And, since this is Texas after all, we'll be seeking the dealth penalty.

I've got mixed feelings about this - it is sad to see Sony in such a light, but of course it's sadder to see Sony do such a weasily thing in the first place. Maybe this will get a good discussion going about all this DRM/copyprotection/who-should-control-my-computer stuff.

Pitting an industry against it's customers seems like bad strategy...

... since this is Texas after all, we'll be seeking the dealth penalty.

LOL -- that has a nice "ring" to it.

But first we'll need a DNA sample...

W H O

Give it a rest already. This is not the Sony CD Rootkit forum.

...seems at least
SIX people !!!!!!!!!!!!
cared just here, in this very topic.


Ozzyyy...! (headbanging mee head and eating a can of worms) ...

Update, 3:38 p.m. ET: EFF filed its class-action lawsuit against Sony in California state court, along with two leading national class-action law firms. In its filing, EFF issued a statement praising Sony for acknowledging problems with its XCP software, but said that the company "has failed entirely to respond to concerns about MediaMax. "Music fans shouldn't have to install potentially dangerous, privacy intrusive software on their computers just to listen to the music they've legitimately purchased," the EFF's Cohn said

Poor little Sony, always being picked on.

From Ed Foster's Gripe Log

Sony's DRM Profile

By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Nov 22nd, 2005 at 02:49:54 AM PDT

You're probably getting tired of hearing about Sony BMG's rootkit DRM, but one central mystery about it remains to be solved. What was Sony's real motive for what many consider behavior that is awfully close to a criminal act? To answer that question I think we're going to need to borrow a page from the criminal profilers by tracking the company's behavior. Fortunately, we have more than one crime scene to help us with our profile, because it so happens that Sony has been employing more than one form of spywarish DRM in recent months.

Even after finally confessing, under considerable duress, that the rootkit was probably a mistake, Sony officials have stuck to the story that their use of First4Internet's XCP DRM was intended only to protect their CDs from music pirates. But that alibi doesn't really wash, since the XCP copy protection only punishes legitimate customers while doing nothing to stop file sharers. What's more, this is a pattern of behavior we saw before with Sony when readers were complaining back in July about another form of DRM it was using on music CDs from SunnComm, Inc.

What clues can we pick up by comparing the different DRM approaches Sony has employed on its CDs in recent months? Fortunately, on the subject of SunnComm's MediaMax DRM, we have the equivalent of a forensic anthropologist who can serve as an expert witness here. Princeton University computer scientist J. Alex Halderman is the researcher who SunnComm threatened with charges of violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions a few years ago when he revealed how their technology could be thwarted by holding down the shift key. The rootkit brouhaha prompted Halderman to take a look at how the MediaMax DRM is implemented on recent Sony CDs (all apparently on different titles than the CDs that have the XCP rootkit), and his published findings are quite intriguing.

While Halderman found no evidence of SunnComm's MediaMax using a rootkit, some of the things he did discover provide considerable grist for our behavioral profile of Sony. For one thing, before users can even say yes or no to accepting the Sony EULA, MediaMax has already installed a dozen files on their hard drive and started running the copy protection code. The files remain even if the user rejects the EULA, and the Sony CDs provide no option for uninstalling the files at a later date.

Most interesting of all though is what Halderman discovered concerning the spyware attributes of the Sony CDs equipped with MediaMax. As with the XCP rootkit, MediaMax also "phones home" every time you play a protected CD with a code identifying what music you're listening to. And in the SunnComm server's response to these transmissions Halderman also uncovered a very important clue to what Sony's really up to: a URL including the term "perfectplacement." A MediaMax developer's webpage describes Perfect Placement to potential clients like Sony as an e-commerce revenue generation "feature of dynamic on-line and off-line banner ads. Generate revenue or added value through the placement of 3rd party dynamic, interactive ads that can be changed at any time by the content owner."

