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Sony's EULA Worse Than Its Rootkit?
jaaron writes "If you think the Sony rootkit is bad, check out the accompanying EULA! From the EFF's summary: 'If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. ... Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to "enforce their rights" against you, at any time, without notice. ... Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling.'"
Disclaimer: I hate Sony. Hate them, hate them, HATE them!
That said, I was a little put off by the article and suspected it was a bit hyperbolic, designed to whip the masses into an unwarranted (unwarranteed?) frenzy.
But, a funny thing happened on my way to show this critique a bit harsh. I read the actual Sony EULA. Wow! I'll still say there is a little hyperbole in the /. article but, on whole, it's
true! Holy Shit Batman (probably get a DRM ding for that!).
It's time to take SONY to the woodshed. Don't purchase anything with any SONY signature (this may require a little research, SONY makes ccd's for lots of digital cameras).
I am saddened a little more each new DRM'ed day and more thankful each day I was alive early enough to amass a comfortable 1000-CD collection of music I can freely copy, rip, etc.
I hope only better days for the X, Y, and Z generations. God Bless all of you.
(Seriously, if there were some visible and concerted effort to boycott one of these leading vendors, maybe there would be some softening of this death march to control content (most consumers, contrary to popular belief, are willing (and DO) to pay for their media, don't abuse fair use priveleges, and are NOT criminals). I can't contribute much more against SONY since I swore them off from the MiniDisk debacle -- sold all of my SONY equipment, won't buy ANY SONY equipment -- my house is as SONY-free as I've been able to make it.)
EULA's are just things nobody reads or pays any attention to that basically say the company isn't responsible for anything but that hasn't stopped them from being sued in the past so who cares about it.
Rootkits on the otherhand are dangerous to your computer and in this Sony case even caused conflicts with other problems and could disable your drive. So it's hard to compare, the rootkit seems infinitely worse to me.
If you think the rootkit caused a backlash, just wait.
Has anything been heard from employees of Sony's consumer products arm? By and large, they manufacture high-quality kit - they have high standards, and one assumes they can't be happy to see this coming from their music arm. Not to mention the fact that, AFAIK, Sony BMG is essentially a US company, steeped in copyright culture, whereas the consumer electronics arm remains largely Japanese and engineering-led.
do we know about the relative profitability of the two arms? Is this likely to bring forward the day when the two companies go their separate ways?
Yet another stupid requirement to the EULA is according to this article here: "You must delete your songs if you move out of the country or if you file for bankruptcy."
http://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=art icle&sid=215
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
So you are allowed to make backups of your CD's for safety (traditional fair use),
but now if you ever actually need to use those backups because you sat on your original CD, Sony says you must destroy them too. Nice.
Get used to using the word "info-feudalism", for that is what the corporations are creating. Think about it: under feudalism, the lord owned the land, the serfs worked on the land, and the serfs were not allowed to move away if they didn't like the deal.
Under info-feudalism:
Large corporations bribe legislatures to expand "intellectual property" to include many, many things that used to be open to all;
Government spends your money on basic drug research, but drug companies patent the results;
Copyright gets extended again and again so that works no longer pass into the public domain after the creator dies;
Your DNA gets patented by someone else without your say-so; authors patent story lines (!), corporations apply for ridiculously broad patents in an attempt to control what others can and cannot invent;
Police arrest scientists who publish papers on flaws in Digital Rights Management schemes;
You buy a song or a movie but never really own it;
Fair Use quotations are legally doubtful;
Crooked churches sue their critics because their 'bibles' are copyrighted;
Governments tell lies such as "piracy helps the terrorists;
News media are corrupted by their connection to cash-cow entertainment conglomerates;
And it's not like any of them truly invented the ideas all by themselves; all of society indirectly helped; yet they rob all of society by seeking monopoly. Oh, I could go on and on.
See this demolition of the whole idea of "Intellectual Property":
http://deoxy.org/aip.htm
The Recording Industry tried to sue radio broadcasting out of existence back in the 1920's, because they feared that people wouldn't buy their records if people could listen to it for free on the radio. They were forced to evolve their business model, and have since learned that radio is their biggest method of getting music out. The internet is much the same. The Recording Industry is trying the internet and it's users out of existence as well. Soon companies like Sony and other labels are going to find out that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Which is exactly why we created our online music store. It is for independent artists. Check out my sig for more info.
I have nothing clever to put here...
As far as i can tell, these are merely statements with no force of law.
