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Sony, in their futile digital rights management efforts, has taken to playing dirty with the music CDs. Multiple security sources are confirming the existence of spyware in the form of rootkits on Sony's music CDs. This behavior is unethical in the eyes of many and the legality may be questionable as well.emphasis mine
Full Story [securitypronews.com]
Hidden software no less, and difficult to remove. So you buy a CD from SOny BMG, pop it into your PC to play it, and bam, you have unwanted software installed on your PC and Sony made it difficult to get rid of.
Both F-Secure and SysInternals said conventional means won't get rid of the file. They said if you just delete it, it could "cripple" your computer.
there are sites which run sell give away digital rights management kill apps ..but they cant be linked to from here ..
When are we going to get at least one major record company who actually has the slightest notion of understanding of the phenomenon they are facing?
I can't. Seriously, I just don't get why they are doing this. Is is mass insanity within the recording industry or total miscomprehension of the issues involved? The facts are simple: you cannot "protect" digital content. How hard is that for them to understand?
Many things these days are abundant not scarce. This is true of electronics (Apollo 11 went to the moon on less computing power and memory than my calculator...yesterdays supercomputer power in todays X-Box...); agriculture (many countries now pay farmers not to grow crops to prop up prices...); communications (bandwidth that used to cost thousands, became hundreds, became tens, is almost free...radios that cost hundreds now given away free in promotions...satelite television dishes that were 4-metre diameter and 2-thousand dollars now under 0.5 metre and free with a years subscription...)
And of course the audio recordings that were expensive, analog, and individual are now affordable, digital, and abundant. But the monoliths of government and business (and most of academia) only know/understand the economics of scarcity. The economics of abundance will cause even more ridiculous luddite behaviour as the dinosaurs of economic scarcity go extinct.
A very good time not to be employed by a dinosaur.
Or stand too close to one.
I will NEVER buy another Sony disc again.
Viruses Exploit Sony CD Copy-Protection [news.yahoo.com]
The Trojan horse programs — three have so far been identified by antivirus companies — are named so as to trigger the cloaking feature of Sony's XCP2 antipiracy technology. By piggybacking on that function, the malicious programs can enter undetected, security experts said Thursday.
So, do you think they can be sued since they install the software without telling you?
I'd like to hear lawman's opinion on this one
I'd like to hear lawman's opinion on this one
Webwork's opinion would matter more than mine. I don't do that kind of law.
They treat their customers (the ones that pay for their products and keep them in business) like criminals. Soon they'll want a background check and fingerprints to hear a preview to the new Vanilla Ice album.
From the article I read.
We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative..
.. Sony did not admit any wrongdoing, nor did it promise not to use similar techniques in the future.
How about a sobriety test, or something for mental illness if you still want to hear Vanilla Ice.
and wouldn't feel the need to join one of these "own me" clubs ..
dewinter dot.com slash modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=215
read it ..love it :))
and these are the people whom we should trust with the linux patents :o
further reading..
[sysinternals.com...]
The wave of indignation isn't helped by this ..
Thomas Hesse president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business division:
“Most people I think don't even know what a root kit is so why should they care about it”
well ..do we care?
Sony's bought and paid for congress critters put laws on the books dealing with this sort of thing and there goes Sony puting pirated code on million(s) of CDs at 150K a pop it comes out well above Sony's current asset size.
'A senior Homeland Security official cautioned entertainment companies against discouraging piracy in ways that also make computers vulnerable. Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at DHS, did not cite Sony by name in his remarks Thursday but described industry efforts to install hidden files on consumers' computers.
"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property, it's not your computer," Baker said at a trade conference on piracy. "And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."'
From:
[thedenverchannel.com...]
[edited by: Woz at 2:19 am (utc) on Nov. 12, 2005]
[edit reason] Made link live [/edit]
Sony's bought and paid for congress critters put laws on the books dealing with this sort of thing and there goes Sony puting pirated code on million(s) of CDs at 150K a pop it comes out well above Sony's current asset size.
Now if you hadn't drawn my attention to that little peice of maths I wouldn't have to be typing this on my spare keyboard and wiping the wine off of the screen ..:))
A small price to pay for such a thought tho ..
How fast can sony stock fall ..
interesting side issue in there about the competence or lack of it shown by the emails from "ceri" ..and also the ISP sticky services they do ..the largest ISP here in France ..semi government owned wanadoo uses their tech ..I wonder if they are legal in doing so?
well ..I can now spend sunday afternoon translating the form letter thats to be found in the blog for the benefit of non english speaking french IT sites ..
I remember some folks thinking that I was joking when last year I posted a list of possibles ..( including letting people play music CD's on PC's ) how to compromise the security of someones system ..that the "Lan guy" said was OK ..
Didn't think at the time that Sony were gonna be the next "ninja hackers" ..
This will be a fun one to watch.
and posters in all music stores in all countries
and offered to pay for the fix to all machines affected..?
how come I don't think so ...
let's hope so. They sue people when they get harmed so a bit of payback would be nice. Hopefully it's a large enough settlement to send a message
Hollywood
