Comments on: Week in review: Sony's sour note

Sony BMG finds itself singing the blues this week, after copy protection on many of its CDs struck a sour note on fans' PCs.

[Stan Johnson]

BOYCOTT ALL THINGS SONY!

Sony only respects cash. They rip off open source programming to make a rootkit exe that rips off paying customers and damages their PCs. I make a living on my PC so this is unforgivable. Sony does not deserve consumer support or cash. They do deserver lawsuits and a strong worldwide boycott. Buy nothing Sony.

[GrandpaN1947]

I agree and

get ready for Windows DRM. That's what I call Window Vista. It has the DMCA built right into it. If you thought the rootkit was bad, you haven't seen anything yet.

[heystoopid]

Too little Too late!

Sony, has lost the plot, totally, by treating all customers as thieves! But, then never again, shall I purchase anything related to SONY! But alas, think of all sony bmg's label recording artists, when the get the bill for all the replacement cd's deducted from their paltry royalty payments(dressed up as additional promo costs!) Oh well, in this case nobody wins for users, have additional costs to clean and disinfect corrupted Windoze computers! Most Businesses will have banned all commercial SONY cd's/dvd's from use in house WINDOWS 2000 computer networks for security reasons! Recording artists will be deliberately underpaid! And Sony will have sunk it's reputation into the SEWER, for showing the world that it will always ignore all corporate laws and business governance regulations, for total profits ahead of it's customer rights! Time to BOYCOTT all that is SONY!!!!!!! I hope all the class action law suits monetary restitution, collectively sink SONY BMG permanently!

[Lolo Gecko]

this gives new meaning to the word ...

STUPIDITY :)

[11-Dimensions]

What a Mess!!!

Sony's little 'rootkit' secret, hidding from the fans buying their CDs, now turns out to be a big mess for Sony in the news.

Sony just sent a clear message to all the fans:
Downloading pirated musics from the internet is actually safer to your computer than buying CDs from Sony.

[powerdot]

Sony XCP More Sinister & Not Just Anti-Piracy

First, Full Support To BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT ALL ALL ALL Things Sony.
Look deeper and put the jigsaw together and you'll realise that Sony is definitely an EVIL AND SINISTER EMPIRE. Rotten to the core.
They installed the XCP not just for anti-piracy purposes BUT to bring down the great American Company of Steve Jobs, the magnificent Apple iPod machine.
First, Sony tried to double their download $ for each song to kill iPod. As Steve Jobs said something like, doubling the download price from $0.99 to about $2 will encourage piracy and thus Sony hoped to gradually kill iPod's popularity because less and less people will then be using iPods as the downloads get more expensive. iPod's leadership and top popularity now was ONCE Sony Walkman's.
Since Steve Jobs resisted Sony, Sony tried (not sure if effected) to cut iPod off from its songs.
Another evil step to trample on iPod to get itself (Sony) up to the top.
And now this 2nd step by Sony to be a virus distributor itself by hiding it's XCP deep inside people's computers with 2 main objectives (maybe more).
As I read somewhere, those Sony XCPed songs cannot play on iPods but play fine on Walkmans.
Sony is greedy, evil, arrogant, and a pathetic liar (wait till you email them for customer service when they reply that they'll get back to you in a few days and the days turn into months with deafening silence and you'll know that I don't exaggerate!! Further nice, polite emails met with the same fate. That is the real Sony).
NOW, I DON'T BUY ANYTHING SONY.
Sony of many, many, many years ago was different.
NOW, their products are riddled with so many quality problems like their software.
Design problems, malfunction problems, unable to write when intended to do so (DVD writers) etc.
I should know because I have used Sony digital cameras (2MP and 5MP), camcorders, TVs, DVD drive,CD Drive, 3.5 floppy drive, and others.
BUT NOW, I TOTALLY BOYCOTT ALL THINGS SONY.