OK, so let's see what we've got here. A company that seems bent on sneaking files onto unsuspecting users' computers, pretending they've gotten permission to do so from a vaguely-worded EULA, transmitting a constant stream of usage information back to their servers, and using that information for who-knows-what revenue generating opportunities. Does this sound like a familiar profile to you? Of course, it's the profile of all the spyware/adware scum that have come very close to destroying the Internet just to make a few bucks peddling their trash.

But we shouldn't miss the fact that Sony's behavior with both its XCP and MediaMax implementations matches another pattern we've seen many times before. It's the serial DRM offender profile that Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit, and lesser lights in the software industry have exhibited. Their product activation and other forms of copy protection also aren't really about stopping piracy - they admit their DRM won't stop the software counterfeiters. It's about giving the vendors control over your usage of the products you buy, so they can decide if you're using it in ways they don't like, or that they ought to force you to upgrade, or that it's time to start selling the information they've collected about you to the highest bidder.

No, I don't believe there really is much mystery as to the motive behind Sony's DRM. Hey, if I were a record company executive, I'd be looking for new revenue generating opportunities too. And, as I've said, we should be grateful that they botched it so badly by using a rootkit. They've given us the best and maybe the last chance we're likely to get to stop the music, movie, TV, software and countless other companies from controlling our lives with their DRM. If we don't, you and I will match another familiar profile: that of the fool who is soon parted from his money.

Here's why you should care... What if DRM becomes so overreaching that small operators like us will have to pay a license fee just to get our work viewable by our clients because every viewing device is locked up with a proprietary DRM system?

Steve

1) I'll deal with that on a DRM forum. This is not a DRM forum. There ARE other places where this can be discussed, and the fact that it's Sony is a lame excuse for it being here. The people behind Vegas have nothing at all to do with the rootkit problem. I'm more than capable of going to news sites or using Google to find out the latest on Sony's problem.

2) "Small operators like us" are exactly the ones who can benefit from DRM. I am NOT saying it should be done the way Sony did it, of course, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. (Cool, that's the first time I ever got to use that phrase. :-) ) I happen to *have* a film out there and it's been ripped and is available online. So I have a keen interest in DRM; just not on this forum.

3) I've never been a fan of "doom and gloom" prophesies. I don't think it's going to get to a point where you have to pay a license fee just to allow your work to be viewable. Yean, I'm sure there will be one or more players that require a license, but I don't think it will ever get to the point where there's *nothing* that can play your work without paying.

4) If this is relevant to a Vegas forum just because it's about Sony, then why stop there? That means NOTHING related to Sony is OT for this list.

Well I have to agree it's a bit of a long bow to draw saying this topic is relevant just because of the name at the top of the page.
However you do raise a point that IS pretty relevant to most of us here and that is effectively having to pay licencing fees just to 'publish' our works. This already exists and from what I can see it's going to get worse, much worse.
Take the existing DVD, we can all make DVDs that will play hopefully in most DVD players but they're not DVD Forum sanctioned DVDs and hence we cannot use the DVD logo on them. I know this is a very small distinction, so small as to be pretty well irrelevant unless of course you want to start selling your works through large outlets and then bingo, they'll pretty much insist on Macrovision protection and DVD Forum certification and then you've got to pay.
But that's just the current state of play.
What about UMD, HD DVD and Blu Ray?
Well so far the only way to get your work onto a UMD is to pay Sony to do it, no home brew allowed. Will this apply to any of the competing HiDef DVD formats, well so far I don't know but I hear of no plans for anyone to release authoring apps or burners so indies can roll their own.
I suspect some of the justification is the concept that if only 'they' can make it then no one can pirate it, in some wierd way they think if you or I can burn a UMD then we could make pirated copies of games etc, no worry that already this can be done without ever burning a UMD. So we become the collateral damage in this unwinnable war.
And make no mistake about it, it's purely about profits and successful independant production hurt their bottom line, probably more so than piracy, if they can hurt one while claimimg to be stopping the other what a bonus.
Bob.