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Sony Intentionally Crashes Customers' Computers
Uttles writes "According to Yahoo!, Celine Dion's latest CD will not play in computer drives. In fact: 'Should the consumer try to play Dion's CD on a PC or Macintosh, the computer likely will crash.' How is this legal?" Since Sony admits that their product is designed to cause damage to your computer system, almost anyone would likely have a good lawsuit against them. Attention Celine Dion and all musicians: crashing your fans' computers is not a good business practice. No matter what your agent says.
Are you sure it's the protection? I would say that the computers they tested it on had good taste, that's all. :)
Your heart may go on, but your computer won't.
...wtf is sony thinking? undermining another sector of their business??
Crashing computers are nothing. Put Celine's CD in to your car while you're driving and it'll make you crash that too, just to end the god awful experience.
</all too obvious crashing joke>
Actually, I just showed this to one of my roomates and he said he hasn't had a problem with it...
-shoptroll
Insert Sig Here
If Sony wanted to be obnoxious, they could write a program that starts when Autorun is activated. It could cover the screen and say "YOU CANT PLAY THIS HERE!!!", and then send a signal to the CD ROM to eject the CD. When somebody puts it back in... and so on.
Yes, this would be easy to get around. But I'd far prefer that then causing a BSOD.
"Derp de derp."
Now some poor kernel hackers will have to listen to this music so they can code a workaround for the linux kernel. :)
I feel there pain. Just rember this is for the greater good.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
I like it. I think Microsoft should license Celene's music to play as your computer crashes... Nice and mournful...
I'll just put this thing in here and show you all that that story is total bullshi
ATZ0
NO CARRIER
Let me get this straight: If I go shell ~$1800 USDfor a Sony Vaio (like I did 3 weeks ago), then I shell out another ~$20 USD for the disc, it not only will not play in their own damned PC, but it will crash their own system?
That shit is fucked up. I wonder if they make any claims as to the stability of their systems.
What are they telling people? That it won't play on PCs. Or that it will crash their computers, potentially causing loss of important data? I remember, when those audio cds with a video/data track as track one came up, they had a huge warning label telling you not to try to play track one because it might damage your stereo ...
And .. what would they say if your roommate takes the CD (that happens to lie on your desk without case and booklet) and tries to play it on the computer you both own ... crashing it ... causing you to loose all data of your term paper one day before it's due ... oh, wait ... they'll sue YOU ... letting your roommate listen to music he hasn't paid for ;-)
Not that I mean to nitpick, but are you offering the legal advice that I should sue Sony, lose, and then sue Slashdot for damages? If I lose against Slashdot, can I sue you?
Or was your comment meant as incredibly dry humor?
There's a big difference here. A CD is meant to play in a CD player. A shotgun is meant to hunt birds.
Using the shotgun to blast your computer into small pieces is not the normal use of a shotgun. Putting a music CD into a CD player *is* the normal use of a shotgun.
Of course, in the future, the normal use of Celine Dion CDs will be to launch them as clay pidgeons and shoot them with your shotgun...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"he said he hasn't had a problem with it"
The problem with it is that he *has* it! ;)
(Sorry, couldn't resist...)
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
Near... far... wherever you are...
I believe that the mouse won't move on...
Once more... you close the drive door...
rip, mix, and blue screen...
our prices go up and on...
Now it's just Sony making CDs which cause your computer to crash instead of Microsoft.
I work for Sony, and this our only idea as to the killing off of Celine's career. How dare you warn her, have you heard the awful cd?!
- colin
Argh. f**ck sony:
"And it won't eject properly, but that's just because the computer has crashed."
And you won't be able to eat properly, but that's just because my foot is so far up your ass that I'm playing footsie with your tonsils.
Arghhhhhhhhhhhh.
This was the only way a Celine Dion record could get free publicity on Slashdot.
Can't Sony cross-market this as a system that protects the user from Celine Dion?
Free Mac Mini
I used to think exactly the same, until one CD proved me wrong.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
A friend and I both bought Céline Dion's latest CD ("A New Day Has Come") in one of the first few days that it came out, brought it home, played it on the computer, ripped it to PCM using Exact Audio Copy and encoded it to Ogg Vorbis... this CD did absolutely nothing to the computer. The ripped files are perfect without any artifacts.
I don't know what this report is talking about.
BLAME CANADA
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Why not just stamp AOL on the top of these disks? they're just as useful.
Could somebody translate this into english for me?