[sabot96]

test

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agreed

This is what we get for being honest and paying for merchandise?! Sony is the devil. Hurt them where they hurt the general consumer...in the pocketbook. Greedy Sony keeps trying to get iTunes to raise their prices above the .99 cent mark too? Oh jesus...boycott!!

[powerdot]

Pt 2: SONY XCP More Sinister or Just Anti-Piracy?

Recent news that <<< the industry has seen an estimated $2 billion overall decline in CD sales...>>>
How is that calculated? Real figures or imaginary numbers?
More likely, is it just an excuse to plead "poverty" to pay the artistes LESS and keep more for their greedy selves???
Paying big bucks to keep people like the HEAD???!! of Sony's GLOBAL???!! business to say things like "Most people, I think don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
SO AFTER WE, THE CUSTOMERS HAVE PAID FOR SONY'S VERY EXPENSIVE SONGS AND VERY EXPENSIVE PRODUCTS TO KEEP HIM UP THERE, IS HE IMPLYING THAT WE KEEP PAYING GOOD MONEY TO SONY FOR HIM TO LOOK DOWN UPON US AS PEOPLE WHO ARE WAY BENEATH HIM BECAUSE WE ARE IGNORANT, ILLITERATE, STUPID & COMPLACENT??
So he can exploit that, trample on our rights and privacy, and put their dirty greasy hands into our pockets again and again by spying on our likes and dislikes?
LIKE, SONY, THROUGH HIM, ARE THEY IMPLYING THAT CUSTOMERS DESERVE NO RESPECT BECAUSE CUSTOMERS DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ROOTKIT, PRIVACY, INSULTS, AND WILL STILL KEEP PAYING FOR SONY'S PRODUCTS T GET INSULTED AGAIN & AGAIN?? AND THAT WE'LL FORGET AFTER A FEW WEEKS AND THEN START BUYING SONY AGAIN???
And when Sony's XCP disables our CD/DVD drive,
we might be misled, cheated, conned, and scammed into thinking that our CD/DVD drive is burnt out or that our computer is in poor shape and so is Sony hoping that we will then buy a brand new sony computer or at the very least spend good money on a new sony problem-plagued CD/DVD drive and throw out the perfectly good CD/DVD drive that was in our computer???
IS THIS THE START OF A NEW GREEDY BUSINESS TREND OF GETTING MORE MONEY FROM US BY, IN THIS CASE, USING XCP TO INTENTIONALLY KNOCK OUT OR CAUSE WILLFUL DAMAGE TO OUR PRODUCT AND THUS MISLEAD US INTO THINKING THAT WE NEED TO GET A NEW ONE OR PAY FOR OUR PRODUCT TO BE SERVICED??
OR HAS THIS GREEDY NEW BUSINESS TREND ALREADY STARTED?
The timing of introducing the XCP now, starting of the Christmas shopping season,
when people are more inclined to spend or replace or gift computers etc, is that ?good,
well-planned? timing or just a coincidence that XCP can disable our drives?
Did Sony dream that their XCP would be good for their business without thinking that the "illiterate, dumb masses" of customers are way much more intelligent, more sharp and much more hi-tech than Sony and their HEAD???!! of GLOBAL???!!! Business???

Sony is a very greedy company.

I hope that people realize - Sony doesn't market to consumers. There's more money in developing relationships with other businesses and securing their loyalty. That's how these kinds of issues crop up.

In the case of DRM, Sony approaches businesses and says "Look, we can do this". Without any tech-savvy, the soon-to-be partners assume that Sony's methods are legitimate and genuine - and as we know, it's quite the opposite.
It's not very long before Sony is given the wake up call that they aren't exactly good at what they do and people have bypassed their security with no effort at all.

I would strongly reccomend that people do what I've been trying to explain for ages: Boycott Sony. They don't deserve any of our money and their products outside of music also suffer from a range of questionable practice issues.

Ever had to deal with their support?