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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."
Once again the big company gets a slap on the wrist and everyone effected gets the peace of mind of knowing that the cd they bought still has the DRM on it and will still act the same way the next time they put it in a computer. Thanks for the great customer service Sony.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Just put some Sony guys in jail and everyone will be happy!
Number 3 probably interests me most. Anybody in the know will be able to download the uninstaller at any time and get that filth off their hard drive (or likely: not put it on there to be begin with). But what about those who are not tech-savvy at all?
It seems to me that the main result of copy protection so far has been to punish the honest and control the meek. Smarter, savvier people get around it and are privy to software and music unencumbered by the DRM that works quite well against those foolish enough to uniwittingly install it. So what's the point? Are the DRM-proponents trying to drive a wedge between power users and the techno-illterate? Do they plan to blame the foul side-effects of DRM on the pirates who are not encumbered by it? "We only put DRM on our products because pirates like Joe Blow download it. Blame him!"
I'd bet that 90% of the population doesn't know what the heck DRM is. We'd better be damn sure to educate the masses or the cartels will do it for us - by smearing the savvy.
Electric Monkey Pants
The Texas case is not a class action suit. It is a state action alleging violation of the Texas CPA. So Sony will have to satisfy the Texas Attorney General, not a lawyer for a citizen (who supposedly represents all other citizens in the area, in similar circumstances).
Still, I'm not sure what you guys expect? They aren't going to be banned from including DRM, unless they agree to that, which they won't. It's also unlikely they'll be hit with any MASSIVE fine. Although $7.50 per CD is actually a good amount of money (not to mention if people go for iTunes downloads, and the like), if the theoretical number of people all take it (unlikely).
I did not realize that the settlement included any download service - that makes it much better.
-Daniel
"The settlement includes a host of restrictions on future Sony DRM use"...
Sony DRM use? Why only Sony? Are all other companies guaranteed to maintain ethical & reasonable DRM implementations?
If they're going to come up with some big guidelines on DRM usage they should apply to any/all DRM implementations. Maybe such stuff can stop maniacal levels of DRM before it's too late..?
Maybe by the end of the two years, they will have figured out that non-DRMed music sells better than DRMed music. Maybe this settlement forces them to run the experiment that shows them that they can make more money if they don't act like the other music companies.
Think they're bright enough to see the trend in their data?
My dad told me of a story of back in the 60's and 70's when he used to work for Howard Johnsons. When you were hired you were specifically told that you would not be paid overtime as the law states. Yes, this was illegal, and yes, they got fined.... but the reality of the situation was that it was cheaper for them to pay their fine every month than to pay overtime to all of their employees.
The only way to show them that you dont agree is to quit.... The same rule applies here.
The school is making me give MS money, along with the money that they get from our tech fee, what can I do? how can one in my position tell MS that I hate their shenanigans without flunking a class for not buying the book?
Oh yeah right, there's NO rootkits for linux.
Google Results 1 - 10 of about 1,650,000 for linux rootkit. (0.11 seconds)
No, they just have to "stop manufacturing SONY BMG CDs with XCP software ("XCP CDs") and SONY BMG CDs with MediaMax software ("MediaMax CDs")." The settlement doesn't seem to say anything about no content protection. I'd wager those products will undergo a namechange, a 6 month retool, and then be back to being installed the first time Timmy puts his new [insert corporate rock band here] "CD" in his computer.
There is not a chance in hell these will be mp3s. I will eat my hat if people can download Sony's music as mp3s from iTunes. No, consumers will get to trade the "bad" DRM-laden files for some other DRM-laden music files. Lucky them.
Yeah. They have to release a fix for their rootkit (already done), trade real CDs for the rootkit installers (which they've already been doing), and they have to send out some gift certificates to iTMS which can only buy Sony music (which, if I remember correctly, of the $1 75 cents goes to the label). Yep, they're really hurting now. Doing what they were already forced to do, and keep consumers using DRM'd files.
Bwaaaaaahahahah! Oh man, that was a good one. "Pro-consumer." Hahahhaa.
Cthulhu loves you.
Shouldn't Sony at least have to compensate purchasers with the amount those purchasers would have to pay if an infringement judgement was issued against them? The maximum penalty for copyright infringement is, I believe, $150,000 per song. If someone buys a rootkit CD with 10 songs on it, that person should be entitled to a maximum of $150,000 per song, for a total of $1,500,000.
I mean, isn't the crime Sony has committed at least as serious as infringement? Why should the penalty be any less?
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
I work at a computer repair shop. Time- about 3 weeks ago. Customer brings in a shiney new Dell desktop. "boot volume unmountable." Hard drive's partition is lost, data unrecoverable (i've never before seen that level of data loss that wasn't due to HDD failure). Run various hardware tests, find no problems. Partition/format/reinstall it is.
"What happened?" I ask, expecting the usual "I dunno, it just stopped working"
"I bought a Sony DVD burner to upgrade my system. The system didn't recognize it at first, cause i forgot to enable the primary slave in BIOS, but it was running fine after that. I put in the software CD to install their software, since a friend of mine told me media player needed the codecs so it could play DVDs. About a minute into the install process, the computer gave me a blue screen, and restarted, and hasn't worked since. I think it was that goddamn Sony software."
I told him about Sony's music CD rootkit fiasco, and told him that although I wasn't aware of any cases of Sony putting DRM software on anything other than CDs, he might want to search around on the internet to see if anyone else had had a similar experience.
A few days later he pickes up his computer. "Yeah, i found out it was that Sony CD that did it," he informed me while i charged our redicilous fee to his credit card.
"Oh?" 'Whatever, llama,' i thought. I know my Google-fu isn't that strong, but i had spent a signifigant part of yesterday's slow work day looking, and hadn't found a singe web page/article linking Sony DVDROMs and Sony rootkits.
"Yeah, got a friend who does computer stuff for the FBI. He says Sony's putting their copy protection on other things besides music CDs. The government is pissed."
DISCLAIMER--- I don't know if any of what this guy says his friend said is true (I still haven't found anything on the net to back this up), and I'm posting AC because I can't afford a libel lawsuit.
The publishers do everything in their power to piss off their once faithful customers, what do they really expect? It is much easier and safer for me to torrent a new album and burn it to a CD - not that, as said, I can find that much of value anymore. If I did, and I had some EASY SURE-PROOF way of knowing that it didn't contain any DRM, I'd much rather be buying it.
Amen to this, for this sounds extremely familiar with my situation. I, too, used to buy lots of records earlier, but first came the crippled (some say "copy-protected") non-standard CDs, and then came the new Finnish copyright law. With the former case I had to leave some records I would've otherwise bought to the store shelf as none of my equipment was 100% guaranteed to play them, and with the latter case I stopped buying records from all companies that signed a IFPI petition demanding the law to be accepted regardless of its known flaws.
So basically the industry managed to alienate yet another of its loyal (~50 records a year) customers by fighting piracy (yarr, sail the seven ISPs) with desperate attempts that didn't actually harm anyone else but those buying legitimate copies of their stuff. Actually, if a year ago someone had told me that by now I wouldn't have bought a single record for three months, I would've asked what was this apparently good sh*t they're smoking.