Stringer Says Sony Was Attacked For Protecting Its Content

Tweet

It must be tough being Sony CEO Howard Stringer these days, having to carry the weight of the PSN attacks on your shoulders and all. I would imagine that attending shareholder meetings is one of Stringer’s least favorite things at the moment, especially after how today’s meeting in Tokyo went.

Naturally, shareholders were curious about the PSN attacks, with Stringer saying that they were attacked because they tried to protect their content. “We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case video games,” Stringer said.

“These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don’t want us to protect them, they want everything to be free.”

Of course, Stringer’s referring to the whole Geohot scandal, which saw the PS3 hardware hacked and Sony taking George Hotz to court over it. This, obviously, didn’t sit well with much of the hacker community. Fast forward to two months later, and 100 million Sony accounts have been compromised as Sony is left to answer to angry consumers, third party devs, and politicians around the world.

But now it’s the shareholders who aren’t pleased, and one of them apparently asked why Stringer was still working at Sony. Stringer dodged that question, so I doubt stepping down is on his list of things to do, but still, it had to be something of a sobering moment for the boss who has, thus far, been kind of a jerk about this whole ordeal.

What’s your take, should Stringer step down? Would none of this have happened if Sony hadn’t taken George Hotz to court? Sound off in the comment section below!