EFF Pushes Consumers to Claim Rootkit Compensation

An anonymous reader writes "'It's time for music fans who bought Sony BMG CDs loaded with harmful XCP or MediaMax copy protection to claim their settlement benefits', says the EFF's Derek Slater in an awareness campaign that is urging those inflicted with one of Sony BMG's rootkit infected CDs to collect what is due to them. The compensation is a DRM-free version of the original CD, $7.50, and album downloads from iTunes, Sony Connect, and others."

Comments

Summary correction:

[tpgp]

is a DRM-free version of the original CD, $7.50, and album downloads from iTunes, Sony Connect, and others.

Should read:

is a DRM-free version of the original CD, $7.50, and DRM-laden album downloads from iTunes, Sony Connect, and others.

I'd also like to know if anyone is going to try for a real settlement - like a company having to audit their network after finding one PC rooted.

Re:Summary correction:

[Tim C]

To be fair, the DRM on iTunes songs isn't even in the same league as the DRM on the Sony CD in question, let alone the same ballpark - at least it only affects the affected song, and doesn't open the entire PC up to compromise.

Re:Summary correction:

[Grant29]

True, and at least most everyone knows the iTunes DRM before buying. It's not as bad as someone sneaking some software onto your PC without you knowing.
--
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Re:Summary correction:

[tpgp]

To be fair, the DRM on iTunes songs isn't even in the same league as the DRM on the Sony CD in question, let alone the same ballpark - at least it only affects the affected song, and doesn't open the entire PC up to compromise.

I completely agree with you - but itunes was not the only music service mentioned. From the EFF's site: CONNECT Music, f.y.e., iTunes, or Wal-Mart.

Whilst you might be prepared to trust Apple's DRM (and to be fair, I don't see much wrong with its terms either), read this thread before trusting Wal-mart's. (I don't think I'd have to work hard to convince most people here that putting faith in Sony's DRM is a bad idea as well.)

The ultimate trouble with drm - any drm, is that it restricts your right to do what you want to do with your music. It's like giving a company the keys to your CD cabinet & trusting them to unlock it when you ask them.

Re:Summary correction:

[Have Blue]

Except that in Apple's case the cabinet is made of chicken wire- you can convert the songs to Redbook audio with a minimum of effort and the cost of a blank CD.

Re:Summary correction:

[tpgp]

Except that in Apple's case the cabinet is made of chicken wire- you can convert the songs to Redbook audio with a minimum of effort and the cost of a blank CD.

Again, I agree. Apple's drm (along with both Sony's & Microsofts) can be easily defeated. It still doesn't really change the inention - to restrict me.

The fact that I'd have to:

a) Find a blank CD (why would I have one around for when I buy my music online anyway?)
b) Encode using a highly compressed source

to listen to music I've purchsed legally purchased on ITMS on a different player in the event that my ipod dies really irks me.

Maybe Apple's DRM is the 'best' out there, but no DRM can really be good.

Re:Summary correction:

[Helios1182]

2 Hours of PC repair at $100/hr. per computer affected. It seems reasonable. The average user doesn't have the tools/knowledge to un-root their system, so lets assume they had to pay someone to do it. Time is money anyway, having to spend an afternoon to fix it is worth something.

That would be a painful settlement. How many thousands/millions? of PCs were hit?

Re:Summary correction:

[WebScud]

Except that it's not your music at all. The only thing you get by buying a movie, music, or game is the right to watch/listen/play. Purchasing copyrighted material is nothing more than a "lifetime rental fee".

Re:Summary correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Find a blank CD (why would I have one around for when I buy my music online anyway?)

To back up your purchase, of course, as anyone with half a brain will do. (What do you think Apple is going to say when your hard drive crashes and you come crawling to them for permission to re-download all your iTunes purchases?)

b) Encode using a highly compressed source

Which I guarantee you don't notice when you listen to the music. If you could hear artifacts from 128K AAC-compressed tracks, you wouldn't want to use iTunes in the first place, DRM or none.

Re:Summary correction:

[quanticle]

Purchasing copyrighted material is nothing more than a "lifetime rental fee".

You also get the right to give your license away to someone else. If I get a book, I can resell it after reading it. If I get a Windows CD, I cannot resell it, because there is no way of "disabling" my Windows license.

Re:Summary correction:

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, but Apple could turn that chicken wire into Cheyenne Mountain at any time, simply by releasing an iTunes update that disables that ability. And you wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it, especially if they neglected to mention it in the patch changelog.

Seriously, that "just burn a CD" argument is tired, old, and most importantly, invalid. Stop using it already!

Re:Summary correction:

[Tim C]

If I get a Windows CD, I cannot resell it, because there is no way of "disabling" my Windows license.

Well, apart from being crap, what's that got to do with music, which is what we were actually discussing?

Re:Summary correction:

[Tim C]

As you say, I have merely bought the right to listen to the music, not the music itself. That raises two points:

1) Unless otherwise clearly informed of the fact at the time of purchase, I have bought the licence in perpetutiy, not for a limited time - I do not expect to lose access simply because the company goes belly-up and the DRM prevents me from accessing it.

2) If I have bought the right to listen to the music, then I should be allowed to replace it if lost, stolen, destroyed or otherwise unusable to me for a nominal replacement fee. I should not be forced to buy a new CD at full retail simply because my daughter broke the old one.

Re:Summary correction:

[Xymor]

And both are not as Bad as StarForce rootkit. Yet DRM is still DRM, I mean, how come you can't you use the content you rightfully own as you most see fit?

Re:Summary correction:

[cyberwench]

2) If I have bought the right to listen to the music, then I should be allowed to replace it if lost, stolen, destroyed or otherwise unusable to me for a nominal replacement fee. I should not be forced to buy a new CD at full retail simply because my daughter broke the old one.

