Comments on: Will Sony's DRM nightmare affect future policies?

Readers weigh in on the security debacle surrounding Sony's rootkit music CDs.

[SithTracy]

Hit them where it hurts and look past Blu-ray...

and allow HD-DVD to become the standard. Blu-ray offers greater capacity, but what will the eventual cost to a consumer be? What sacrifice will the consumer make for Sony.

Sony has it wrong. They treat a consumer like a criminal by putting their copy protection on anything and increasing the cost of the product by investing in this technology. Someone that is going to steal a song or movie is not going to buy it. I know the stores by me will not allow you to return an open DVD or CD. They only allow you to exchange it for the same title.

[0wnz]

blu-ray was never a good idea

I own a sony camera and video recorder (the last sony tech I will ever get) and I, as well as almost anybody who owned sony equipment, know better then to support blu-ray. Personally, after I found out that the SD card reader on my laptop is useless because my camera and camcorder use proprietary memory sticks. I mean I know better than to buy an overpriced Vaio, so I have to carry USB cables around. Sony makes good products on occasion, but their buisness practices are really bringing them down.

[glennwsharvey]

Sony may owe users rent for disk space and processor time

If Sony did not explicitly ask for permission to install software on the user's hard drive as a condition of purchase of the music CD, then an argument could be made that Sony owes its customers rental fees for the hard disk space and processor time their unauthorized software used.

[amana]

as well as for the services provided...

as well as for the services provided...

[nnjdonny]

Others take close notice !

I will never buy a Sony product ever again - even as they recall their crap they are saying they will use other means. This to me means not trustworthy. BMG has lost my Biz and if Columbia house follows BMG they will lose it also.

Courts should make Sony responsible for all and any damage caused by this in not only personal PC's but any computer related problems anywhere.

Class action suits should automatically include anyone who purchased this crap from any supplier.

Also should be sued by companies spending time and money (antispyware and antivirus) in trying to deal with this mess.

An example should be made of Sony for others to follow that this is not what you do to people buying your products even if it means Sony going out of Biz.

[nnjdonny]

TO: Song writers and Artists

We still want your music !

Stand up to Sony with lawsuits!

We want your song and you want the money but sure won't get any from me if it means crap like Sony tried to pull off or any other company for that matter.

[nnjdonny]

Are Adults running this Biz?

Must be a 15 year old exec running Sony...sure glad I don't have stock in Sony.

[jshale]

Never again Sony

Sony can rest assured that after their rootkit invasion of people's rights that I will never again buy a Sony product.

[ErvServer]

Sony Baloney

The music industry continues to be clouded by the visokn that sales are down due to pirates getting the music for free from illegally copied material. While this is somewhat truethey have much bigger issues they need to deal with. The price of cds and quality of the material on them. Who wants to buy a music cd for $17 for 1 or 2 good songs?

[Gorbag]

It's Fraud, and Criminal Charges should be brought

Sony intentionally hid the software, did not inform the user of what it did, and in so doing not only stole cycles, power, and disk space from the user, they opened the user up to other attacks such as identity theft. We should not tolerate such cases of fraud by any corporation or individual, and Sony as well as its management team should be held fully accountable for engaging in such illegal and irresponsible practices.

[Allannaa]

Sony's Back Doors

I wonder, if software such as Sony BMG's anti-copy trojan, can be installed without my knowledge, and can then transfer information I haven't authorised to be shared... What can Sony OE do when I sit down to play EverQuest? Obviously my computer communicates with the big EQ servers, or I wouldn't be able to play. But just how much information is SOE picking up, beyond what's bottom-line necessary for game play? Talk about things that make you go Hmmmmm!

[gcameron_99]

Who owns my desktop?

It's a simple matter, I bought my computer with my funds therefore Sony or no other corporation/entity has the right to place malware on my PC. Where does the blame lay for this intrusion into my privacy? The RIAA and recording companies have been on a downward spiral for years and have focused on the downloading of music (P2P) as the culprit when in essence it the mismanagement of the recording companies that has caused their bottom line to suffer. You can not keep spending millions of dollars recording plus more millions promoting/advertising any group's music and expect to make a profit. Because their bottom line is in shambles, you can't claim the right to place malware on computers that leaves computers vulnerable to hackers to protect non-existant profits.

