Ever since Thursday, April 21st 2011, PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been down due to hackers. The latest post from Sony as of April 23, 2011 said the following.
We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.
We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.
This means that it might be a little longer until the services are back online. Also Sony also posted the following on April 22, 2011.
An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th. Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share.
They said “external intrusion” which brings us to think that hackers have brought down the services. This might be the case with Sony suing George Hotz recently and a group of hackers are merely taking revenge for the actions of Sony.
As of now the service is still down and there is no planed date of relaunch.