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Where are the Prosecutors?
a_greer2005 wonders: "In the past 5 years, we have seen plenty of virus writers in the United States brought to justice both criminally and when possible financially. In the past couple of weeks it has been discovered that Sony has shipped a rootkit, which is worse than the common spyware or virus, so I ask you, where are the law suits? Is anyone planning criminal/civil action at all? Does Sony frighten the entire legal industry? If nothing is done about this, will we have ANY right to tell a company 'NO' in the future when it comes to DRM worms -- Is this but a sample of things to come?" Update: 11/12 10:20 PM EDT by C :Whoops! Missed the fact that we've already reported on the fact that California has already started a class action suit against Sony (thanks to the posters that caught this). New York may soon follow. However that is only 2 states out of 50. Is there a possibility of more to follow?
Looks like the corporation defending copyrightsmay have some copyright problems of their own.
A computerexpert, whose name is known by the redaction, discovered that the cd "Get Right With The Man" by "Van Zant" contains strings from the library version.c of Lame. This can be conluded from the string: "http://www.mp3dev.org/", "0.90", "LAME3.95", "3.95", "3.95 ".
It's easy to take legal action and be successful against a single person, especially one who often is very young and simply cannot afford to hire good legal counsel. On the other hand, it's not so simple to take legal action and be successful against a huge corporation with ties high up in the government and loads of money to protect themselves. Legal action is being pursued in several states and by several different parties, but due to the fact that this is a major corporation with very important friends in high places they will receive nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
They're right here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/10/00 24259&tid=233&tid=17
Tim Dorr
Owner/Manger
A Small Orange
Where have you been lately?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
A rootkit is a set of tools used by a hacker to hide his presence on a system and maintain 'root' privileges (Administrator on Windows). While Sony's DRM app does hide its presence, I don't believe there has been any indication of systems comprimised and hacked into by Sony and I don't think that was their intention. I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't call it a 'rootkit'.
it's not self replicating and doesn't attack other people's PC over the internet or such. The nuisance is limited to the computer the disc is inserted into. It sucks, and it doesn't make it right, but it's nowhere as bad as a virus that hits corporate LANs and that directly cost millions to fix (manpower, lost productivity, etc etc). It's mostly single homer users affected.
///<sig
This is what you get when you allow large corporations to dictate your laws: they will only be enforced when it suits those corporations. And when you allow nearly all laws to defend only the interests of the very rich at the expense of everyone else, a travesty of justice is the inevitable result.
I spent the better part of an hour yesterday ridding my mothers computer of this "rootkit". Most of that time was spent attempting to restore the use of her CD/DVD drive that went missing after the core DRM code is shut down. Before people get on my case, my mom is no idiot and is very protective of her computer. I asked her specifically if she ran or saw anything run when she put the CD in her drive and I believe her version of events.
She did not install anything
She did not agree to anything
She never saw an EULA
Her computer could not RIP ANY CD's afterwards
All she did was attempt to import a CD into iTunes and from then on out any attempt to import CD's would freeze up her computer, not just XCD protected disks.
let the editor flambe begin
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
Nope. Class Action Suits are civil actions. Story Poster is asking "Where are the *CRIMINAL* penalties for this"?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's not just a domestic issue anymore. Before CA filed or people began talking about the NY case, a consumer protection group from Italy filed suit.
The domestic issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Other countries that are not so impressed by the financial might of companies like Sony are going to nail anyone using such underhanded methods. Rootkits like this one most likely violates the Berne Convention, TRIPS, and possibly WIPO.
ACThere's winning the battle, and winning the war. Large corporations with deep pockets are well-suited to winning battles, but there isn't much they can do about losing the war with regard to the effects of negative public opinion.