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Sony Settlement Start of DRM Protection Act?
An anonymous reader writes "Sony BMG and a group of class action lawyers have reached a provisional
settlement in the U.S. Sony rootkit class actions. Sony will
pay cash compensation and give away free downloads from a choice of
music download services including Apple iTunes as part of the
deal. The settlement includes a host of restrictions on future
Sony DRM use, which Michael
Geist argues provides the starting point for a future Digital
Rights Management Protection Act."
Isn't this the same thing that happened before? I forget the specifics, but a music company lost in court for keeping CD costs inflated, and they were ordered to give away free CD's to libraries. They ended up giving a library 50 copies of the same CD- "christmas songs" or "western songs". Not popular songs that are in demand.
Will Sony give choice to those who won the lawsuit. Will people be able to pick their music download, or will Sony select what music people get in the settlement?
I learned my ABC's watching television! I learned science watching Voltron.
After reading the linked document, there are a lot of interesting points. While none of these points are watershed moments in consumer rights, I think that they are really going to make Sony grit their teeth. Consider:
1) Sony now has to release "clean" CDs with NO content protection...which means that they are effectly out of the DRM business for at least two years. That's going to make their music execs hopping mad.
2) Not only do consumers get their DRM CD replaced at no charge with a non-DRM CD (something they could not have gotten before anyway), they also get either a) $7.50 b) a free CD from a list of at least 200 or c) three free albums from a downloadable service. That certainly better than the whopping $5 coupon I got back from the RIAA settlement. This is probably the least offensive section.
3) Sony has to make "all resonable commericial efforts" to allow the above downlodable albums from iTunes. Youch. That's pretty much an admission that Sony's own music service is crap and iTunes is the definitive standard for downloadable music. Boy, what fun Apple's PR group could have with that! This has really god to piss Sony off. Now they essentially HAVE to crawl to Apple and negotiate some deal to offer Sony customers the ability to download Sony music...for free...in UNENCRYPTED MP3 FORM...from Apple's music service.
The final part is that Sony has to restore people's computers back to the pre-rootkit way. Of course, we have to assume they can do this properly. If this part of the settlement gets screwed up, then all the free downloads in the world won't make up the cost of repairing or reloading a PC. So, potentially, this settlement might be letting Sony off. But really, what could we expect? While it's possible that there are some people out there who had their computer crash or die because of this software, let them opt out and get a settlement in small claims or some other method. The vast majority of the people would be happy just to have all traces of the software removed (safely) and some bonus music for their troubles.
So, I have to say...of all the settlement offers, I think this one by far is the best one I can remember. Especially from the standpoint of sending a message. You can damn well bet that Sony (who will I'm sure accept this because they publicity of this issue going to trial is their worst nightmare) is going to have some heads roll over this, and combined with pressure from upset Sony artists, might actually usher in a new crop of executives who are more willing to listen to the pro-consumer voices in their hardware divisions instead of heeding the horrible advice from their content divisions.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
There is much more information available at SonySuit.com, including information on how you can pursue your own litigation against Sony BMG.
-- Mark Lyon http://www.marklyon.org
1. MS doesn't take security seriously. Has broken permissions.
2. People point out Windows's flaws, dismissed as MS bashers.
3. Company uses MS's broken permissions to threaten security.
4. People point out Windows's flaws, dismissed as MS bashers.
5. Rinse and repeat.
Sony DRM use? Why only Sony? Are all other companies guaranteed to maintain ethical & reasonable DRM implementations?
In case it isn't obvious, this settlement only applies to Sony because they are the ones being sued. I would expect other businesses to take this as a sign that they can get off the hook easily for breaking into people's computers and vandalizing their software.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
False.
You may argue that they have poorly chosen defaults, giving users Administrator accounts (although in context I'd consider it justifiable), but the permissions themselves are not broken.
2. People point out Windows's flaws, dismissed as MS bashers.
Blaming Microsoft because Sony installed malicious code is bullshit. Unless you can think of some platform that can magically tell whether or not software is "good" or "bad".