Why? This has never been the case with cassettes that the tape broke in or with LPs that got scratched. To some extent, the purchase of music has always been limited to the viable life of the media it is sold on. I don't think that's entirely unreasonable, either - it's the way consumer goods work. If you break something, you replace it... it's not the company's responsibility. (Barring, of course, warranty situations - which frequently don't cover damage you do to an item.) I'd say in this case, there's no difference between scratching a CD and trashing your hard drive. If the company wants to be nice and replace it for free, good for them. It shouldn't be expected, though.

Re:Summary correction:

[SlimFastForYou]

Because the record companies (rightfully) justify the high cd prices, monopoly on selling a song, and lawsuits against the general public by saying that you're buying the right to listen to the music.

Parent is pointing out that the record companies shouldn't have it both ways. If the record companies cause you to lose your ability to listen to the music (by preventing you from backing it up for instance), they should have to provide you a free replacement. Or at most a cd at cost but I personally think that if they make the customer "suffer" a little, they should have to "suffer" a little as well and provide replacements for free. After all, they are placing artificial limitations and making the customer go through extra work and a period of deprival.

I've seen a couple of gas stations do something similar with their fountain drinks. One time, I needed a large cup of water for my car. They charged the full price of a fountain drink and justified it with the supposed expense of the cup. Yet if you took your own cup in and gave yourself a refill, you can bet they'd charge for that too. Though at least in this case, I could always go to a different store and if I found a way to make a copy of a friend's Pepsi they wouldn't be suing me over it.

Re:Summary correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Hours of PC repair at $100/hr. per computer affected. It seems reasonable. The average user doesn't have the tools/knowledge to un-root their system[...]

That presumes Sony does not provide an effective uninstaller, which I thought I heard they had. (Posted AC, because I'm too drunk to verify that. Some nice karma whore should provide a link to the uninstaller....) Presuming they have, anyone who suffered demonstrable consequential damages (IE: a repair bill) should opt out of the settlement, and wait for round two; probably Ibid, plus any documented repair expenses paid prior to release of the effective uninstaller and first round settlement. Anyone wanting round three (further consequential/punitive damages) will have to fight it out in court, I'm afraid. ( IAmNotALawyer; IAmAnAnonymousCoward. )

It's also more likely 3 hours at $35/hr, assuming hard drive sizes and that the virus cleanup rates in my area are average. Still not cheap.

Re:Summary correction:

[Pofy]

>Except that it's not your music at all.

Not sure if you speak of a specific rental service (I have no idea about itunes or any of the others mentioned in the post you replied to) or about buying music in general. If we stick to music in general, yes it is yours, those specific copies of the music are. No idea why you have some other idea.

>The only thing you get by buying a movie, music, or game is the right to
>watch/listen/play.

No, if you buy it, you buy it, that is covered by normal sales laws, copyright does not in anyway interfer or deal with that. The fact that what you buy is a copy of a work that someone holds the copyright to is irellevant in that aspect. Also note that owning (or buying) the copyright to a work is of course different from owning (or buying) a copy of thw work and one does not imply the other. Here is, by the way, a good link to a copy of the US copyright law that deals with such differences and one that defines "copies" (which are material by the way and includes the work as well):

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/us c_sec_17_00000101----000-.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/us c_sec_17_00000202----000-.html

Feel free to review other parts of the copyright law as well if you feel you don't know how it works. If you prefer some the law of some other country, I am sure we can find links to that as well.

You may also see that "watch/listen/play" or any other similar activity is NOT one that is exclusive to the copyright holder. Hence it is free for anyone to do without any sort of permision or liecense. Copyright does not deal with those activities at all.

>Purchasing copyrighted material is nothing more than a "lifetime rental
>fee".

Are you making up sentences and pulling them out of a hat as you type along? No idea why you have got such an idea as this (which is of course wrong). Feel free to try to find ANY basis for this in for example the copyright law.

Purchasing copyrighted material is NOT any different from purchasing any other material, works just the same way.

Re:Summary correction:

[Hal_Porter]

Well, Sony's DRM has damaged my reputation, since I maintain l33t_Ripper.

Firstly, they should make an official statement that l33t_Ripper is broken because of their code, and apologising to my users for inconveniencing them. They should also pay me $1M dollars for taking actions that have convinced some of my users that I'm a "fscking lamer".

Secondly, they should send me a cute Japanese secretary of servicable age to anwer emails flaming me for distributing "a POS" and perform other duties as necessary.

If possible, she should be skilled in x86 assembly language, to help me update l33t_Ripper to work while the rootkit is installed.

Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Re:Summary correction:

[plumby]

If we stick to music in general, yes it is yours, those specific copies of the music are.

Not as far as I can tell it isn't. Most CDs say somewhere on the case something along the lines of "no unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, reproduction, public performance or broadcasting of the work". If I was the actual owner of the music that I'd just purchased, why is anyone else able to put those restrictions on what I do with it?

If I buy a bottle of Coke, I'm not told that I wouldn't be allowed to serve it at a public gathering, or let my friends have some of it, would I? In that instance I own the Coke in that bottle to do with pretty much as I see fit.

Re:Summary correction:

[Helios1182]

You are probably right, even as a drunk AC. $35 is cheap though, even in the smaller town I worked in high school we charged $65/hr for repair work. Making Sony pay for actual damages (whatever the actual cost is) would be more effective than having them pay $7.50 and a CD.

Re:Summary correction:

[sdnoob]

the average rate around here for "in-shop" computer work (labor) is about 50 bucks an hour.. at 2 hrs...

$100.00 per "victim"
- 7.50 cash payment
- 8.88 value of an album download at wally world
- 15.00 value of a replacement cd

$ 68.62 greedy lawyers' share per claim.