My idea was to have the autorun program just eject the CD. You pop the CD in, and then it pops back out again. It'd be kind of like the PC gagging on it, hehe. I'm sure it'd take a while for the average user to know that disabling autorun'd turn off that behviour.
"Derp de derp."
Everyone who has replied and kept the subject line "Re:Clone CD can copy it" are just as guilty because the subject line says it all.
A really insightful thing would be e^{i \theta} = \cos \theta + i \sin \theta. But I guess this aint News for Nerds anymore.
Windows has been crashing my computers for years... so whats wrong with one Celine CD doing the same? At least they are telling you upfront. I have yet to find the label on Win98 that says the same.
Its all just smoke and mirrors.
Attention Celine Dion and all musicians
Kudos for not mistaking Céline Dion for a musician. (-:
S
11. Some dingus points out the obvious.
Well it should be "We need laws to make this illegal, not just illegal ... oh wait ..."
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
New York, NY (AP) -- Sony releases Celine Dion Virus.
Sony Music Entertainment Corporation was today found guilty of releasing an audio compact disc (commonly known as CD), which has been found to intentionally cause personal computers to operate erratically or completely fail to operate ("crash" in computer lingo).
Federal Authorities find the New York based company guilty of cyberterrorism. Repeated contacts to Sony's various divisions returned the official statement of "No Comment."
In related news, Microsoft has announced today that it's newest product, Windows XYZ, touted as the best version of Windows every, will be released to the public tommorrow. Beta testers around the world report that it protects users against the Celine Dion Virus. Federal authorities are investigating Microsoft for Anti-DMCA charges relating to the reverse engineering of Sony's software.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It may have a warning on the jewel box and the booklet, but often CD's are innocently left on the desk.
Wouldn't it be an opportunity for sabotage to leave the bare CD in the server room for some techie to slide it in while troubleshooting something? I can see the phone lines start to flash...
I just saw Céline and her manger/husband on TV speak of this (lucky me, I was zapping around on tv and just stumbled on a rerun of her press conference).
It was mostly René Angelil doing the talking (the manager/husband), and he was...not clear.
What he said is that the CDs sold in europe can break your computer (to wich Céline said "Ouch, that's gonna cost 'em"), its only sold that way in europe, for now, but might come to america soon. Then he said there are two sides to this story, the first part is that music makes you feel a lot of emotions are is very important in people's lives and not everyone can afford CDs because they are a bit expensive, especially for teenagers. The second part is that authors and singers and producers need to get paid, and the big companies meet every year and they are working on technology for music that can be downloaded that will get paid for, but the technology isn't ready. So in europe they are much more agressive, but this technology might come to america soon.
So, he's not being clear at all...and this is loosely translated from french, but that's pretty much what they said about it.
So, to summerise: These copy-protected CDs might break their fan's computer, and they feel this is harsh. They wished that people could listen to their emotionally-charged songs for free, but they want to get paid.
So...if people actually PAY for the CDs, its ok to break their expensive computers?
You can't take the sky from me...
but if you have mede it as far as the server room you may as well wire up the cabinet door to the mains, and replace the terminals with model three waffle irons.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Let go! Bad dog! BAD DOG!
Stupid product and a computer with a stupid name.
You know, I just don't get it. Why would you want a synthetic dog?
There's something about the Japanese culture that I just don't get. Hello Kitty is a perfect example. Why do they like Hello Kitty?
How did they get the bow to stick to Hello Kitty's ear? I tried that on my own cat, but the taper of the ear as it reached the extremity wasn't conducive to holding a bow, much like pants will be self-adjusting on the rotund. Besides, she flicked away the bow then attempted to sever my femural artery. After I got back from the emergency room, I thought about using the staple gun, but Hello Kitty doesn't appear to have pierced ears. Unfortunately, I was out of hot-melt glue sticks, so I was unable to investigate that possibility.
Why do anime characters always have two teeth? (One on top going all the way around from molar to molar, and one on the bottom going all the way around from molar to molar.) Does Japanese toothpaste include spackle, or am I missing something? Why these one-piece monolithic teeth? The monolith is a fissure-free, gap-free symbol of strength. Which is ironic from a people who have been living in one of the world's most active seismic zone and yet persist in building paper houses with stone roofs.
[sigh] I long for the good old days, when the Japanese were quiet, reserved, and Sony built battle-wagon open-reel VTRs instead of CanCon pop music CDs.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.