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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."
entire concept of a "EULA," for those few who don't know, is largely an obnoxious legal fiction - sans UCITA, anyway)
This is a love letter to Sony, and a "go ahead" signal to expand "open season on your computer" into the entire market. It is a shocking, audacious outrage, and I have no doubt Sony et al would love to see it made the basis for future statute.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. We have to immediately mobilize and derail this "settlement."
This is not settled until Sony repairs each vandalized computer... and then we can talk punitive damages...
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Sony wins again.
What a lousy settlement.
This is for the New York case only. What about the Texas case brought by the Attorney General of TX?
There are lots of cases against Sony. This is only one of them.
No, this means that companies like Sony can trample your rights (i.e. sell you a rootkit you didn't know about) and get away with it if they pay enough. How many retards out there won't get the incremental-cost-to-sony "free" downloads or rebates? How many people will stop buying their stuff? None. Its a trial balloon - and Sony now knows what the market will bear. Like MS continuing to violate monopoly laws, or the famous exploding Ford Pinto, companies will break the laws of the land and of decency when it makes them money. note that you don't have a "right" NOT to be rooted, or a "right" to free music, or a "right" to much else other than "this product is exactly what is advertised, no more, no less, and since it is a product, I have right of First Sale".
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
1. Contrition
/. Good corporate citizen Sony gets back to DRM'ing and nothing changes. Nothing!
Sony Corp. says "sorry" for something they didn't really do with malice. After all, it's our music, not the consumers so there's nothing wrong with the steps we took.
2. Negotiate Good Deal
Sony gives away stuff that costs me little to nothing over a long period of time, that no one likely wants and put our version of "market value" on them. The States will like it or they'll see you in court until Sony gets your Administration voted out of office.
3. Profit
The PHB's get their bonuses for proper crisis management and get back to business.
I'm sick and tired of all of the clamor surrounding this stuff. Especially on
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Unfortunately, that page doesn't seem to work just now. All I can see is a shaded background, some small print at the bottom, and a banner that reads "Alienware recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional." Are you really sure about that recommendation? ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Haha! Michael Geist is a cut-up. When I first read the topic I thought, "Damn straight it does, Michael! You tell 'em." Then I RTFA'ed and I realized he's saying this opens the door for a law protecting us from corporations.
Holy Dudley Do-Right, Michael! What country do you live in -- Canada?
This certainly does open up the door for a Digital Rights Management Protection Act. Here's how: Sony goes crying crocodile tears straight to Congress. It petitions every congressional representative in its pocket to draft a new law that indemnifies corporations from any damages resulting from software that gets installed on a customer's computer when he/she makes use of a company's product. Those same representatives, wiping their mouths, will get up on TV and proclaim to the world how this new legislation will protect us all from the frivolous lawsuits that are driving up the costs of everything, depriving Americans of their God-given low low prices.
Because this lawsuit against Sony only serves to point out the failures of our legal system, don't you see? Sony was trying to innovate with new technology and got slapped down by evil, profiteering lawyers. The corporations must be protected!
Breakfast served all day!
While number 3 is important, I feel that number 9 is the most important. I feel that Sony or any company would be completely within their rights to put DRM or whatever into their music, as long as they let the customer know this before actually paying for it or installing potentially spyware laden software on the computer (if the media company contracted for the software, it would not be trivial to insure that spyware's not bundled or if the software opens up backdoors, even intentionally.
If someone still thinks it's worth it, then they can feel free to go ahead and buy the music/software/whatever. But including something like this (or even including restrictive terms of service in the EULA) in such a manner that the customer wouldn't be reasonably expected to find out untill after they purchased it (And has no legal recourse for refunds) or worse yet, comes to harm because of the DRM, is in my opinion dishonest at best.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
For real protection against egregious DRM, fair use rights must be protected. DRM isn't really about piracy prevention, after all - it's merely a red herring. If content companies were only interested in piracy prevention, the Blu-Ray spec would be finalized by now.
The real reason for DRM is control over the consumer, ranging from hardware or software lock-in to captive audience advertising. Fair use lets us escape such abuses by allowing us to time- and space-shift content, allowing us to move legally-purchased content to other playback devices and to skip unwanted advertising. The DMCRA would be a good start - if anything, this proposed DRMPA should be added to that legislation.
Besides, the complaints regarding Sony's DRM are the same as the complaints surrounding a lot of spyware and viruses. Why should Sony's status as a multibillion dollar corporation cause it to be painted with a different brush (and have different laws applied to it) than, say, Claria?
These companies ASSUME that file sharing is evil...and therefore a proper punishment would be to post free files on those networks. That is completely bogus! Actually, it is great advertising for Sony and their products. It is not a punishment at all...it's an incentive.
Perhaps ENRON should have been forced to provide free ENRON bumper stickers at gas stations as a penalty for their coroporate wrong-doings. Maybe Microsoft should be forced to give free software to students as a penalty for abusing their monopoly. Oh yeah...they almost got that deal, remember.