Re:Summary correction:

[WebScud]

That was pretty much the point I was making. You own the disc, the paper, the case -- but not the data that's on the disc or the artwork that's on the liner notes.

Re:Summary correction:

[Pofy]

>>If we stick to music in general, yes it is yours, those specific copies of
>>the music are.

>Not as far as I can tell it isn't. Most CDs say somewhere on the case
>something along the lines of "no unauthorised copying, hiring, lending,
>reproduction, public performance or broadcasting of the work".

So? What does that have to do with the ownership of the copy? The things printed is basically telling about what copyright law says. Copyright prohibit certain types of action regardless of if you own a copy of a work or not. That has nothing to do with ownership. Just because you own something doesn't mean you can do anything.

You can do anything that is not against the law. The law, copyright in this case, restricts you in some way. Other laws can restrict you in other ways. For example, despite owning a car, you might not be allowed to drive it if you don't hold a valid driving license. You might own a stereo equipment, yet is not allowed to play it, at night at increadible high volume if you live in an appartment. And so on. Ownership does not alaways give complete freedom although it typially gives you almost complete freedom to do whatever you want.

More importantly, just because there are some things you is NOT allowed to do, does not mean you don't own it. That is a completely erroneous conclusion.

>If I was the actual owner of the music that I'd just purchased,

Small nitpicking, you are the owner of *A COPY* of the music.

>why is anyone else able to put those restrictions on what I do with it?

Because there is this thing called copyright that restricts you in a few ways in what you can do with copies of works that someone else holds the copyright to.

>If I buy a bottle of Coke, I'm not told that I wouldn't be allowed to serve
>it at a public gathering,

Correct, because a bottle of Coke is not covered by copyright. This has nothing to do with ownership.

>In that instance I own the Coke in that bottle to do with pretty much as I
>see fit.

No, not really, you can't do a host of things. For example there is nothing telling you that you can't thrown the bottle through my window (and thus breaking the glass), despite you owning that bottle, yet you can't do that because law regulating damaging of others property forbids it, this is regardless of if you own what you throw or not.

If we exchange the content of the bottle for some content that is highly damaging to nature or man, there might be laws that forbids you from empyting in some place because it can cause harm.

This of course has nothing to do with copyright or ownership.

The point is, ownership and holding copyright are two different things, you can own something while not holding the copyright to it which means you are somewhat restricted.

Re:Summary correction:

[plumby]

For example there is nothing telling you that you can't thrown the bottle through my window (and thus breaking the glass), despite you owning that bottle, yet you can't do that because law regulating damaging of others property forbids it, this is regardless of if you own what you throw or not.

But that's nothing at all to do with it being a bottle of Coke, or ownership. That's to do with not being allowed to throw anything through your window. If it was a bottle that I'd manufactured, containing liquid that I'd made myself, I would still not be allowed to throw it through your window. That law has absolutely nothing to do with 'ownership'. I'm not allowed to copy the recipe and pass off bottle of Coke as my own. That's fine - that's trademark violation, but Coca Cola is not forcing any special restrictions on my use of this specific bottle, or its contents, because it's "their" drink.

You might own a stereo equipment, yet is not allowed to play it, at night at increadible high volume if you live in an appartment.

Again nothing to do with ownership of the stereo - I'm also not allowed to shout at very loud volumes and disturb my neighbour, and if I'd built the stereo myself, I still wouldn't be able to play it very loud. And whoever manufactured the stereo, I'm not aware of any restrictions placed on it by the manufacturers, patent holders etc, forbidding me from using the stereo to play music in public, or from lending the stereo out.

For example, despite owning a car, you might not be allowed to drive it if you don't hold a valid driving license.

And once again, nothing to do with ownership. If I'd built the car from scratch, I still wouldn't be allowed to drive it on a public highway without a licence. Ford don't place any special restrictions saying that I'm not allowed to use the car to carry passengers or lend it out to my mates do they?

Small nitpicking, you are the owner of *A COPY* of the music.

I'm not nitpicking. This is fundamentally different with music (and films) and I am talking specifically about the single instance of the music recorded on the single CD that I've just purchased (the equivalent of the specific 1 1/2 litres of Coke in my bottle that I was allowed to share with my friends without breaching Coke's rights).

If I had written and recorded my own music, I could broadcast it, lend it out, play it in public and do just about anything I wanted with it (except throw it through your window or play it very load at night). If I actually own the CD, I should be allowed to do any of those things - there is nothing fundamentally illegal about performing those activities with a CD. However, copyright protection prevents me from doing those things, therefore I have less rights on what I'm allowed to do with (what is allegedly) my CD. I fully understand why I'm not allowed to copy the CD and sell it down the local market (or even give that copy to someone), but I don't understand why I'm not allowed to lend the CD that I supposedly own to someone else, or play it out loud in my office (assuming that no-one else in my office minded).

Re:Summary correction:

[Pofy]

>But that's nothing at all to do with it being a bottle of Coke, or
>ownership. That's to do with not being allowed to throw anything through
>your window.

Exactly, and in many cases the same is true for a copy of, say, a book or a music CD, it has to do with your ability to create a *new* copy for example. My point was that even though you own something, laws might regulate what you do with it. In the case of music, it happens to be copyright laws. It is of course impossible to make exact examples with other things, such as a can of coke, that is not the point. It was an illustration that other laws might regulate and restrict your actions when you use something, even if you own it.

>I'm not allowed to copy the recipe and pass off bottle of Coke as my own.

Copying a recipie is typically OK, nothing prevents you from doing that. You would not be allowed to call it "Coke" or "Coca Cola" though (despite owning your created bottle with liquid) due to trademark laws as you say.

