Sony Rootkit may Lead to Regulation

An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld has a story about DHS officials meeting with Sony to read them the riot act, following the rootkit fiasco. From the story: 'A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official warned today that if software distributors continue to sell products with dangerous rootkit software, as Sony BMG Music Entertainment recently did, legislation or regulation could follow.'"

Comments

WTF?

[smash]

So if a 15 year old crashes his school's webserver by getting a bunch of friends in IRC to click on it too many times he can be prosecuted, but if a global megacorporation does something far more insidious (effectively, SELLING you TROJANED media), then "we need regulation"?

Why are people not in jail for this yet?

(yes, that was a rhetorical question).

smash.

Re:WTF?

[lennart78]

According to www.opensecrets.org Sony has, over the years, ponied up millions of dollars in contributions to political parties. I haven't seen that 15 year old script-running-juvenile matching that.

Re:WTF?

[philipgar]

I would say the most important reason is to avoid unfair competition. Imagine this, 2 companies are competing, one a corporation, the other is set up such that one family controls it (and it isn't incorporated). Normally the family controlled business would incorporate to give it limited liability etc. However as it would stand under this situation they'd have a huge advantage.

The family owned business starts sending lobbyists to congress, and gets a law passed that basically makes it such that they're the only ones allowed to do business (and yes congress has done similar such things before), or more likely they have more capital available (as the other company spent theres on upgrading technology etc) and lobbied congress to pass massive pollution control laws . The pollution control laws are laregely irrelevant, but would cost each company billions of dollars in expenses. Luckily the family owned company had "saved up" for a rainy day and previously bought many patents to help with such matters (overpaying in the process because they knew these companies would soon be much more valuable). All of a sudden the corporation goes out of business because the individuals managed to lobby congress for a less efficient economy that they could rule.

Or we could always stop anyone from directly giving money to political campaigns, which of course would mean that the richest people would have an even bigger advantage in running for office (why do you think congress fights attempts to give themselves a bigger salary. .. yes, to make it so only the richer people have a chance at holding office). Of course you could then start attack problem after problem, but if there's one thing you'll quickly learn (as 70 years of big government has shown us) is that big government is incapable of solving big governments problems. While it still has problems when it's smaller, at least it's just that, smaller.

Phil

Re:WTF?

[drinkypoo]

I agree it stinks, but I'm not exactly sure how we stop it short of a constitutional amendment, and if that amendment is too broadly worded, the cure could be worse than the disease.

Outlaw campaign contributions to anything other than a central fund. Cap campaign spending at a dramatically lower level. The n candidates with the most petition signatures get on the ballot, and get equal campaign funds.

This prevents people from buying elections...

The only missing piece here is who pays for advertising. I propose that all media outlets be required to dedicate a certain percentage of their space to this purpose. It can be part of their licensing fees. After all, the FCC is supposed to hold the airwaves in the public trust and manage them in the public's interest. It's not an unreasonable thing to do. Campaign funds can be spent on travel, newspaper ads, et cetera.

Re:WTF?

[crawling_chaos]

I propose that all media outlets be required to dedicate a certain percentage of their space to this purpose. It can be part of their licensing fees.

Including Slashdot? Or does "media" not include the net?

Furthermore, with the ruling that cash == speech, there is no way to cap or equalize spending. It's unconstitutional prior restraint. Yes, it sucks, but that is the law as written. You can force someone to forgo government assistance if they spend beyond a certain limit, but you cannot limit the amount of someone's personal fortune if they choose to spend it on their personal candidacy. I fully expect the next GOP candidate for President to reject matching funds so he can spend without restraint. There's no legal way to stop it from happening and they are the party of money.

Re:The recent Sony experience

[anagama]

I recently (about 2 weeks ago) had to buy two new monitors for my office. My business partner mentioned she saw a sale on some Sony LCD -- I said "no way" and we got something else. Had Sony not gone out of its way to be evil, I would've said "sure". Perhaps "Sonied" will be a term for companies that shoot themselves in the head with their marketing practices. I'd rather see that than a lot of customers being screwed.

Re:The recent Sony experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you say that - I had exactly the same with a new 24" TFT we need for the office. And my wife wanted to get a Sony Camcorder, and I said to her 'No way, God knows what rootkits they are shipping with the editing software' I hope the right people from Sony read these comments.

No malicious intent?

[erroneus]

While Sony's software was distributed without malicious intent, the DHS is worried that a similar situation could occur again, this time with more serious consequences. "It's a potential vulnerability that's of strong concern to the department," Frenkel said.

Would someone please define malicious? I think it WAS malicious.

------------
The American Heritage dictionary:
malicious (m-lsh's) pronunciation
adj.

Having the nature of or resulting from malice; deliberately harmful; spiteful.