Sony should be charged with criminal invasion and destruction of any computer it has infected with their rootkit; made to pay for any and all damage to a computer, plus a multi-million dollar fine.

Keep in mind, two months ago the New York State Attorney General fined Sony 10 million dollars after being found guilty of payola.

[amana]

SONY and the Spanish Miners (including MS Hypocrisy)

Funny that Andrew Moss, Microsoft's senior director of technical policy says "Anything that runs on that computer, you should have control over." when they have been pushing hard (on the times of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, and later after it was renamed to Trusted Computing Group) to do something simmilar but on a larger scale. Even as it is now (with lots of improvements), TCG technology raises too many concerns to just be accepted.
Just an example: Recently, the Best Practices Committee of the TCG published a document entitled "Design, Implementation, and Usage Principles for TPM-Based Platforms". On page 13, the document states:
?TCG realizes that market forces, coercive behavior, and poor implementations can do much to weaken these principles and that there is little the TCG organization can do to prevent a manufacturer or system designer from subverting the goals of privacy and control, if they are determined to do so.?

Do I need to say anything more?

I guess the case of SONY was more or less the same story. They are just determined to enforce their rights. No matter the price. And in this context, they have decided that their rights are more important than their customers' rights. A very bad policy for a company. In fact, there are other more user-respectful technologies and even other possible business models as demonstrated by i-Tunes.

We are experiencing strong protests by miners in Spain. Mining is not profitable any more and they know it. They just ask for a way out. In my opinion this is also the case for record companies and in general for any digital good intermediary.
I don't want to be obvious but the perception of the music consumers (to mention the best known case) is that artists earn lots of money, and that record companies earn even more money. Furthermore, the added value of record companies, given the current status of technology, is very little. One of the values is recording. But recording studios have started to be affordable. I have a recording studio at home. I'm not rich, and I don't make my living out of the music, it's just my passion. Of course a proffesional one is still expensive, but the existence of very good quality home studios make entering the music business easier for novel artists.
Then there is the promotion. However, most of us feel that the promotion strategy that almost all music companies have is not good for the art. It is good for their (mainly economic) interests. So the general opinion is that music companies manipulate consumers in order to sell their products, with no respect for the good music. They only produce commercial music. I know this is not applicable to all of them, but it is for the 99.99%.
Finally, there is the issue of collecting revenues, but current Internet technologies make this possible by automated means without their intervention.

In fact, SONY and the others are "record companies", designed to earn money and provide added value in a past world where records were a popular good, but the future information society is "recordless". So, in the end the sad conclusion is that record companies, and any other intermediary of digital goods are bound to dissapear if they insist in playing the same roles. They have to re-invent themselves or die. Just as Spanish miners.

[El Kabong]

I couldn't agree more.

The "Big Three" record labels have total control of what we hear on commercial radio whether broadcast or satellite.
First of all, there has been a "recording industry" for less time than the Soviet's "Evil Empire" lasted. In that time, they have strangled creativity and removed the passion of which you spoke from music. Today, no artist is heard on mainstream radio unles he or she is signed by one of the B3 or a subsidiary. They are only signed if they agree to a ridiculous contract that takes 90% or more of the proceeds from the sale of recordings, while extracting 100% of the costs of studio time, extra musicians, mixdown,printing, artwork, packaging, promotion, and shipping from the artist's share which is often less than 4%. This is not by accident... the lopsided arrangment forces the artist to tour in order to make any money from their efforts, thus further promoting sales for the record label.
The RIAA complains that file sharing cheats the artist of his royalties but also stated in Radio Ink a while back that moneys received as a result of law suits and intimidation could not be distributed to artists because they had no "digital rights" specified in their contracts.
This whole copyright issue is a scam and the labels appear to have our Congress bought and paid for so don't look for any relief from that quarter.
A partial solution is Internet Radio. Listen to a variety of signed and unsigned artists and buy from the "Indies"... if you can find them.

