TOKYO – Sony said it had begun restoration of its PlayStation Network games service on Sunday, almost a month after a massive security breach of the network forced the company to shut it down.
Gamers and security experts had criticized Sony for its handling of the incident, which sparked lawsuits and cast a shadow over its plans to combine the strengths of its content and hardware products via online services.
The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant apologized to customers for the outage, and said a range of new security measures had been introduced. These included an early warning system that could alert the company to any attempt to penetrate the network.
“I can’t thank you enough for your patience and support during this time,” Sony No.
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NEW YORK – Google is set to launch an online music locker service to allow users to store and access their songs wherever they are, similar to one launched by Amazon.com Inc in March.
And like the Amazon Cloud Drive player, Google music service is being introduced on Tuesday without any prior licensing deals with major music labels, following months of fruitless negotiations.
Google plans to announce its ‘Music Beta by Google’ service on Tuesday at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
Google has been working on a music service as a feature of its Android mobile operating system to better compete with iTunes, which is the anchor of Apple Inc’s content services.
Amazon’s service caused a furor in the music industry because it had not reached any licensing agreements with major music companies: Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group.
The online retailer defended itself vigorously against suggestions by some music sources that Cloud Drive service infringes copyright.
Since the launch Amazon executives have met with label owners to negotiate for a more advanced music service.
Several music industry sources privately expressed concern at Google’s music plans but said they hoped the search giant would continue negotiating for a service with more features than storage and personal streaming of the songs.
Reuters sources said last month Apple was set to beat Google to launching a licensed online music locker.
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– Facebook and Google Inc are separately considering a tie-up with Skype after the Web video conferencing service delayed its initial public offering, two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions told Reuters .
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has taken part in internal discussions about buying Skype, according to one of the sources. Another source said Facebook had reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.
Google has also held early talks for a joint venture with Skype, the second source said.
A Skype deal could be valued at $3 billion to $4 billion, the first source said.
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– Sony Corp’s No.2 Kazuo Hirai will brief media on Sunday about a huge security breach of its PlayStation Network, the first time an executive of the Japanese electronics giant will publicly address the case, which could prompt global legal actions.
Hirai, in line to succeed CEO Howard Stringer, will hold a news conference in Tokyo at 2:00 p.m. on Sony’s investigation of the case, its information management system and the schedule to resume services, the firm said in a news release on Saturday.
Sony warned on Tuesday that hackers had stolen names, addresses, and possibly credit card details from 77 million user accounts of its online video game network, which produces an estimated $500 million in annual revenues.
The disclosure of one of the biggest ever online data infiltrations came on Tuesday, a week after Sony shut down the network.
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– A cache of classified U.S. military documents provides intelligence assessments on nearly all of the 779 people who been detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
The secret documents, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, reveal that most of the 172 remaining prisoners have been rated as a “high risk” of posing a threat to the United States and its allies if released without adequate rehabilitation and supervision, the newspaper said.
The documents, provided by WikiLeaks, also show about a third of the 600 detainees already sent to other countries were also designated “high risk” before they were freed or passed to the custody of other governments, the Times said in its report late on Sunday.
The dossiers, prepared under the Bush administration, also show the seat-of-the-pants intelligence gathering in war zones that led to the incarcerations of innocent men for years in cases of mistaken identity or simple misfortune, the Times said.
The documents are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantanamo that drew global condemnation, the newspaper reported.
President Barack Obama pledged two years ago to close the prison at U.S.
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