-------------
Thompson-Gale Legal Encyclopedia:
Malicious

Involving malice; characterized by wicked or mischievous motives or intentions.

An act done maliciously is one that is wrongful and performed willfully or intentionally, and without legal justification.

--------------
I'd say that given Sony's generally agressive posture with regards to personal/individual fair use and copyright infringement, I think they could easily be characterized using words like "angry" and "vengeful." And regardless of the emotional component, it was certainly wrongful, willfull, intentional and without legal justification.

Re:The recent Sony experience

[luvirini]

Vaio was one of the more popular laptop models for our salesforce. It has now been dropped from list of approved products.

It seems like a case of

[Adelle]

do as we say, not as we do.

Mod Parent Up.

[SeaFox]

To have the government threaten to enact legislation is like having a parent wave their finger at a naughty child warning him not to break ANY MORE of the neighbor's windows.

Laws have already been broken and all we're seeing is warnings implying this may be made illegal in the future.

And yet, the cynic in me...

[Crash Culligan]

...thinks that DHS would love for this to happen again.

From TFA: Baker stopped short of mentioning Sony by name, but Frenkel did not. "The recent Sony experience shows us that we need to be thinking about how to ensure that consumers aren't surprised by what their software is programmed to do," he said.

I could almost see them thinking, . o O (...and the best way to do it would be to stringently regulate consumers' computers, so that we can watch for intrusions of this sort in future and prepare for them. Oh, do it again Sony? Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohsnausagesohplease!)

Re:Threatening Legislation

[bm_luethke]

The main difference here is that Sony didn't do anything considered illegal (some may try and construe it to be, but it is not conisdered so by federal regulations - your state laws may and will vary). This is more like if the police pulled you over for going the speed limit and told you "If everyone doesn't self regulate and go a little slower we will lower the speed limit".

You, yourself said it: "It seems to say, if you do it again, only then will make it illegal so you can't do it a third time." which is what the govt does quite often before hitting people with the Law Bat.

Interestingly enough this could be a Big Brother Evil(TM) threat - "do what we want or else" or the govt finally getting it's head out of it's ass. That view is totally dependent on if you think Sony's rootkit to fight piracy is a correct thing or a incorrect thing. It's totally amusing the number of people who are OK with this threat but not others (with the ones they are not being "Threats are wrong"). (not that you did this - read others on this whole thread)

Personally I would just assume see the legislation passed and be done with it. I don't like the threats, even when I agree with what the outcome of the threats are. It's not illegal now and this type of thing needs to be outlawed otherwise it will just happen over and over and over.

Could someone sue StarForce spreaders please?

[LarsWestergren]

I was about the download the demo for Battle for Middle Earth 2 the other day, only to read that the goddamn DEMO comes with the StarForce malware.

According to Wikipedia, Ubi Soft, Digital Jesters and Codemasters routinely use StarForce on new games. Forget about consoles, THIS is what might kill PC gaming permanently.

Important distinction

[AlphaSys]

Another exaple of our tax-dollar-paid servants not applying themsleves to the task mentally:

"A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official warned today that if software distributors continue to sell products with dangerous rootkit software, as Sony BMG Music Entertainment recently did, legislation or regulation could follow."

The important thing to keep in mind is that, while SONY may have a software division, the product sold wasn't even a software product at all, and no disclosure of a software product was discussed in any terms of sale, etc. The whole software angle was completely surrepetitious. It's not just "software distributors" that need policing here. When it boils down to it, this SONY division had no business "engineering" software into their product; they had little grasp of the ethics or the technical implications of what they were doing... or at least that's what they tell us now. For all we know, they were fully aware and just did it anyway thinking plausible deniability was all they would need when it came to light. If indeed they thought so, they would seem to have been prescient - nothing has happeded because of it. I for one am a bit surprised at that.

Re:You haven't figured it out yet?

[Fred_A]

You might also want to keep in mind that "true capitalism", as well as "true communism" are mind constructs that are completely impossible to setup in the real world because there is no way that most people are actually going to play nice. If they can screw you to increase their benefit, they will. Which is why an external regulatory agent is needed (even though that idea is apparently blasphemous to the US mindset).

Re:You haven't figured it out yet?

[f1055man]

"Which is why an external regulatory agent is needed (even though that idea is apparently blasphemous to the US mindset)."

A failure of analysis--society's not yours. The idea that economics and politics are different spheres of life is fairly limited to the United States among Western nations. Europeans don't have "external regulatory agents," as they acknowledge that politics and economics are inseparable. See The Great Transformation, by Polanyi. Its like reading the entire API for political economists. Just as critical and just as boring.

Sony is EVIL!!!

[rlp]

So I guess Sony is the new official Slashdot punching bag ... till the PS/3 comes out.