[shanecahill]

Unlucky Cd Title

As shocked as I was by Sony's actions, I had to chuckle at the title of one of the CD's in question: The Coral's "The Invisible Invasion"! How apt...

[ABP3]

Same old "Norelco Cassette" paranoia!

Truly scary that a company as big as Sony could pull such a stupid blunder... all in vain attempt to stop music copying, which they will never do, and have no right to, as they broadcast it on airwaves to the general public. This is the same old "Norelco Cassette" paranoia of the 1960's. And it's totally about the money Sony makes, not about the money the artists make. The artists should just tell the labels to kiss off, start their own web based, 99 cent/song download sites, and tell the rest of the money grabbing music business to go die.

A fan of an artist truly appreciates an artist's work, and they will happily support the artist, and send them the money. The problem is major labels in the music biz are all about money for themselves, and this goes back to the beginning of broadcast radio. Get the major labels out of the loop, and the artist will be rightly compensated for their talents and works, and if not, the labels will continue with all the copy protection tactics they attempt to deploy, which will always be circumvented, and the artist and the public get cheated. The distribution of music via the internet is advent of clear path to eliminating the rigged business world of music distribution. Sony should be swamped with class action law suits on this one, they deserve it.

[ljlego]

Music to my Ears (no pun intended)

Sometime in the near future, the music industry is going to implode on itself. The major labels are going to copy-protect themselves into oblivion, and then P2P sharing groups will be stronger than ever. Also, the legal services such as (the new) Napster, Rhapsody, and the like, will recieve a boost from the honest people who are willing to pay a little bit for their favorite music.

[ljlego]

this is ridiculous!

I can't believe what America has become. A bunch of sue-happy, self-serving individuals. They speak out their own radical views, while sitting in their nice home, not once thinking, "Hey, this technology that I'm using is really great. Maybe I shouldn't bash this one company because they made a little mistake." And I realize the magnitude of the mistake, and the crazy thing it's created, and the people whose computers were slightly infected with spyware. But this is ridiculous! It was a mistake, a bug. Just like the Iomega Click of Death, back when ZIP Drives were big, it was a bug. And unlike Iomega, Sony has realized that they made a mistake and are making every effort to compensate. But, I do realize that everyone is entitled to their own views, so I will not go any farther. That said, my views are the following:

I think Sony BMG is being ridiculous by putting copy-protection software on these CDs in the first place. The music industry is a bunch of jerks. They take the CDs that they are trying to sell, load them full of anti-piracy copy-protection, and then sell them, and expect to get good feedback. I see that they are trying to prevent bootlegging, but 1) If the bootleggers really want to, they will figure out a way to bypass the copy-protection anyway, and 2) What about those people who just want to put their songs on an iPod or the like? What about them?

Bottom Line: I disagree with the people who mercilessly bash Sony because of this one mistake. However, I respect that they have their own opinions. Regarding Sony: I think that they could've - and should've - avoided this whole fiasco by not copy-protecting their damn music. And if they stop, which they should, I hope the rest of the music industry follows. Because they've become a sad heap . . . but that's another story.

[ljlego]

Where the Music Industry Will Go

I know I touched on this in one of my replies, but here is my projected future for the music industry:

Sometime, in the possibly near future, the music industry will collapse onto itself. The labels will no longer fight to see which artist sells more, but who can protect their music best. They will, in a sense, copy-protect themselves into oblivion. This will, in turn, give P2P networks like LimeWire a huge boost in business. The same will go for legal networks such as Napster, Rhapsody, iTunes, and Yahoo! Music. Artists will make their own music, when and how they want to. They will release it through these services, which will make them more money in the long run, because the only people they'll be splitting the money with is the services, which is fair. The problem with CDs is getting to be that there is so much fluff on it, you get to wondering why you just spent $20 when all you really wanted was the one song. And that's why music is going to graduate to pay-per-song method (iTunes) or subscription-with-option-to-buy-for-burning-etc. method (Napster). Downloading is the music of tomorrow, and its brighter than what we have today.

[cafesmitty]

DVDs Also

Sony didn't list their DVDs that have that malicious code on it also. I know at least one (ROBOTS) that if you put in your CPU will wreck havoc on your system.