>but Coca Cola is not forcing any special restrictions on my use of this
>specific bottle, or its contents, because it's "their" drink.

nor could they any more that someone creating a music CD can do so beyoned what copyright law allows, which is a few specific sets of actions only.

>I'm not nitpicking. This is fundamentally different with music (and films)
>and I am talking specifically about the single instance of the music
>recorded on the single CD that I've just purchased (the equivalent of the
>specific 1 1/2 litres of Coke in my bottle that I was allowed to share with
>my friends without breaching Coke's rights).

There is no such "fundamental difference" as you seem to think or imply. Feel free to point to what make you think so, for example applicable copyright laws. Actually, copyright law specifically make a difference about the work itself (an abstract non tangible thing) and copies of the work (tangible, material objects) and make a distinction in the ownership of the two. Ownership of one does not imply ownership of the other and each can be transfered freely seperate from the other. For US laws, here are some links to it defining "copies" and to the distinction of ownership to the copyright and ownership to material copies.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/us c_sec_17_00000101----000-.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/us c_sec_17_00000202----000-.html

>If I had written and recorded my own music, I could broadcast it, lend it
>out, play it in public and do just about anything I wanted with it (except
>throw it through your window or play it very load at night).

Sure, and you could do it EVEN if you did not own the specific copy of the CD you would use. The reason is you own the COPYRIGHT to the music, it has nothing to do with the ownership of the material COPIES of it. That is the difference. They are two different things.

>If I actually own the CD, I should be allowed to do any of those things -
>there is nothing fundamentally illegal about performing those activities
>with a CD.

Well, "should" is an opinion, however, copyright laws does not allow so, EVEN if you own the CD. However, you are drawing a wrong and non logical conclusion that just because you are not allowed to do so, you can't be the owner of the CD which is an erroneous conclusion. Copyright specifcally dissalow so regardless of if you own the CD or not, you need to own the copyright to the music to be allowed to do so.

One might argue that this is bad and that copyright laws should be written differently so that it doesn't apply if you own a copy but that is currently not how copyright works.

>However, copyright protection prev

Apologize

[MyLongNickName]

They don't mention it here, but in A civil action, one of the quotes (paraphrasing) is "Corporations say they are sorry by paying money". If a corporation gets away with crap like this without a significant blood letting (law suits), they will try it again soon. It will be a more refined approach, you can be sure. But it will happen again.

Companies who pull this shit need to be punished. Badly. Not a public tounge wagging followed by a pseudo-aplogy. They hire people to do PR and deal with that. When the company's bottom line is hurt, they will be more cautious in the future. And if it takes months or years of cases hanging over their head, the stock will suffer. And when the stock suffers, so do the folks at the top.

Anything else is just the cost of doing business.

Re:Apologize

[mrchaotica]

Companies who pull this shit need to be punished. Badly.

Yeah, they need to be barred from doing business for a period of time, and have their board of directors and CxOs jailed.

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the guy who put the worm into GCC? Should he be jailed? What about the guy who got the rootkit code into the linux kernel, should he be jailed? What about all the members of the cDc? Should they be jailed?

Pot. Kettle.

Re:Apologize

[MyLongNickName]

I disagree. This only puts people out of business, putting people out of work. Like rats, CEO's find another place to make their millions. It only punishes the bottom -- much like our wonderful international sanctions. Ever notice how the dictators are the only ones who don't seem to suffer?

Re:Apologize

[mrchaotica]

You must not have been paying attention when I mentioned jailing the management.

Re:Apologize

[danpsmith]

They wouldn't be able to find another place to make millions in the same way if we held all companies to the same standards.

Re:Apologize

[unix_core]

If they find better ways of making their millons then forcing the installation of rootkits on their coustomers computers, mabye that could be a good thing...

Nobody wants a system where companies are allowed to take any measures to secure their profits, just so that pepole won't loose their jobs.

Re:Apologize

[Richthofen80]

Board of directors? are you crazy?

Assuming somehow you could prove that the directors and CxOs knew that the DRM was even sold, (what chances are there that those individuals are even tech savvy enough to know what DRM is), what justifies this? What are the losses? Has anyone stepped forward and said, 'My machine was hacked because of a defect in your product!'

Without quantifiable damages or actual harm, what right do you have to call for them being jailed? I think what's fair is a new copy of the CD without DRM. that's just. Also, a CD mailed with a utility that will clean the rootkit from the machine. That redresses the grievances. The rest of what you wrote is probably driven by anger either at corporate america in general, or at Sony in particular for this sneaky, underhanded tactic. I agree that Sony did a stupid thing, and risked people's computers. I think the FTC should examine and possibly give a fine, on the whole.

Imagine you're a CxO or Board Member. You're job is to predict music taste trends, and to make deals with other companies as part of marketing and such. Then police cuff you during a meeting, because a middle manager told his IT staff to use a contractor to customize and develop a tool for anti-piracy that you had no idea about. But you work for a company, so groupguilt applies.

The only reason we're even debating this issue is because a user didn't know the software was installed. Companies usually indemify themselves against lawsuits and charges by saying 'this software comes with no warrantee, implied or otherwise', so that if there is a bug that could cause a hack, they already told you there's that chance. That's part of that EULA that you clicked through.

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

Going by your logic, maybe we should abolish capitalism and go the way of communism. Isn't that what you GPL sheeple want?

Re:Apologize

[honkycat]

What about the guy who put the worm into GCC? Should he be jailed?
Yes, if it can be shown in a criminal court that this was a violation of the law, the violation warrants a jail term, and he was guilty of the crime.

What about the guy who got the rootkit code into the linux kernel, should he be jailed?
Yes, as above.

What about all the members of the cDc? Should they be jailed?
If they can be shown to be guilty of crimes, then yes. On the merits of their association alone, no.

