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?

Comments

Uhhh

[timdorr]

They're right here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/10/00 24259&tid=233&tid=17

Some information

[_LORAX_]

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.

Re:Some information

[karnal]

I have Our Lady Peace's new disc, Healthy in Paranoid Times.

On insertion (simulated here via the AUTORUN.EXE, since my autorun is off) the CD displays an "Enhanced CD Installer" window, which has the title and artist of the cd. "End User License Agreement" is off to the right.

In the center is the familiar legalese of the EULA - stating "IMPORTANT - READ CAREFULLY:" Off to the bottom is an "Agree/Disagree" radio button, which if you select Disagree (agree is defaulted, BTW - without any scrolling in the main EULA part) the CD automatically ejects to protect itself.

But it will not install any software if you select Disagree. Given, I am only able to test on this specific CD, so I can't really state with full authority that your mother clicked on "Next" without moving the radio button, but in my case you'd have to hit something to install this rootkit.

p.s. You can also rip away with EAC while the agreement is being displayed, if you don't want to turn off Autorun. My thoughts are to just turn off Autorun, however... It is handy in certain cases, but I'm not a typical user I guess.

pps bottom of my eula = (ID:239675.18 -- 1/7/2005)

Re:Not a rootkit

[max born]

I don't believe there has been any indication of systems compromised and hacked into by Sony ...

Not hacked by Sony but others are beginning to take advantage as a result of Sony making it easy for them. Sony Rootkit Trojans Emerge. So far, trojans Backdoor.IRC.Synd.a and its variant Backdoor.IRC.Synd.B have been detected.

Re:SONY rootkit violates LPGL

[Dachannien]

It was Dutch, actually.

http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/38285

Wrong!

[sconeu]

Nope. Class Action Suits are civil actions. Story Poster is asking "Where are the *CRIMINAL* penalties for this"?