Well, that's that...

For regular readers, this should be the last time I feel the need to mention Sony and their unfortunate business decisions, so read or skip as you like.

The final hope I had for Sony getting told that their shenanigans with the PS3 firmware from April of last year were wrong is gone. The class action lawsuit brought against them (and which Sony has shielded themselves against with changes to their Terms & Conditions since then) has been dismissed. Basically, the judge says that, since the users have the option of not upgrading the firmware on their PS3s if they want to keep the functionality they want, there's no foul on Sony's part.

The only problem I have with that line of reasoning is that it doesn't apply strictly to Sony's online services... you can use the same line of reasoning for games on disc that include a mandatory firmware update if you want to play them solo on your own machine. Don't want to accept the update? Don't play the game. Never mind that the system you bought was specifically designed to play those games, it's not on Sony for requiring an update, it's on you for refusing an update that strips away features you paid for.

So, apparently, the state of the law now is that your right to use your game consoles (and what else?) in a feature-complete state as of the time of sale is strictly dependent on the goodwill and immediate business concerns of the seller. That said, I simply can't trust Sony, based on past behavior, so they're still off my purchase list... and the bar for every other console seller has been set that much higher.