There's one problem at the root of all of this. And Sony's rootkit hijinx and crappy advertising techniques, Microsoft's monopolistic practices, and the despicable actions of dozens of other megalithic companies are all symptoms of it. Look at the common factor among all cases (size), and you'll see:
Modern justice lacks scalability.
Think about it. We have these immature, almost psychopathic corporate constructs wandering the landscape. They're greedy like children, live in their own world like children, and have an unnatural knack for breaking things like children. They're gigantic, amoral, know only enough to get into trouble, and don't think much about consequences. And why should they? In this case, it's taking a whole gaggle of government lawyers bearing class action suits to spank them, and even then they're doing a poor job of it. Admittedly, it might help if the government didn't dote over them so, tsking at them for running roughshod over their toys (customers), but ever so happy with them when they perform vital household duties like collecting information and marketing government policies.
The death penalty exists for individuals who are convicted of crimes. (Note: guilt never enters into it; the only important aspect is the conviction.) For corporations, legal contrivances that they are, the best the government can do is dissolution. The last time they did that was the breakup of Ma Bell, and we know what happened there: the individual enterprises have each grown up in their own special, horrid ways.
And the mallet needed to properly smack them down and make them stay down we can't trust in the government's hands. So how do you spank a toddler that big?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
The settlement *I* want with Sony is unlimited backdoor access to all the computers in their entire corporation and total indemnity for any illegal actions I might use them to commit. I will also need to get files with the personal information of all their employees to be used in "customizing" my software.
Pick a different course, or a school...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
There are multiple problems with this list.
1. XCP or Media Max? Why not? They should have learned from this mistake and are unlikely to do it again. It won't change my position on never purchasing a music CD again (I am a Rhapsody user), but it certainly makes sense that they should use someone who has learned from mistakes rather than another 3rd party without a clue.
2. There needs to be a more streamlined way for this to happen. Joe Average isn't going to bring back music just because it pops up in typical legalese or even plain English warning him that he isn't supposed to copy the music. Regardless of what it says about DRM, his interpretation in the 5 seconds he thinks before pressing "Accept" will be that this is just another warning about not copying the CD that he has to agree to before he can listen. It needs to say something like: "Installing this DRM will break your computer, prevent you from accessing the Internet, and allow everyone in the world to view all the files on your computer." just to get the user's attention.
3. Why would someone willingly uninstall this software when it means they can't listen to their music collection anymore. That's way worse than renting music online. It needs to be available so that Joe Average can take his CD back to the store within the return period and for the rare occasions when Sony makes a similar "mistake."
4. A pop-up message appears 6 months down the road and says Joe Average has to accept an update to his DRM or his music will stop playing. At this point he's a hostage to Sony. It is too late to bring the CD back to where it was purchased. It doesn't matter what the update says or warns him about, he's going to install it. This is pointless.
5. Plain English? If it is more than a couple sentences, any English looks like legal mumbo-jumbo to the average teenager who is likely the target market anyway.
6. In other words, a lawyer who is going to make them add more than a couple sentences to fully protect Sony's interests. Or a lawyer who is going to make them add more than a couple sentences to fully protect the consumer's interests. Either way it will defeat number 6.
7. Who is this going to be? Microsoft? Sony, or Sony's 3rd party DRM maker will never agree to hand out the code to, say, the open source community to take it through some decent testing.
8. Fine. I'd rather they just were happy with the high profit margin on the CD sale though. Anyone dumb enough to purchase a CD at this point deserves all the spying/targeted advertising they get.
9. This depends how they describe full-disclosure. I can't believe they expected that the current software would cause any problems. "This CD contains copy protection that has been tested by Microsoft to ensure compatibility with Windows XP." That may constitute full disclosure for them.
10. This depends what the fix is. They haven't fixed the problem they got themselves into this time. The AV companies and even Microsoft have had to do this for them. They aren't technically competent enough to do this, unless they mean to outsource this process to Microsoft, etc.
Every one of these points is lip service to the problem, and even all together they won't completely ensure that this doesn't happen again. You are right, this punishes the meek. I happen to be tech savvy yet honest at the same time, which is why I subscribe to Rhapsody (and Yahoo, but that stuff is so buggy it is almost unusable) which now works on my Linux boxes and makes me very happy. I am punished to the tune of $15/month to feed my MP3 player all the music I want, so I'm not too upset. My parents, on the other hand, who are also honest people but not technically savvy could fall victim should they decide to play a CD in the computer, as unlikely as that would be.
I'm going to post something on my blog about DRM, warning my half dozen readers of the problem. If everyone here with a blog, a soapbox, or any other platform would post or say something, maybe we could educate people. Until this becomes something that Joe Average's technically savvy buddy talks about, Joe Average won't know or care about the problem.