The Playstation Network outage and data breach that has tormented Sony and some 77 million of its gaming network customers since the middle of last week has spawned its first lawsuit. A class action complaint charges that Sony failed to "maintain adequate computer data security of consumer personal data and financial data, including, but not limited to credit card data." It says the company didn't properly maintain firewalls and was "negligent" in exposing customers' information.

Programmers at the electronics giant, meanwhile, are still trying to fix the problem and get the network back. But this debacle has already hurt the company. The stock fell 5.2 percent yesterday, and gamers are furious, both at Sony and at the hackers. The staff at Video Game Writers vented yesterday about Anonymous and hacker George "Geohot" Hotz (the guy who first cracked the network and got sued by Sony), both of whom have denied involvement but laughed into their sleeves all the same.

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Adam Martin