Re:Apologize

[Mistshadow2k4]

You get a bunch of people working for you and order them to put rootkits on people's computers and we'll see how fast you wind up in jail. Why the hell shouldn't Sony's CEO go to jail just like anyone else who told people in his employ to rootkit computers belonging to other people? Just because he's the CEO of a corporation? Do you realize what that means? It means the CEO of a corporation has immunity to prosecution from the crimes he commits that you don't. The same logic applies to the guys who developed the rootkit in the first place - why should they be immune to prosecution just because they work for a corporation? If you coded a rootkit for a hacker to use on people's computers, you'd go to jail.

Re:Apologize

[joeljkp]

This wasn't a criminal case, it was a civil settlement.

Re:Apologize

[Psykosys]

There's a little thing here called intent. Sony did not intend to leave computers open to hackers, they just paid absolutely no regard to security. That would certainly seem to qualify as some kind of negligence, but there's no getting away from the fact that there was no ominous intent here, just stupidity.

Re:Apologize

[mrchaotica]

Imagine you're a CxO or Board Member. You're job is to predict music taste trends, and to make deals with other companies as part of marketing and such. Then police cuff you during a meeting, because a middle manager told his IT staff to use a contractor to customize and develop a tool for anti-piracy that you had no idea about. But you work for a company, so groupguilt applies.

No, if you're upper management, your job is to accept responsibility for the running of the company. If your employees do something illegal, then you screwed up too, by failing to prevent them from it.

I suppose it could be possible that claiming an underling acting on his own was responsible could be a defense, but in that case it should just result in both the manager and the underling being guilty, but splitting the sentence between them (unless, of course, the underling could document being directed to take the action, in which the blame would fall solely on the manager).

The only reason we're even debating this issue is because a user didn't know the software was installed. Companies usually indemify themselves against lawsuits and charges by saying 'this software comes with no warrantee, implied or otherwise', so that if there is a bug that could cause a hack, they already told you there's that chance. That's part of that EULA that you clicked through.

That's just a load of bullshit anyway.

Re:Apologize

[mrchaotica]

Maybe that would just teach people not to work for unethical companies, and thereby force companies to be ethical in order to find employees.

Re:Apologize

[cbiltcliffe]

What about the guy who put the worm into GCC? Should he be jailed? What about the guy who got the rootkit code into the linux kernel, should he be jailed? What about all the members of the cDc? Should they be jailed?

Errr...what? What worm in GCC? I've never heard of this, and apparently Google hasn't either? There's a worm that required GCC be on a system in order to compile the worm code, but that's hardly a worm in GCC.

Similarly, what rootkit code in the kernel? Again, Google appears to have never heard of this.
Methinks you're full of it.

And what do cDc members have anything to do with? If one of them has actually broken into a computer illegally, then yes, maybe they should be jailed, but your question is like asking: "What about all the citizens of Rhode Island? Should they be jailed?"

Re:Apologize

[Al Dimond]

Oddly enough, I can't find a reference to this within 5 minutes on Google, but here's the basic idea: someone planted a worm in GCC that planted itself in everything that GCC compiled. If I recall correctly, when one of these infected programs was run it would modify your GCC installation. There may have been something else to it, I don't recall.

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the guy who put the worm into GCC? Should he be jailed? What about the guy who got the rootkit code into the linux kernel, should he be jailed?

Did it get to the stage where anyone's box was open? If so, fuck yeah. There's no excuse for something like that, and I'm speaking as someone who's done it in the past.

What about all the members of the cDc? Should they be jailed?

If they've taken control of other people's computers without permission, yeah. But I believe a lot of what they do was just finding the exploitable holes on their own machines.

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

That assumes the consequences were unintended and that is not clear. It may be that the intent was not to allow another person to control your PC but it was their intent for Sony to do so.

Re:Apologize

[RidiculousPie]

The compiler in question was not GCC, and the complete story can be seen in the paper reflections on trusting trust

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

Then put them in jail, re-distribute their assets to the vitems and set up others to run the company.

Re:Apologize

[Cadallin]

"I suppose it could be possible that claiming an underling acting on his own was responsible could be a defense, but in that case it should just result in both the manager and the underling being guilty, but splitting the sentence between them"

I would argue against this, "just following orders," didn't fly at Nuremburg, why shoud it fly here? They are both independently guilty, although perhaps the underling's act is worthy of a lesser punishment, as at Nuremburg.

I would also argue that we ARE talking about human rights issues here. I would argue that fair use, and the public domain; both of which DRM is intended to defeat, ARE human RIGHTS. They are uppercase R Rights, and not merely something granted at the mercy of government and corporate overlords. Copyright, is a lowercase r right, granted to content creators in Our (the public's) mercy, that it is being so abused and used as means to oppress us means we need to seriously rethink it. The fact that copyright scarcely benefits those for whom it was created only strengthens this claim.

Re:Apologize

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they pay for the $100 an hour rate the techs charged my relatives to fix the problem.

Re:Apologize

[mrchaotica]

I would argue against this, "just following orders," didn't fly at Nuremburg, why shoud it fly here? They are both independently guilty, although perhaps the underling's act is worthy of a lesser punishment, as at Nuremburg.

That could be handled by only persuing criminal punishments against the management; the underlings' punishment would be being out of work while the company was disallowed from functioning.

Copyright, is a lowercase r right, granted to content creators in Our (the public's) mercy, that it is being so abused and used as means to oppress us means we need to seriously rethink it.

It's not even that. It's a social contract that grants privilages (not even little-r rights) but also imposes requirements (namely, that creators don't try to screw up Fair Use and the Public Domain).

