The Ant Hill Gets Kicked Again

I noticed “sony settlement” trending on Google Trends today. 20,000+ searches. The funniest thing about digital ownership is how angry people get when the company finally admits it was never theirs to begin with.

I remember when the PlayStation Store launched in 2006. I was a teenager. I bought a game on PS3 in 2007. Sixteen, seventeen years ago? I own it. Except I don’t. I rented it, and the rental agreement just got a closure notice.

It reminds me of the Asimov story “The Last Question.” A group of scientists build a supercomputer to solve the ultimate problem of entropy. It can’t. Centuries pass. Civilizations rise and fall. The computer grows more powerful. But it still can’t answer. Finally, trillions of years later, the last human asks the computer one final time: “Can stellar energy be reversed?” The computer thinks. And then it says, “Let there be light!” And there is light.

Sony’s been running a nineteen-year lease nobody signed. The settlement credits being offered are typically fractional. Users can claim, but the process is opaque. Wait. Sony isn’t settling because they did something wrong. They’re settling because the math says it’s cheaper to settle than litigate.

The settlement isn’t punishment. It’s a budget line item.