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Sony Pulls Controversial Anti-Piracy Software
An anonymous reader writes "Bowing to public outrage, Sony BMG has temporarily halted the use of its controversial anti-piracy software in all of its music CDs, the company said in a statement today. The move comes just a day after a top Bush administration official chided Sony and the entertainment industry for going too far: according to this story over at Washingtonpost.com, Stewart Baker, the Department of Homeland Security's policy czar warned would-be DRM makers: 'It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. 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.' The Post has the full text and video of his commentary." We've reported on this story previously.
I for one am boycotting all Sony music from here on if it comes on CD. Windows root-kit, OSX kernel extensions ... how can you trust them? The RIAA and big record companies are getting very long in the tooth and I would love nothing more than to see them get taken down. They have all but destroyed the industry over the years and turned it into something worse than politics.
The most talented musicians I know are waiters, bus boys and taxi drivers, thanks to the recording industry.
Can't wait for someone to shake it all apart by releasing their works without the industry influences (and the industry taking their piece of the pie).
Are the people who purchased the DRM/spyware CDs due a replacement copy without the DRM/spyware?
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Wonderful to watch this going south in a big way, dragging the whole concept of DRM with it. We all owe Sony a debt of thanks, really.
x cp_art10
I particularly enjoyed this quote from First4Internet's website from their director of Sales & Marketing:
"We're not denying people access to the music," Macdonald said. "We're just trying to help them manage their access."
http://www.xcp-aurora.com/press_article.aspx?art=
Please! Please, Mr. MacDonald! Help me manage my access to my media by installing a rootkit!
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
On the other hand, I also hope that the DMCA will be really shaken by this event. After all, according to DMCA, Sony rootkit is protected software. Hit them in the wallet, me says!
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
A Homeland Security honcho saying that all our computer are not belong to them?! Wow. Just... wow. Was Baker somehow shown the right end of a cluestick, or is this a temporary fluctuation in the collective subconscious?
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Stupid Question: Could they be prosecuted/sued under the DMCA for trying to bypass the security in a computer?
It would be sweet to give big corps a taste of their own legislation.
There's a huge difference between just saying they'll stop going forward, and going to the effort of a recall, complete with replacement of discs people have ALREADY bought in addition to promptly pulling all CD's from stores that have this DRM on them.
I have afeeling they are doing neither though, I'd love to see a class action suit that demands all CD's sold are to be replaced with DRM-free versions on Sony's dime. Then perhaps it would sink home they'd done something a little wrong.
I wonder how liable the company that came up with the DRM in the first place is, perhaps Sony can shift all blame to them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4427606.stm
The question is whether they perceive that they've blocked enough piracy with that DRM software that the financial loss is less than they "would have" lost. If all else fails, they can consider it "market research".
It's all about putting the right spin on things.
You seem to have missed the point that they have also broken several state and federal statutes related to spyware and trespass.
cat
If you desire to grovel at the feet of Sony, and beg for permission to uninstall some software from your own PC, we new have a link:
http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form14.html
Use this information in any mannor you see fit...
DRM implemented at the hardware level will do nothing. Some company will continue to manufacture the non DRM versions. They will make bank selling it. What about the legacy hardware? I still have a Pentium 75 sitting around as a jukebox. 1% of the population buys this hardware and seeds the content for the other 99%.
Also we're at least 10 years from hardware DRM, if it ever happens. What about the increase in microphone and speaker technology? Increases to the point where the old skool method of putting the tape player up to the radio acctually provides high quality.
People don't understand the information age. We can't understand it yet. It's a paradigm shift, in the true sense of the word not the corpspeak sense. Success will no longer be about selling information. Success will be about pointing people to the information. A subtle but important difference.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Should the F/OSS community in the US develop a file system wrapper that is a form of "DRM" so that anything that limits the use of files or mounted drives on the computer is trying to circumvent the DRM wrapper? Wouldn't that be a great day!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
The dept of Homeland Security has been worried for some time about the possibility of foreign nationals creating botnets
Ok, I understand why the massive botnets used by spammers don't count (because most of them are americans), but what about the 'nets you can buy cheaply (a few cents per machine) in russia, poland, heck all over the world?