Re:Apologize

[kcarlin]

Except that the "stupidity" just happened to improve the effectiveness of their DRM strategy at the expense of their customer's security and information safety. Anyone still buying the intent argument when they installed their software regardless of the customer response to their license agreement? The EFF settlement is a joke, a serious blow to any prestige that EFF has built up over the years, and any prosecutor worth a damn will be filing charges.

In any event, the last (of many) Sony brand products have been purchased by this household.

Compensation...?

[Omaze]

Typically the EFF seems to be on the right course but, in this case, the EFF is promoting the idea that a major corporation can force its will on the consumers preemptively and then, when the consumers revolt, all they have to do is say,"Oh. Sorry 'bout that. Here's a lollipop. No go away."

There needs to be a clear signal. What we're seeing here is just a buyout.

Re:Compensation...?

[JFitzsimmons]

Which is worse than just going silently into the night?

Re:Compensation...?

[Omaze]

The point is that advice like this encourages two patterns of behavior:

1) Like mail-in rebates a good portion of the tactic relies on the fact that many people will simply not find it worth their time/trouble to bother pursuing the claim. A good portion of people will take the first couple of steps and then find that other things in life demand more attention. Eventually the claim period expires or the person simply doesn't feel like devoting effort to it. This is unacceptable. It allows corporate criminals to get away by doing little more than using their superior economic position to make the retribution process tedious. Creating tedium is the best defense against someone seeking compensation for wrongdoing. Time passes, people move on. With this type of system the criminal is allowed to endlessly continue on with their pursuits.

2) It sets a precedent for future infractions. Today it's system monitoring software on a CD, tomorrow it's the black box monitor in the car, the next day it's mandatory spy cams in subsidized housing, the next day it's a legal right for property owners to install spy cams in their rental properties. Every step of the way there will be consumer backlash, and every step of the way the courts are supporting a system which allows the violators to say,"Oh. Sorry about that. Just give us a minute to assess your arguments and figure out how we can pass legislation to get around them."

The criminals are being allowed to pass laws by which their particular crimes can be argued to be legal while at the same time passing laws which legally criminalize people who are doing nothing wrong.

Re:Compensation...?

[blitziod]

i wonder if ould by a list of people who purchased these, and file all the claims for them for a mere half the payment? That would teach sony a lesson and make me a tidy proffit. It would be great if i had some online easy click way to sigb up too.

Re:Compensation...?

[babbling]

The EFF explain their decision in this lecture at Google.

Basically, they sent a letter to Sony before suing them outlining the steps that they should take to correct their mistake. Sony ignored the letter, and the EFF sued them. They came to a settlement that achieved most of the suggestions outlined in the original EFF letter.

The settlement wasn't too bad. Sure, they didn't hit Sony as hard as they could have, but everyone is getting replacement CDs and a small amount of compensation money. Anyone whose computer was severely damaged should probably sue Sony separately.

Well...

[Captain Splendid]

Haven't bought any Sony CDs recently, but even if I had, I wouldn't bother. Recompense enough to see a megacorp lumbering toward extinction.

Re:Well...

[From A Far Away Land]

If consumers don't get what is owed to them, then Sony won't learn their lesson.

Fortunately there are still legal actions in progress in Canada, and some other states.

Re:Well...

[Captain Splendid]

Sony not learning its lesson only hastens its demise. Besides, point to one large company "learning its lesson" from a lawsuit.

Very Little Compensation

[kabz]

This is very small compensation for machines that may have been damaged by this rootkit. Sony should allow people to claim actual damages if people can show that damage has been done.

The best thing that may come out of this is that the rules on what companies can and can't do have been clarified.

If I install software on my machine, I expect it to behave itself, providing I believe that the company itself is reputable. Sony have damaged themselves through this.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[sugarmotor]

What would be a better amount: 750$, 1500$.

I call this "cornering the individual". 7.50 is hardly worth anyone's time.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[sglider]

Agreed. What's worse is that there's no way of actually knowing how much damage was done. Anyone who knew of the exploit could plant another trojan or backdoor or keylogger on your system, completely undetectable because of the rootkit. Now you have the propensity to lose anything you held deal, to include financial information. There should be punitive damages, to the tune of $1,000 (the cost of a new PC, roughly) in the very least.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[ScrewMaster]

Sony damaged themselves the very instant when they decided to become a media company. They've never recovered from that, and I doubt they ever will. They've been infected by SES (Studio Executive Syndrome), a degenerative, wasting disease that is invariably fatal.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[CuriousKangaroo]

Please read the EFF FAQ regarding the settlement.

If you participate in this, you are NOT giving up your right to sue for damage to a computer or network!

Even if you get the small amount from this claim, you can still go on to sue for actual damages, should you have them.

http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/settlement_faq. php#8

Re:Very Little Compensation

[westlake]

Sony should allow people to claim actual damages if people can show that damage has been done.

Difficult to prove. Expensive and time-consuming to pursue. Take Grandma out on BINGO night instead. The odds are better that you will come home a winner.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[Henry V .009]

"... grandfather liked it," said Chester, averting his eyes from a lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat.

I just read The Great Time Machine Hoax. Very cool.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah ... I'd like to have a computer like that one in my basement. For that matter, I'd settle for the "mobile speaker".

Re:Very Little Compensation

[jimicus]

Sony should allow people to claim actual damages if people can show that damage has been done.

Allow? Allow?! Surely the whole point of a lawsuit is that Sony don't get any say in what's allowed - that's down to the court.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[Scarletdown]

If I install software on my machine, I expect it to behave itself, providing I believe that the company itself is reputable.

And even more importantly, if you put what you were led to believe is an audio CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive, you should expect it to behave itself by simply playing the music encoded on it and nothing more.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[TheSpoom]

Indeed, and if you don't even like the result of this class action, you can always opt out and sue them on your own.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[Eil]

Agreed, and this "settlement" implies to me that the folks at EFF are not only losing their edge, but their minds as well.

