd be a little sour, too.

PS.Kotaku seams to be very broken today.

The reason why Lik-Sang didn't turn up is because they couldn't afford to, I mean they were being sued by Sony in 14-15 other countries too, remember? So YES, Sony IS responsible for Lik-Sang's closure entirely.

This statement just seems like provocation on Sony's part. I'm sure they want to get Lik-Sang all riled-up and to pursue legal actions (or counter-legal, or whatever- Hey, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know all the legal-ese), so they can trash them with their corporate lawyers who get paid a lot of money to win court cases. Of course, that hasn't always helped them in the past. If anyone wants me, I'll be over there, hanging out with my good pals Rumble-Features and Common-Decency.

From what I understood was that Sony had multiple cases filed where Lik-Sang would have to have representatives in many different countries at one time and there was no way they had the resources for that.

Fuzz is right, you know...

@Fuzz

That's their fault by not even bothering to showing up to the trial

Lik Sang wins by sympathy vote

And I think Sony could burn babies to fuel blu ray diodes and EnigmaNemesis would defend them to the bitter end.

"they have successfully sued Pacific Game Technology, which owns Lik-Sang"
"Lik-Sang did not contest this case"
If Sony was suing PGT then why would Lik-Sang contest it?

I think lik-sang still has a reasonable case. From what I understand, there were multiple cases pending all across Europe. They realized that they could afford to defend every single case, and it only takes losing one case to lose them all. So they cut their losses and folded while they still had any money at all.

Now, they should probably go ahead and pay the damages that were awarded for that one case, but then again shouldn't sony be paying up in all of their lost cases (ie: Immersion)?

As for the privacy issue... probably not the smartest thing to do, but then again, the sony Execs are semi-public figures. Lik-sang did not divulge any personal information about the executives, only the fact that the execs were in fact customers of lik-sang.

Either way, I'll care about the loss of privacy of a few sony executives the day that they care about the loss of privacy that they caused with the whole root-kit fiasco.

Neither company is completely in the right here, but I still feel that in the big picture, lik-sang is being bullied out of existence and for that I am extremely displeased with sony.

Jeez how poor do you honestly think Lik Sang was? This wasn't some mom and pop store, but a multinational company itself, to say that they didn't even have the money to show up to a singular trial either is completely ridiculous or if actually true would showed that Lik Sang was already close to collapse even without Sony pressure

"@Fuzz

That's their fault by not even bothering to showing up to the trial"

Basically. Not showing up shows guilt in the eyes of most courts. They could have won the case for all anyone knew.

Anyways, Nintendo, MSFT, Sony, European government, and even Lik Sang are all at fault with the problems over the years.

Like Sony-made batteries....

Kaboom!

"If anyone wants me, I'll be over there, hanging out with my good pals Rumble-Features and Common-Decency."

I hope you are talking about Nintendo and not MS.

For all you people who are siding with sony. Can you be in so many different countries at once?

For a small company of course there will be some court cases that you wont have the money to attend .especially since they are based in hong kong and had so many different pending court cases.

Sony did that purposely knowing full well it would drive the company out of business

Wait, so Sony's reason we shouldn't be mad at them for suing Lik-Sang out of existence is that they ALREADY sued them out of existence, so it's too late to be mad now?

Has anyone actually listened to what they said?

"We would therefore strongly deny that our actions have had anything to do with this website closing."

Why does anything Sony says hold water after making that statement? It is an illogical leap to believe that. But then again Sony supporters are used to making illogical leaps of faith.

If Sony had not sued Lik-Sang, this would not have happened. I guess I was wrong about Sony executives...EVERYONE at Sony is batshit crazy.

OF COURSE lik sang didn't argue the case....that was the whole point. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO FIGHT IT. So they did not...so they were correct when they were saying that the legal costs were too high for them to fight. As a result of not being able to afford fighting it, they have to pay sony by default (since they automatically lose the case). Either way you put it, the fact remains that they would still be in business if Sony hadn't sued them on multiple accounts.

END OF STORY

"Investigatory" purposes...? Pull the other one, its not as though Lik-Sang were attempting to disguise the fact that they export around the world!

It seems more plausible that the SCEA execs didn't want to disappoint their respective families in light of the 9 month European launch delay they announced (or possibly where planning to announce!).

"The purchasing of PSP consoles by SCE employees would be for investigatory purposes. We would also like to express our surprise at a company releasing personal information about its consumers, as this is contrary to data protection principles around the world."

You know what, I'm actually going to shield my nuts here and say that I do believe that. I mean, if you were a high-up at Sony, why in the HELL would you be buying a PSP AT ALL? Don't you think those guys had one sitting on their desks long before they were released anywhere? I'm sure Sony takes care of their golden boys better than making them import their own hardware from some HK supplier.

"Investigative purposes" my ass. They couldn't get a PSP from Sony JP so they imported one.

Lol, Sony and its PR are surely a joke. Lik-Sang clearly stated their situation. What Sony expected? That Lik-Sang wich is based in HK went to England and all other European countries to defend itself? It would be expensive as hell! As someone pointed out already, they had to close shop while they still had some money.

Oh, and the "pruchasing for investigatory purposes" was the lamest and most hypocrate answer ever made by Sony, lol. They probably bought to investigate why the PSP has loads of crappy games and a very slow UMD loadtime huh? :P

This is just stupidity on behalf of sony. Lik-Sang PAYS FOR THE THE PSP'S THEY SELL. Why should Sony have any say over how they resell them? The PSP is not region locked for anything but movies, so selling a jap PSP in the US isn't a problem so...WHAT THE FOX SONY

As much as I hate Sony's idea to shut down Lik-Sang, they do have some justifications:

1) strict EU's ruling. Governments don't want people to evade taxes and pay cheaper PS3.
2) protecting local businesses in Europe (whichever is selling PS3)

Of course, as gamers, you're fucked. If you live in Europe, you might wanna start signing petition against your local government to stop charging so much on taxes (so you don't have to buy cheaper imports)

To be fair, this won't be the first time that Lik Sang has closed up shop suddenly.

I predict that they will be back in six months.

In other news from the Sony Spin deperatment, "Our battery self-disposal system is exceeding expectations this quarter."

And the amount of personal information involved here is basically equivalent to a hotel hanging a sign that says "George Washington Slept Here."

>>OF COURSE lik sang didn't argue the case....that was the whole point. THEY COULDN'T AFFORD TO FIGHT IT.>>

So a supremely popular multinational company with well over a hundred thousand costumers can't even afford to show up to just ONE court case, despite the fact they have been able to fight many cases before. I'm not sure about you but to me it seems that Lik Sang was already a doomed company with or without Sony against them.