I think they're mixing two things together
1. The DRM software on the CD
2. The audio tracks on the CD
There is no EULA that applies to the audio tracks on any CD. If I disagree with their EULA, all it means is that I disagree to use their software to manage my experience. Unless I'm way off base* my reading of the EULA doesn't suggest otherwise.
They use CAPITAL LETTERS to make sure we know that the license we're being 'granted' is to
1(a). "install one (1) copy of software"
1(b). "install one (1) copy of any approved media player(s) contained on this CD"
1(c). use the software and any approved media player(s)
*I know the collective genius of
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've been fairly moderate about DRM in the past, until I purchased the rootkit-encumbered new Foo Fighters album. I placed it in my CD-ROM drive to encode some MP3's for my portable player, and I noticed a licensing agreement popped up. I hate those "software enhancements" on movie DVD's and audio CD's, and I did what I have always told my girlfriend to do when the InterActual ones come up: I closed the window without accepting the licensing agreement.
The software was still installed on my computer. The dirtiest thing about all this, in my opinion, is that the "A" in EULA (Agreement) is nothing of the sort. If I had agreed to the EULA and got the rootkit with the garbled audio and everything else, I would say caveat emptor until the laws are changed or lawsuits create a deterrent. Even if the contract is 200 pages long, we should probably be reading them. Or, we should demand a law like what the credit card companies have that requires a standardized matrix that summarizes how we're going to get cheated, monitored, and butt-raped.
They could have done this legally (we can talk about the ethics another day), but they chose to circumvent their own legal measures: the "yes" and "no" that is supposed to make all this work. Now, I'm glad to see that this will give the world a reason to say caveat venditor.
I agree.
In the Internet age, do we really need the RIAA or MPAA? All any band/movie producer needs creative people and market themselves because the distribution channels, formerly controlled by the RIAA/MPAA, are now open to the common folk because the cost to produce such works is within the budget of anyone willing to work a minimum wage job and live in their parent's basement.
I can produce, distribute and market my own movies/garage band on the Internet. If people like the product, it turns a profit. If the product sucks, it doesn't profit. Why did Barney the Dinosaur become so huge? Marketing. Do you think a parent who cares about their child would subject their child to the mind numbing antics of a purple dinosaur? Do parents who subject their children to Barney even watch and see what they are showing their children?
The RIAA/MPAA is not dedicated to quality. Why? Quality is subjective, profits are objective: some business manager OK'ed the Hulk movie because, hey, everybody knows who the Hulk is so at least N people will go see it/buy it, plug that into the profit-o-lator, and bingo, they figure out they should at least break even, which isn't bad business practice because a bunch of people got paid in the process. However, such a scenario does not bode well for the "art".
Similarly, at its height of popularity, Atari was making a killing with their 2600 console. Alas, they let piles of steaming crappy games get published in quest of more profits. Where are they now?
Having a work earn its value spurs creativity and innovation rather than remakes and rehash. With hokey television series like Dukes of Hazzard being remade, what's next? The A-Team? Chris Tucker as Murdock, the Rock as Mr. T, Leslie Neilsen as Hannible and Michael Jackson as Face?
If you work for the DOD pleae read this.
I will be talking to the director of IT for the base and this is what I will be discussing. Sonys installation of a root kit on home or work computers poses a serios security violation to military and DOD property. This root kit can compromise computers that may contain sensitive government data. Also most people will not place the cd in TS rated computers but they may play the cds in home computers or non TS computers where sensitive derivative works may reside. Sony is indirectly installing software on dod computers that may constitute compromising DOD clasified and sensitive information. This may be a form of treason and subversion, and because of this we should exclude and prohibit the use of all Sony CD's in their work and personall computers.
I must agree with the poster that said he had amassed a 1,000+ CD library before copy protection and DRM started to come into play. While I don't have that many, I have quite a few. My wife and I just bought matching iPods yesterday (the 30 GB iPod Video unit), and I am currently going through this large library of CD's we OWN and am ripping them and uploading them to my iPod.
What does this mean for Sony and other music companies? Well, I can't speak for everyone out there, but my wife and I are being very selective about the CD's we buy. If there is any copy protection what so ever, we will not buy the CD. Since it is just the two of us, I doubt if it is going to hurt any of the record companies bottom line much, but at least we have made the conscious decision to not purchase DRM'd content.
I do feel for the younger generations that enjoy the new music. They are the ones that are going to have to fight the good fight with the record companies. My hat is off to you, and we will do what we can to help.
No matter where you go... there you are.