I mean, how is this kind of settlement any different from the one that Microsoft agreed to back in the day? "We're sorry for all of our abusive, monopolistic actions. And to prove it, we're going to give millions of dollars worth of our software to public schools. (Haha, what suckers.)"

Real punishment for Sony would be to have them pay for the actual cost of repairs to machines infected with their rootkit or to have such rootkits made illegal with a punishment that has some real teeth.

Re:Very Little Compensation

[kcarlin]

With this settlement, EFF has established itself as just one more shyster looking to serve "the little guy" by representing him, unasked and unwanted, to an abusive corporation. The real outcome, of course, is to muddy the waters for serious litigants and draw out their own cases with issues arising from sham class action settlements.

Neither EFF nor Sony will see another dime from this household.

Friends

[quokkapox]

I guess if I foolishly allowed a friend to stick one of their DRM rootkit-infected CD into my drive, I don't get a share of the settlement, because I can't provide the required proof-of-purchase documentation.

That doesn't seem fair. One CD could have infected multiple machines, but only the original owner gets "compensated" by Sony.

Re:Friends

[ZachPruckowski]

How many owners keep proof-of-purchase beyond maybe the CD and the little plastic thing it came in? I mean, most of these people could have paid cash, and not kept the receipet.

Re:Friends

[eMartin]

If it were up to them, you wouldn't be allowed to listen to your friend's CD in the first place.

Re:Friends

[Firehed]

Hey, if their crap even worked, it wouldn't have been an issue. So not only was their rootkit harmful, it was defective. I wonder what that gets you...

Re:Friends

[wo1verin3]

So you made unauthorized copies of their rootkit? I'm sure they already know and will be in touch shortly.

Re:Friends

[Buran]

Sue 'em yourself. If you can prove their crap is on your computer, you have proof of damage. Go after them in small claims court. If enough people did the same thing, they'd be hit with too many tiny lawsuits to fight them all.

They didn't tell you or the original owner of the malware on the disk, so they are liable because they were aware of its existence.

Re:Friends

[quokkapox]

If you don't have the receipt, you can exchange the actual CD as proof of ownership.

Re:Friends

[blibbler]

Sony has a duty of care to their customers, not to every joe on the street. If the grandparent found the CD on the street and put it into his computer, should he have a right to compensation? Or to remove the CD altogether, if he found a bottle of pills on the street, and took a few, should he sue the pharmaceutical company?
On the other hand, he can sue his friend, who lent him the CD.

Re:Friends

[justthinkit]

And how do I submit the library CD? People who check out music CDs from libraries are completely left out in the cold by Sony. Hence my personal pledge to NEVER buy a Sony product ever again.

Re:Friends

[Buran]

They have a duty to not actively attempt to harm anyone who might use their product. They fully knew that it is common for these items to be used by more people than the initial purchaser, thus they knew that the potential for this kind of harm exists. And yet, they chose to deliberately sabotage any system that accessed the disc.

So yes, those who were harmed by the malware -- which I might add installs even if you attempt to deny permission -- have grounds to sue. Or would you claim I was not liable if I aimed a gun at someone, shot them, and one of my bullets bounced and hit you? I shouldn't have been blasting away with a gun in a public area, now should I? I should have known that bystanders could get hurt!

Re:Friends

[bestalexguy]

If you sell dangerous substances and make them look like candies, someone who isn't your customer swallows them and damages rusult, YES, you are liable.

This should be obvious to every joe on /.

As a non-native English speaker, I assume your "every joe" expression is devoid of any derogative hint, so I took the liberty of using it myself.

Re:Friends

[blibbler]

Most developed countries have a department that is concerned with ensuring the quality of food that is available in the country. This department is generally able to prosecute a business if they do not comply with food safely regulations. So, while you are right in that a business who sells poisonous food is liable regardless of who eats it, they are not liable to every person who eats it which was my original point. ie They will be "done in" by the government, but can't be "done in" by the person who picks up the product off the street.

Which CDs have the rootkit?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can get a million free downloads...

Sony get off too lightly by half

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about this. Here it costs at least 40/hour to have a decent engineer come over and reinstall windows, back up your data and restore the machine to working condition. Taking the settlement Sony offer might prejudice getting a proper settlement, which I estimate at between 60-80 per affected user.

Thats's the civil liability. Here in the UK what Sony have done is a *criminal* offence under the computer misuse act.

I hope we haven't even started to see the scale of damage this is going to cost Sony. Frankly I hope it bankrupts them.
If some 14 year old kid wrote this rootkit he would be staring at 10 years in jail.

Re:Sony get off too lightly by half

[penix1]

"Here in the UK what Sony have done is a *criminal* offence under the computer misuse act."

It is supposed to be criminal here to under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). Of course, you will never see them charged like they are supposed to be.

B.

Re:Sony get off too lightly by half

[LordoftheFrings]

I find your use of the word engineer rather jarring.

I am a professional engineer, and obtaining that title is a long process, and at no point is Windows installation, spyware removal, or other pc-geek-bitch work taught or tested.

Re:Sony get off too lightly by half

[AndyboyH]

All it takes is a few police reports, and then I imagine the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit http://www.nhtcu.org/ may become involved, however from their website it appears all they do is link to other sites. :(

Re:Sony get off too lightly by half

[micheas]

Taking the settlement Sony offer might prejudice getting a proper settlement, which I estimate at between 60-80 per affected user.

Taking the settlement explicitly still allows you to sue, and as a bonus removes the maximum damages under New York State law.

