True but....
Whilst it has brought the shoddy security into the limelight (multiple times over!), there's still no need for them to have actually published the username/passwords they recovered.
Of course, it is the easiest way of verifying that you _have_ breached their system, but given the number of breaches Sony have had recently I'm not sure people would require such a high standard of proof at this point.
As for overlooking what Sony has done, not at all. _SONY_ have done a lot to incite anger, but that's Sony and not their customers. It's not Sony's board of directors who have had their data leaked (unless they were customers) it's their customers.
Sony could literally rape and pillage, it wouldn't make it right to disclose their customers details. Target Sony not their customers (he says despite not being affected)
And yeah, too many corporations are far too lax. Some go so far as being indifferent, but in certain areas I'm begining to wonder regarding storage of passwords etc;
Company A sells Bricks (first thing came to mind)
They decide to sell bricks through their website, but users must register first
Company A contracts SuperWebDev to build said site (or at least the functionality)
Although ultimately Company A _is_ responsible for the data and any breaches, they've probably not got a clue about password storage (and yes, they should read and learn). Ultimately it's the cowboy firm SuperWebDev (apologies if it's a real company!) that decided to cut corners and store in plaintext.
Yes companies need to learn just how stupid it is, but perhaps it's time to name and shame those developers who _still_ seem to be churning out systems that store creds in plaintext. Lets face it, generating a salted hash isn't hard whatsoever (anyone ever tried it in BrainFuck? bet that's hard!)
I hate what Sony do and have done, I make a personal point of trying to avoid their products but it's their customers who are really taking the bullets, not Sony. A large proportion of those customers aren't going to understand the reasoning for their account being compromised and so will stay with Sony. Different tactics are needed!