I mean, possibility? Either you are the department is plain crazy. That's like saying air is possibly breathable.
Wake up. We have massive botnets already, many of them are controlled by foreign nationals.
What the homeland security actually fears is that they will continue to be used for spam and other low-profile acts, because they need a huge, frontpage incident to claim more funding.
And if it doesn't happen by around summer 2006, I'd not be surprised if they staged one.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If that were true, it is strange that strings like "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 " -- indicating a specific version -- are in there.
9 69409
i ndowsmedia.drm/browse_frm/thread/8270cbc85f8e9cb8/ 7cb5c4ad49fa206e?lnk=st&q=FIRST4INTERNET&rnum=44&h l=en#7cb5c4ad49fa206e"
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I mean, why would they look for a *specific* version of LAME if they want to rule out mp3 encoding software running on the machine?
Also check this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167537&cid=13
"Go and check it yourself, and compare to lame sources. The data from tables.c is included in the executable in identical form (several large tables), also all the version strings are included, which the DRM system doesn't check.
The data is there, the big question is if it was linked accidently, or if it actually uses LAME code as well."
He's talking about the *data* of several large tables being in there.
Further more, the theory that the DRM software would be using these strings in order to look for "incompatible" programs does not look very plausable, because the DRM kit seems to look for program names rather than scanning the executables, judging from the strings posted here:
http://hack.fi/~muzzy/sony-drm-magic-list.txt
Besides, that does not explains the date from the tables being in there.
Further, we have a post by a F4I employee on usenet talking about an mp3 player he wrote:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.w
"I am currently writing an MP3 player with lots of bells and whistles including a wave editor, fades, reverbs etc.
What I now need is to be able to protect the files it creates. I have already written the routine to convert the MP3 into a WMA file.
Does someone have some simple C++ code which can write Microsofts DRM v1 properties that the user whishes to set(i.e. 3plays 4 copies etc) over the unprotected file to make it protected. There may be some cash on offer here if its easy to use! All I need is a procedure that performs this"
And, another thing is that LAME also seems to be cabable of decoding: http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_lame.htm
Taking things togeter, to me it looks unlikely that they are looking for a specific version of LAME by scanning trough executables, while for other mp3 playing software they simply look for the name of the executable.
I think it is very well possible they use of have used LAME in their mp3 player. Then the strings and tables either indicate that Lame is indeed being used by the bundled player to play mp3s, or they mistakenly linked the Lame library because they did use it in other parts of their software and somehow did not realise they were linking the Lame lib.
I have an e-mail message showing EECOL Electric in Canada telling it's employees, "DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES INSERT SONY MUSIC CD'S INTO YOUR COMPUTER, EITHER AT HOME OR WORK!" in big red letters, followed by an explanation of the situation.
I'm positive this isn't the only company which has sent out similar notices.
It's been a long time.
> Sony made a stupid PR mistake, but they are too big a company to
> really suffer from it so badly...
They will suffer a substantial loss of CD sales. All that the twentysomethings will remember from the newsblips they saw on ABC is that Sony CDs break your computer.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Yes, they DAMN WELL SHOULD GO TO JAIL FOR THIS!! You know why? Because these aren't teenage script-kiddies trying to prove a point, these are high-ranking executives of multinational corporations, who are doing it on purpose , and should FUCKING KNOW BETTER!
They KNOW what they're doing is illegal and wrong, but they're DOING IT ANYWAY, BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY'RE ABOVE THE LAW. They really need to be made an example, in order to stop the fucking huge corporations from running amok!
In fact, not only should the executives go to jail, the entire company should be barred from doing business in the United States for some period of time (i.e., the equivalent of jail for a corporation). That's the kind of message we need to send!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz