Slashdot Mirror
EFF and Sony Disclose New DRM Security Hole
Dotnaught writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and SONY BMG Music Entertainment said on Tuesday that SunnComm is offering a patch to fix a security vulnerability with its MediaMax Version 5 content protection software on 27 SONY BMG CDs. Security firm iSEC Partners discovered the hole following a request by the EFF to examine the SunnComm software. The vulnerability involves a directory installed on users' computers by the MediaMax software that could allow a third party to gain control over the affected Windows PC. The EFF and iSEC delayed disclosing the problem until SunnComm could develop a fix."
How big of a drama it is.
Sue the bastards and get it over with.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
And to think that only yesterday, there was a slashdot story wondering whether the EFF had outlived its usefulness... So there's your answer, I guess.
Hopefully the fix is them turning around, bending over, and grabbing their ankles.
activestudios web design
Who in their right mind would voluntarily install something from SunComm or SonyBMG given their track record?
Their software phones home and cripples your computer. Would anyone here actually trust them?
Sony has done more damage to the DMCA and set back DRM farther than the combined efforts of the EFF and like-minded people around the world. We should all thank them.
Why am I suddenly afraid my Sony speakers are going to do this:3 0/0021211&tid=126&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/
It is clear that DRM software is going to be as open to bugs as any other
software, and some of these will constitute a security threat.
Surely the solution is obvious. If they built DRM software directly into the
operating system, then it could be happily updated with all the rest of the
software, using whatever update mechanisms your OS provides.
I'm sure that the security minded folks on slashdot will be the first to
support a legal requirement for DRM in all OS'es, so that we can solve this
problem before it becomes really serious.
Phil
But first you install stealthy and quite possibly illegal software with one hand , and on the other you install DRM with a Security hole that hardly anyone will patch because they will likely not hear about it.
Way to go Sony , you truly are a bunch of arse-holes .
Well at least if this gets major press coverage it may cause an even large headache to ever encroaching wave DRM
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Root kits, Serial Copy Management, Macrovision, Content Protection for Prerecorded Media, Advanced Access Content System, blah, blah, blah. The most effective DRM is for the lables to continue to put out crappy music. Eventually we'll all find something better to listen to.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
I've never understood how any userland bullshit software could manage the complexities of opening up a hole *on accident*. Call me paranoid, but, when shit like this gets 'found', they call it being 'found' because someone put it there.
Since they are redoing the CDs, maybe they can change the names too?
Alicia Keys - Unplugged, but still Infected
Amici - Forever Defined as Dishonest
Britney Spears - Hitme, but Don't RipMe
Cassidy - I'm A Hustla in Your PC
David Gray - Life In Slow Motion Since your PC has a Rootkit
Faithless - Forever Faithless Sony
Imogen Heap - Speak For Yourself, I Love Rootkits
Leo Kottke/Mike Gordon - Sixty Six Steps to Uninstall the Rootkit
Raheem Devaughn - The Hate Experience
Santana - All That I Am Allowed to Copy
Stellastarr* - Harmonies for the Haunted PC
Various - So Annoying: An All Star Tribute To Rootkits
Wakefield - Which Side Are You On? Sony or the Public?
YoungBloodZ - Everybody Know Me, Nobody Copy Me
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
..did they also fix that little issue where the DRM installs itself even if the user doesn't accept the EULA?
Great, now not only do I have to make sure all my users' applications are patched, but I have to track patches on every frigging DRM implementation out there as well.
Well, payback is a bitch.
I have already steered a friend away from a Sony stereo to another brand, making it clear that Sony is not a good "citizen" and they would do well to stay clear of any Sony products.
Yes, I am only one puny person, but I've already cost them a couple of hundred bucks, and will continue do so at every opportunity.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I don't agree that anyone deserves to be owned , bar the creators of the DRM with a lawsuit. .Come on though ,how can you say everyone , Santana are still cool and are up there with Barry White on Music you play for romantic evenings
I may not like most of the music there and can see your point
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Go download the MP3's.
"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."
From EFF: "We're pleased that SONY BMG responded quickly and responsibly when we drew their attention to this security problem," said EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Consumers should take immediate steps to protect their computers."
As if Sony, which already has a boatload of negative publicity, could do anything else. I think even the stuffed shirts there must now realize that they can't let anything else fall through the cracks or their music business might collapse. Don't be surprised in Sony divests itself of BMG music at some point in the future, to keep from losing customers for its home electronics business.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I understand it is supposed to be a joke, but I can't help being amazed by the fact that I can recognize exactly two artists from your list, Britney and Santana. And the former just because she's a famous TV/news celebrity, I have never really listened to anything from her, except the occasional unnoteworthy clip. I own some songs/cds from Santana.
Maybe I should spend some time listening to some top-40 radios. But then again, maybe not.
Switchfoot - Nothing is Sony
You must be new here.
RIAA Bans Telling Friends About Songs
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
On romantic evenings I turn off the music to make sure no one's home.
Or
Sit here and rip the whole thing off the net for free and burn it to CD and copy it to my IPod.Yeah DRM is a great way to stop piracy.Maybe they should try offering value for money instead.
Sony is really setting DRM and copy-protection back by several years. And with each annoucement, they are making more and more people dislike DRM. That's not a bad thing, I suppose, but they're making it painfully obvious that the only fix for this is the complete removal of the software for people's systems with instructions on how to prevent the software from being loaded again in the future. (Sadly, a huge number of people don't know about the Shift key as an autorun disabler.)
/. but it's become clear that negative reactions like DRM are not what keep CD sales going.
Frankly, I want to see a major mea culpa from Sony on just about every TV and radio station that targets the audience from all of those DRMed audio CDs complete with previous said instructions and a promise (that will be kept) that such DRM techniques will never be used in the future.
Considering that even artists themselves are starting to fight back against DRM stating that it does nothing but hurt the fans, which is true, it's about time for the heads of these companies to realize that Sony has crossed the line and that DRM for audio CDs is not only useless but can have dire consequences. I'm not going to use that silly "information wants to be free" dogma that is used too often on
Maybe they should - gasp! - try adding value that the customer wants and cannot get over the Internet through downloading rather than trying to add chains to a product that we want to legally buy. For example:
* Buy the CD and get the concert DVD for 1/2 price
* Buy the CD and get a discount on concert tickets and merchandise
* Buy the CD and accumulate points that can be redeemed for other items
Tactics like these, where items that cannot be downloaded are offered as incentive, is a much better alternative to increase sales than pissing off the customer base by nefarious methods such as DRM. This is particularly true because DRM can be defeated by one simple method: CD line out --> PC line in.
In short, make it worth my while to buy the CD and not download it. DRM, particularly the kind that Sony implemented, does the opposite.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
FWIW, I have known one of the founding partners at iSec, Jesse Burns, since high school. He's a very very smart guy with almost instinctual understanding of security issues and problems. This is a shameless plug for my friend's company: they're great and you'd do well to hire them if you want a good security audit or training done.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
"The EFF and iSEC delayed disclosing the problem until SunnComm could develop a fix"
In my opinion, this is a severe mistake. With all the publicity that this attrocious farse that is the rootkit, was getting, they ran the risk of knowing about a security hole, not letting people know, and allowing millions of users to be vulnerable because of their big bro mentality.
Its shocking.
ilovegeorgebush
They left @stake en masse when the company was acquired by Symantec in 2004, and in so doing decimated the San Francisco office. Every one of the folks at iSec is absolutely top-notch. And no, I'm not astroturfing...
Corporations are sometimes their own worse enemy. It has gotten to the point that I feel safer downloading my music from complete strangers on the internet than buying it in a store.
The other farce in this fiasco is that these methods of protection are so easy to defeat that "anyone" who actually uploads music would not be slowed down for even a second.
So we have an extreme example of a rights denial system that penalizes in the extreme the clueless who never were going to upload anyway, and does nothing, not one iota, to stop uploaders.
Earth to idiots at corp HQ. Sony will feel the pain for years to come on this one. If I were an artist, I would be looking for a "no DRM" clause in my contracts when dealing with these morons.
Never underestimate the awesome power of pale vegetarian lawyers.
This may be a little off topic, but with this whole Sony root kit thing has anyone checked their Sony software lines for the same exploits? I had been an avid user of Sony Vegas software since they bought out Sonic Foundry, but now I am scared to install it again. There goes about 400 dollars just cuase I lost trust for Sony. It was great software much faster and more stable than Premier Pro, probably becuase Sony didn't write it. It makes you wonder what else they have corrupted in their control game.
Sauerbraten and sashimi?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Wow -- I can see it now: people sitting around at Starbuck's all wearing black cardboard rectangles across their eyes so the security cameras can't tell who they are while they talk about the latest music releases! SHEESH!!! I guess the answer is to NOT tell anyone about ANYTHING a major label does anymore, and stick to indie labels instead (better music anyhow). The majors haven't figured it out yet: vertical marketing only works for a little while. If all you sell is rap, hip-hop, and Britney Spears - without developing *new* talent and taking risks - you'll suffer the same fate as Columbia and WB: you'll either get bought or collapse. Best 2 new groups I've heard lately were Reverend Glasseye's "Our Lady of the Broken Spine" and Snake River Conspiracy's "Sonic Jihad", both on indie labels. Haven't bought a major label album in... shit... months... \burt
There is no such thing as bad weather - only inappropriate clothing.
Oye como va my right-hand
Bueno pa gosar myself
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Our Lady Peace: Healthy In Paranoid Times
27 + 23 Canadian discs [some same artist] = 50 affected titles. You can figure out how many unique artists will be pissed off at Sony for this latest blunder...
http://www.sonybmg.com/mediamax/titles.html
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Someone should go and tell the artists that they dont need these greedy evil middlemen to sell their music nowadays. They can simply create their own portals.
That should solve a lot of problems.
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
On romantic evenings, I turn up the music volume to make shure the neighbors don't know what I am doing.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
According to this report at CNET,
"Sony said it will notify customers though a banner advertisement directly in the SunnComm software"
So now you get banner ads with your audio cd+DRM.
Nice.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
The patch prevents you from 'innocultating' your PC against the risk of future 'infection'.
The gist of this press release is that I now have to keep a list of all the titles that might be affected just in case I, or anyone in my family decides to buy a MediaMax protected CD (or are given one as a gift) - Yes you can still buy a flawed CD. Even if Sony issues a recall on ALL affected CDs that does not give me 100% protection from this mess.
I now have to keep monitoring my PC forever more in case someone obtains an 'original' CD with the flawed DRM.
How exactly is this announcement and patch supposed to help me?
- All they've done is made my home admin tasks more complicated by heaping another problem onto me and they haven't given me an adequate solution.
The most interesting part about the whole Sony BMG rootkit fiasco, and now this, is that it seems as if Sony is doubly screwed from now on, because whenever they put out a new product, it's going to be hacked from all sides, to find little holes like this. I'm sure there are plenty of other products out there that behave similarly or have holes in them, that are from other companies, and aren't getting exposed because they didn't piss off the internet community.
It's this kind of backlash now that is bustin Sony, because anything they put out from now on better be bullet-proof, or else it will wind up being counterproductive
Does anyone know if there is a website out there that has a list of all the DRMed CDs put out by Sony and others? I looked on Google, but didn't find anything...
I would like to know so that I can make sure my dollars don't go to DRMed CDs.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Until they make a patch for the crappy music on most of those CD's, I'm not purchasing. Oh, and while they're at it, make a patch for their distribution, since it seems something is faulty with their current method of forcing me to walk to the store and buying the physical disc... when I don't even have a regular cd-audio player.
Of course this is a needed step for the "average joe" out there that didn't even know he got a malicious rootkit for free when playing a cd on his pc, but then again, does this average joe even know there is a patch out?
as for the rest of us... too little, too late.
they have to start with digital distribution without drm, or they will fail.
My friend, that is social engineering at its finest. Hats off to you. :)
Some people say 'Digital Rights Managment' is good for the consumer.
Some doctors used to recommend cigarettes.
Am I the only one who was freaked out that they had put a picture of the sony logo in place of the word sony, until reading the next line and realising that what I was seeing was the badly thought through section logo.
Apple could really capitalize on this whole Sony Rootkit DRM fiasco by advertising iTunes as the only "safe" way to get your music - they REALLY could clean up by finding a way to enable users to buy the entire album all at once instead of individual songs, for the same price as the typical retail physical CD.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I don't want a security patch for Sony's DRM malware. Just give me a removal tool and the problem will go away on it's own.
The vulnerability involves a directory installed on users' computers by the MediaMax software that could allow a third party to gain control over the affected Windows PC.
This is Windows we're talking about; I wouldn't be surprised if we're on to the seventh or eighty party by now.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
why the new acts can't all sound like Lionel Richie or Billy Ocean.
I think that you missed the poster's point, since you mention old pop chart stars. The problem isn't that today's pop charts don't feature yesterday's pop chart music nor soundalikes --- expecting that would be totally dumb.
The problem is that today the music scene is ruled 99% by the pop charts as a result of the ruthless efficiency of the Big Business side of the music industry, to the extent that almost all other musical styles are marginalized to near extinction. Musicians no longer come out of art school wanting to do something novel for their own niche audience; greed has overcome artistic integrity.
Back in the day, the studios and labels were comparatively amateurish and ineffective, so public tastes were strongly influenced by radio station jockeys, through student union gigs/concerts, and by music tabloid reviews of live acts. These have almost no effect today. The image makers and immense marketting machine hold the scene in a vice-like grip.
So it's not old age, only. It's also that musical horizons have been slammed down tight all around us, with only a few wonderful exceptions to the rule offering a temporary escape.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
One nice side effect of the Sony fiasco is that the electroncs arm now has more leverage within the company - Sony is a company torn between what it can do via home electronics, and what it doesn't want to do from the media arm.
With the media arm somewhat shamed, the electronics arm has a stronger case for doing things that are bit more open.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't believe people are taking that article seriously. It has to be some sort of bizarre joke on the part of The Register. Ignoring the ridiculous premise, take a look at the content of the article. It's written by someone calling himself "Bonhomie Snoutintroff", which should give you an idea of what to expect. He calls the EFF "pale vegetarians", and the media "pigopolists". What does that even mean? At the end of the article, there is a registered trademark symbol for no reason.
Here is the Register's summary of Mr. Snoutinroff's career: "Bonhomie Snoutintroff is a plain-spoken strong leader in cyberspace. He did poorly in school but his family is rich and well connected, so he's served as CEO of numerous, well-known Internet ventures that for various reasons unrelated to his forward-looking guidance no longer exist. He developed a cocaine and alcohol problem, although he refuses to dwell on the past: his mission is to bring honor and dignity to the IT profession. His keen insight as a global techno-visionary is matched only by his Christian humility."
Google has exactly one other article written by Mr. Snoutinroff (from 2000) which is equally ridiculous.
At least to me, it seems like someone at the Register got bored and somehow Slashdot turned it into a crusade. Which I guess really shouldn't come as a surprise : ).
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
The article states that " SunnComm is offering a patch to fix a security vulnerability with its MediaMax Version 5 content protection software on 27 SONY BMG CDs. "
Does this mean that once the SunnComm DRM software is patched it will go back to working as designed -- that is, do the DRM restrictions continue to constrain the end users' freedoms to use the music? Is the SunnComm software "fixed" or removed?
I would have been happier to have heard they designed a removal tool.
*grumblecakes*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Whooooosh!
I am still waiting to see how you patch a CD -- short of replacing it entirely, that is.
For now, I wouldn't trust Sony to patch my Tinkertoys properly, let alone my computer.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I've never really understood the GP's attitude. If people actually do like unsophisticated mass market stuff, and enjoy the music, why not let them? They're happy and it's not hurting anyone.
What a ridiculous reply. Absolutely ridiculous.
A. With good cables and equipment, the dreaded "analog" copy will be just as good as the digital copy. {Insert various analog/digital arguments here.}
B. DRM is still GONE. You made a CD via wave or MP3s files. Therefore, you made a duplicate of the CD without DRM. Ergo, DRM is defeated. No, it's not a precious 1:1 copy that you anti-analog types like to espouse; however, it is still a completely legitimate copy of that CD without DRM.
Sheesh.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
it's all still sony, and i'd still rather teabag a mime (http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pi5send5_f-thumb.jp g) than spend any more money with them. what are you going to do, work towards a boycott of a subset of their company and reduce the effectiveness of that boycott, or boycott the whole company and ask others to do likewise?
um, irony? it's the onion, man.
I think I should be paying less than in-store retail when I download my CD album. After all, in addition to the content I'm paying for my bandwidth to download it, my time in downloading, my hard drive space to store it on, any cover art or inserts that I have to print myself, as well as the blank CD I burn to play it outside of my computer and the jewel case I need to buy to store it in.
The record company selling me this album does not have pressing, materials, distribution, or record retailer profits to pay in the process.
So stop encouraging record companies to think they can sell me less for the same price! They're already doing that well enough on their own.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Compare this with the original story from The Register, where the author was offering his viewpoint in absolute terms.
How is this any different than Slashdot?
The difference between the two is night and day.
You mean the difference between a brown turd and a black turd?
To reiterate, The Register article presented a viewpoint, the Slashdot article asked if The Register article was correct in its conclusions.
I can show you plenty of articles where the editor or submitter added their own opinion or conclusion to the story. On Slashdot.
This is not the "rootkit" DRM software that were talking about here. This is the other DRM crapware that Sony/BMG has on its discs. I buy a moderate amount of music on CDs, then rip them to MP3s to play on my Rio and car stereo. I was planning to buy Carlos Santana's new disc when this whole flap came up. I checked, saw that Santana wasn't on the rootkit list, and briefly considered buying it, although I have avoided all DRMed music to this point. No worries, I'll rip it on my Linux box anyway.
I changed my mind, and I'm glad I did. One less bit of malware in the stream of commerce. I did go to Carlos' website and told them I had decided not to buy the disc and why. From the notes there, it seems they have been getting a lot of that. This may be the most effective way to deal with this issue. Tell the artists that you will not buy their art, if it comes packaged with such crap.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Here is an old school 5, troll comment, courtesy of wikipedia. It's about a year and half old, and unfortunately, doesn't show how it was moderated. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=107840&cid=917 5401
If you move out of your parents' basement you won't have to worry about their being home. (kidding, only kidding!)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Wow, a woman with a fast car, uses Linux, AND a sharp sense of humour... No doubt about it, you must be very ugly :D
(kidding, only kidding!)
It's great to see EFF helping Sony, and Sony playing nice. It would be especially nice to see Sony giving back to the EFF...
Now that would be some accountability.
Paper Pusher
How long until people start examining music from the other music labels for similair malware?
Click here for a permanent 'DRM patch'. ;)
I walked in to my local record store TWO DAYS ago with the Sony/BMG list of XCP titles. I asked the counter clerk if they had pulled the titles yet.
The response was, "Which one do you want".
The clerk knew of the issue. He even helped me confirm that the catalog number for the disk was a match. The titles were still on the shelves for sale. The store was replacing the disks as new disks came in from Sony.
Two out of three record stores that I checked that day had the titles available for purchase.
This is a recall?
Also, it is not as if you can look on the spine of the CD to find out that it is a Sony disk. These disks are sold under other label names. I believe that the one I got was an Electra. Sony/BMG is in the really fine print on the back, as well as the XPC URL.
megabux launches 'barbwire drm' on its cd's
people complain of being cut as a result of using it in the fasion they where accustomed to.
hackers report that gloves circumvent the security feature.
megabux releases a 'patch of foam' to cover up the barbwire after you have bought it if you find its cut you...
bollocks
And anyone expects anything less from the company that brought us DRM that can be circumvented by holding down the shift key when inserting a copy protected CD?
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
Sorry, but it is perfectly legal to copy your own cds and such and re-encode them for your own use. It's getting it from a friend that's illegal.
Look up the home recording act or something like that, which clarified the position on home recordings and such.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
...as previous patches. In other words, it leaves your computer even more vulnerable than before.
Don't see any mention of this on the entire last page of comments listed most recently first, so I figured it was worth risking a possible karma hit for duplication.
It seems Sony and SunComm just can't come up with a "real" fix to save their lives.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I had the same experience. My MD player from them had a circuit flaw where the Record button would activate by itself (there should have been a pull-up or pull-down resistor to keep it at the correct level). Worst case: it records over your MD until the battery dies. Best case: it wakes up, spins up the MD, senses the write-protect tab, powers down, and repeats until the battery is dead.
SONY: Some Operate, Not Yours.
Since sony seems to be showing up very often these days, shouldn't they get their very own icon?
Something along the lines of MS-BORG would be a lot more interesting than a simple SONY graphic.
The worst part about this isn't that clueless users get screwed. The worst part is that, clueless or not, it's the honest users who get screwed by this. These are people who would never pirate music not because they don't know how but because they believe it's wrong. They want to pay for legitimate copies of their music. They want to support their favorite bands. They want the label to want to put out that next album.
Accessing illegally copied music is easier than ever and the risks are negligible. Yet these people still laid down their $15 to buy the music on Sony's terms. It's not anyone wants a freaking medal for obeying the law. I don't think it's too much for Joe User to ask that his computer not get 0wn3d when he plays a CD.
Getting your content from anonymous criminals has been safer than getting it from corporations for a few years now. It's been over a decade since I had to deal with a virus infection that required a re-install of the operating system. Between anti-virus and anti-spyware software, you're pretty well covered. Stuff like Sony's DRM is even more dangerous because the people you pay to protect you from threats like these knew about Sony's DRM and did nothing about it.
I am sure that Sony is just protecting itself by working so cordially with the EFF but I must imagine that they don't want anymore bad publicity concerning the DRM technologies included in their music CDs. I suspect that there is going to be a mad rush everytime there is a new DRM software, to find the first security hole. Perhaps Sony is just the first in line to appreciate the backlash caused by unsafe software included in consumer products
Yes, you are confused. First4Internet's XCP is the "rootkit" installing DRM malware. The article here is talking about exploits using SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5. Santana's new album is "protected" with the SunComm software, not First4Internet's. Sony/BMG uses two different DRM packages. One installed a rootkit, the one discussed in this article allows an elevation of privilege attack. Up to today, it appeared that SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5, while a PITA, did not pose a security threat. Now we know different. Sony/BMG also publishes music CDs without either of the DRM packages. Caveat emptor
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Don't be surprised in Sony divests itself of BMG music at some point in the future, to keep from losing customers for its home electronics business
I used to be pretty loyal to Sony. They were a provider of decent quality home electronics for me. I didn't need top of the line, but I didn't want crap either. Sony was a decent product at a decent price. I own a Sony Trinitron 32" television, a Sony DVD player and a Sony 19" CRT. Given that they were purchased a while back before price drops in recent years, that's $1500 worth of stuff I bought from them. Never again. Ever. I'm through with them and I'm telling everyone I know. I have a distribution list in my email program that I send out Sony updates to. No one I know that actually listens to my advice will purchase from them again either. Some will follow my advice, some may not, but at least they know. Regardless, given a choice, Sony won't be getting any more money from me.
But why is the rum gone?
I gotta agree with this. I still buy CDs most of the time (I'll copy from a friend occasionally, but I never download). I wanted the new John Mayer Trio album (supposedly he's going back to his blues roots and away from the pop crap...he's a helluva blues guitarist). I saw the Sony-BMG label and put it back. Makes me sad, because I think he's a good artist and I want to support him, but I'm not gonna give a company like Sony any more money.
Did the DRM-ed CDs have the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on them?
There have been reports that Philips will treat any use of the logo on CDs that don't conform to the Red Book standard as being trademark infringement.
We will DRM anything we damn well please. We're SONY and we're tired of taking your crap!!!
By the above logic, there's no difference between using code from a closed-source corporation or an open source corporation. Is it really all the same whether or not parts of the code have been scrutinized by people with no vested interest in locking you into vendor dependency? By people who have the same interest as you in the integrity of the code?
Anyone who thinks these situations are equivalent is destined to do poorly.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Yeah, but there have a number of cases in which an Onion article got emailed around as real news. Their kind of humor is sometimes a bit too subtle for a lot of people.
The same thing has happened with Jon Stewart. No matter how often he tells everyone that he's a comedian, people insist on taking his stuff seriously.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The $sys$ stuff is just one arbitrary string that a rootkit could express itself through. To be thorough, download and run the free RootKitRevealer (front info page here). This is the software made by the very guy (Russonovich) who blew the whistle on Sony, having discovered their rootkit while testing his software.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
"Musicians no longer come out of art school wanting to do something novel for their own niche audience; greed has overcome artistic integrity."
Musicians? Art School? do you mean Music School? if so, rock musicians tend to avoid music school like the plague. frankly, i've never understood why--even if you don't want to write *in* the tradition, you can still be informed by it--i'd rather be an educated rebel than an ingnorant reinventor of the wheel.
disclaimer: I am doing a BMus in Composition and a BSc in Cognitive Science
The EFF and iSEC delayed disclosing the problem until SunnComm could develop a fix.
There's been a fix all along: don't put crappy security compromising DRM on CDs.
fuck you.
Musicians no longer come out of art school wanting to do something novel for their own niche audience; greed has overcome artistic integrity.
Close, but not quite. There's a big BIG difference between a pop star and a musician. The break really happened between the mid to late 80s and mid 90s as video meant a star had to be pretty, and predecessors of devices like this meant singing ability was a much lesser concern. Paula Abdul for example, according to a guy who played for her, is tone deaf, and depended on pitch correction devices for recording. She didn't do much actual singing in concerts -- woulda got in the way of the dancing.
All the sudden it became much easier to sign young, cheap talent for short run with a catchy tune. All the pop stars had to do look cute and a little rebellious, learn a few dance moves, sing into the magic box, and try not to get caught doing something that would harm record sales. I would bet there are few pop stars now who don't use pitch correction.
Putting together pop bands had been done before, of course. The Monkees, the Sex Pistols, all the bubblegum bands in the 60s, most of Mowtown, were hired and directed perfomers. But still the music of those times was dominated by singers -- and fantastic ones at that.
Lots of pop singers these days start using microphones much earlier, and don't learn to project their voices the way singers used to -- by singing loud in churches and such. With some exceptions, there's just not a lot of power behind the voices these days -- they can shout and screech, but they don't project.
Before MTV and pitch correction, pop stars may have been a lot of things, but they were very, very, very good singers. Even (and especially) the cheesey ones -- put on Lionel Ritchie's 'All Night Long' sometime and really listen to the composition and his voice.
But as I said, singing ability is much less important when everything's going to be pitch-corrected and compressed to hell anyway. What matters is a tight ass. People like Aretha Franklin and Etta James would never have a chance today.
As far as musicians go, they still come out of music school. The real musicians in the business are the ones who play in the pop stars' tour bands and studio bands, the ones who make mad hourly rates to tweak your amp settings. Some try their hand with pop outfits, others are content to make a good living as studio guys. On most record deals the studio musicians are much better off than the act -- payment up front + hourly rate + points on the record (maybe). The act is loaned the money to make the record and then has to pay it back through sales before they get anything.