Sony says that the credit card data associated with the accounts was encrypted, though there are anecdotal reports of credit card fraud occurring coincidental with the timing of the breach.

On top of that, regulators in places as varied as Connecticut and the U.K. and Ireland are demanding information, often the first step in investigations that lead to lawsuits. The office of Ireland’s data protection commissioner (cool title) says it wants a full report on the incident by the end of the week. The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating. Perhaps Sony’s one lucky draw in all this, as Parmy Olson of Forbes notes, is that it won’t have to face the full fury of the European Union because authority for data privacy issues are reserved to individual member countries.

Meanwhile, the attorneys general of several U.S. states are starting to rumble, starting with Connecticut’s George Jepson, who said he is launching an investigation, while his counterparts in Missouri and Iowa are making the kind of public statements that are often a precursor to investigations of their own. A few lawmakers in Congress are tsk-ing disapprovingly too, mulling hearings and new legislation. Below is an appearance on CNBC by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., suggesting that the Department of Justice should launch its own investigation.

Thanks, Senator. However, my guess is that if the systems compromised are in the U.S.–and given the number of PlayStation Network customers there are in the U.S., how can they not be?–then one branch of Justice is already likely involved: The FBI. Hasn’t Sony already disclosed that it’s working with law enforcement? This isn’t exactly the sort of thing for which you call a local police agency.

The venture-backed company is in IPO registration, so it was required to disclose in an amended S-1 filing Tuesday that a recent breach disrupted its customers’ advertising campaigns and resulted in its Australia platform going offline for 36 hours.

However, measured against social networking site Blippy, which accidentally published the credit card numbers of several of its customers on Google (GOOG) earlier this week, the lapse doesn’t look so bad. None of ReachLocal’s customer credit card data or its internal human resources information was compromised, it said.

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That’s what Sony says it is trying to do with News Corp. and some of its publications. The partnership the two companies announced today won’t be nearly enough to make Sony’s Reader line competitive. But it does point in the direction both companies would like to head.

Dow Jones (which owns this Web site) will sell a version of its flagship Wall Street Journal for the Reader devices, as well as a “Wall Street Journal Plus” package that includes a second mini-edition of the paper to be published at the end of the day. Also on offer: A Reader-tailored version of the Marketwatch finance site and a subscription to the New York Post.

Sony (SNE) will have the only e-reader that sells the Post and the second edition of the WSJ. But that’s about it as far as exclusivity goes. The regular Reader version of the Journal looks to be the same one Amazon (AMZN) is already selling at the same price: $15 a month for the basic edition.

And even if you’re one of the people who loves to read a print paper on a handheld device, most of these offers don’t make a lot of sense for an e-reader.

The Post is a tabloid that’s pretty much designed to be consumed, then tossed away, in the course of a subway ride–and if you want to get it for free on the Web, you can do that too.

You can also consume all of Marketwatch for free on the Web, where it makes much more sense to do so, since that the site provides constant updates on…the market.

And given the Journal’s increasing emphasis on speed and breaking news, you’d think its paying subscribers would want the freshest copy possible. But the Sony Reader version is completely static.

So this is pretty much a symbolic deal, right? More or less, Sony CEO Howard Stringer told a press conference this morning. The big picture, he says, is that devices like the Reader are both a growth business for Sony and an opportunity for content owners to charge for stuff that has been free on the Web.

“The sense of losing control of our content is on all of our minds,” says Stringer, whose company is famously both a hardware manufacturer and an entertainment provider. “We’re trying to preserve the value of content in both movies and music and newspapers.”

That dovetails with News Corp.’s (NWS) big-picture plans, which CEO Rupert Murdoch has been has been hollering out at every opportunity: Pay up.

But there’s also a more practical side to the deal for News Corp., which wants to distribute its stuff on as many platforms as possible–and extract better terms than it gets from Amazon and its Kindle platform.

In November, Murdoch said his company was getting up to $6.50 for each $15 Journal subscription it sold via Amazon (AMZN), but noted that this isn’t enough. News Corp. and other publishers have also carped that Amazon keeps valuable customer data for itself.

The Sony deal offers better terms, said Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson, without getting into specifics: “I think you can assume that we’re getting a better deal and that our concerns about customer information have been addressed.”

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Roz Ho, corporate VP of Microsoft’s ironically named Premium Mobile Experiences division, said in a letter to customers.

“We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

That’s quite a change from what Microsoft (MSFT) said a few days ago when it warned that user data had “almost certainly” been lost and that the likelihood of recovering it was “extremely low.” Still, it’s clearly the best outcome for a bad situation.

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Roz Ho, corporate VP of Microsoft’s ironically named Premium Mobile Experiences division, said in a letter to customers.

“We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

That’s quite a change from what Microsoft (MSFT) said a few days ago when it warned that user data had “almost certainly” been lost and that the likelihood of recovering it was “extremely low.” Still, it’s clearly the best outcome for a bad situation.