3. Company uses MS's broken permissions to threaten security.
Which permissions are broken ? If running a non-Administrator account, the Sony rootkit fails to install. If running an Administrator account, it installs. That's exactly how the system *should* work.
4. People point out Windows's flaws, dismissed as MS bashers.
Blaming Microsoft because their system behaves as designed and identically to every other platform, is hypocritical, mindless, Microsoft bashing.
I wouldn't call them retards. I'd say uninformed... anyway the key is on page 17 of the settlement.
1000 requests for exclusion is a pretty low bar guys. If only those qualified reading slashdot filed for exclusion, you could pull this off. Sony should be in a lot deeper shit that this settlement provides. Filing a request for exclusion from the settlement class should send a message to these people... I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! If the settlement is approved by the court, everyone here should file for exclusion. Don't let them get away with a slap on the wrist this time. I personally would not be happy until someone responsible for this at Sony was facing criminal charges.
One of the terms of the settlement is that if more than 1000 people opt out of it, the deal goes bust. There's going to be an opt out form soon. Check it out, and take the opt-out option.
All good points. Thank you very much! You're certainly correct in that those cases are not slam-dunks against EULAs themselves - each came in its own context. They're hopefully useful for setting a tone, and overall I hope the point is nonetheless made - the EULA is not some bedrock legal principle handed down from Thomas Jefferson. It's a wacky new thing someone threw against the wall to see if it would stick. It's caught on in certain circles but by no means does it get the treatment in court that its haughty and forbidding language might suggest to a layman.
I still have some serious questions about your conclusions; I hope you can forgive my persistence.
1) Step-Saver notwithstanding, fitness/implied warranty don't seem to require a phone conversation or other existing deal to be established when I go into a store and buy something like a video game or a word processor - certainly not to the point where an officious piece of short fiction written inside the box could override it let alone if....
2) The "click-wrap" license can't even be read until after you purchase and open the merchandise, and...
3) There is no way to tell if the user assented to it or not, after the fact. I know what you're thinking when I say this, and it's even worse than you think. It's ultimately reducible to the "paperless voting machine" conundrum. I say I didn't agree, the other party says I did, and the only way of determining it is to query a hard drive...
4) Not to mention that almost no clickwrap code even records a decision explicitly... that's because everyone knows its a joke, even the people who program it...
5) To even make the blanket statement that "a click-wrap agreement will be enforceable" seems rather odd, since let's be frank, it entirely depends on what's in it, and I think we can agree that its degree of enforceability depends quite substantially on the intersection between what it is attempting to enforce (usually the legal equivalent of a consturction worker's sex fantasy) and its credibility as a formal, verifiable binding agreement that all parties have entered into with good representation and fully informed consent (virtually nil by conventional standards).
7) Leaving aside what is, think about what should be. Do you really want to live in a world where every exchange of data is a legal negotiation of unlimited dimensions? Is that even really feasible, when taken to its logical conclusion? Isn't this just another "software patent-esque" legal doctine, where it only appears to work until everyone stops ignoring it and actually takes it seriously?
8) Have we really admitted the death of the UCC? Are we ready to abandon common law? By saying a 20 page legal document in a tiny window that 99% of the U.S. isn't qualified to read (and to retain an attorney to read it for you is vastly more expensive than the price of the commodity it "governs") and therefore doesn't read... is binding anyway... you have effectively given carte blanche to those who write the documents, to do anything they wish. Well, I've said "anything," but I must ask: do you imagine there are limits on the practice at all? If so, what? Do you think reasonable expectations and commercial or industry standards play any role at all, anymore? Does each sale of a piece of music really start at the tabula rasa of a new contract, between a team of 30 world-class corporate lawyers in New York and an 11 year old in Tulsa who just wanted to listen to Eminem?
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
The French violated their treaty agreements.
Bullshit.
Doom 3 "needs" Administrator privileges because some dipshit at id thought it would be a good idea to store configuration data in the application's directory, rather than the user's profile where it belongs. Changing the permissions on a single .cfg file is all it takes to run Doom 3 under a non-Admin account, with no performance impact whatsoever.
99% of programs that "require" Administrator access "require" it because of stupidity like this - stupidity that is 100% the fault of the software developer.