From my reading of the settlement (IANAL) you may well have a better case if you take the settlement.

who is the ass master

[dubiousmike]

who decided that a free album was appropriate compensation? How about the cost to archive all important files and reinstall the afflicted OS at the very least. They could forgo the time lost without a shitted on computer

Re:who is the ass master

[boingo82]

Besides the time wasted uninstalling their crap software on my computer, now in order to get my mp3 download of my affected album, I have to disassemble and cut up the artwork/case in order to waste MORE time sending in the original UPC code from my discs - and I don't know about you, but part of the reason I BUY music instead of pirate it is so I'll have the INTACT case/artwork.

All that to get a lousy mp3 copy of the album, so I can FINALLY listen to the damn thing in my car.

Screw SONY. This is not a settlement. This does not make me "whole" after what they did. This just wastes MORE of my time, requires me to destroy the album I purchased, and all I get is some crappy mp3s which I could rip anyhow with any decent oss software.

Re:who is the ass master

[Harker]

I agree. If it were ME who had to reinstall windows because of their crap, I would be billing them for the time it took me to do said reinstall.

I know of at least one person who paid someone to do that, and I have already recommended that they go that route, instead of accepting the settlement. I have no idea if they did (will) or not.

H.

Re:who is the ass master

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a settlement for selling you a bad CD. They have not settled any actual damages, take them to small claims court for that.

Re:who is the ass master

[LiquidCoooled]

If your backing up the files NOW after you are infected, then you have a BIG problem with trust.
The files have already been compromised.
The only restoration process left is to restore to the backup taken BEFORE inserting the first Sony CD.

Lets face facts, no normal person is gonna reinstall Windows purely because of this, they will uninstall it and that will be that.

We can only hope

[DarthChris]

This will like set an important precedent w.r.t. rootkits and other commercial malware (Starforce anyone?). I only hope the result will be good for the customer and not the corporations. If Sony don't get the punishment they deserve for this, everyone else will jump on the bandwagon.

Re:We can only hope

[Homology]

This will like set an important precedent w.r.t. rootkits and other commercial malware (Starforce anyone?). I only hope the result will be good for the customer and not the corporations. If Sony don't get the punishment they deserve for this, everyone else will jump on the bandwagon.

I avoid buying Sony products, unless the product is substansially better than the competition. If more people buy fewer Sony products, you can be sure that Sony execs will take notice. So their CD stunt had effect spilling into other Sony divisions, like sales of TV sets.

Re:We can only hope

[tepples]

I avoid buying Sony products, unless the product is substansially better than the competition.

So you're boycotting PlayStation-exclusive franchises, right? So what's the big-ball-of-garbage game that you substitute for Katamari Damacy (only on PS2), We Love Katamari (only on PS2), and Me and My Katamari (only on PSP)?

Re:We can only hope

[Homology]

So you're boycotting PlayStation-exclusive franchises, right? So what's the big-ball-of-garbage game that you substitute for Katamari Damacy (only on PS2), We Love Katamari (only on PS2), and Me and My Katamari (only on PSP)? I don't play console games.

Re:We can only hope

[PsychoSlashDot]

>This will like set an important precedent w.r.t. rootkits and other
>commercial malware (Starforce anyone?). I only hope the result will
>be good for the customer and not the corporations. If Sony don't get
>the punishment they deserve for this, everyone else will jump on
>the bandwagon.

I just bought a Sony/BMG CD this week. I doubt it has a rootkit installer on it but I don't KNOW that it doesn't. More to the point, I can't ever know for sure that future purchases from Sony or any other mass-media distributor is clean of things other than what the package claims they're selling me.

My solution? 100% piracy. I bought David Gilmour's "On an Island". I also downloaded a torrent of it, encoded in 320kbps mp3. The CD and packaging sits on my shelf and will NEVER be placed in a reader. I consider it my certificate of authenticity. And on my hard drive sits the known-clean version. Problem solved.

If this is technically illegal, so too is the DRM fiasco Sony got caught at. I am protecting myself. End of story.

I make a point not to have something like EMule open publishing a folder full of things, flaunting my policy at the ??AA guys, but I'll gladly pull down a torrent of something I buy, and share it out to 1:1. You should see the convenient portable copy of my BSG Season 1 DVDs that reside on my laptop. Now I don't have to carry the 6 DVDs around with me. Win-win.

Your Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi! The song is called "Wot" cuz the man is saying "WOT"

And the correct lyrics are,

He said, "Captain"
I said, "Wot?"
He said "Captain"
I said, "Wot?"
He said, "Captain"
I said "Wot?"
He said "Captain"
I said "Wot d'ya want?"

Re:Your Sig

[RabidOverYou]

"So I called reception, but to no avail. That's why I'm telling you this sorry tale." Hey, I've got the 12inch picdisc.

Windows only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark me down as a troll if you wish, but I don't have such problems on my Mac mini with OS X. Neither does people running Linux.

Could we ask for compensation, if only because the "CD" wasn't a real "Audio CD"? (or was it?)

Re:Windows only?

[Al Dimond]

You can get compensation if you have proof you own one of the CDs. Now quit trolling. The CDs had correct audio information on them and any computer that just read that information and ignored the autoplay stuff would be fine. As it happens I own a CD that looks like it's affected (though it's not listed on the linked site). And I haven't booted my Windows partition in about a month and a half, but if I did, and put the CD in, it would just sit there. I would start up whatever cheesy little CD player app I chose, and run it without consequence.

Actually supposedly there was a MacOS version too, but you had to run it manually and enter your password, which would raise a red flag for knowledgeable people (kinda like that recent "Mac virus" that relied on the user for both the "code execution" and "privledge escalation" portions). Kinda like it raised a red flag for Windows users running as non-Admin users when the autorun program told them they had to be admin.

Re:Windows only?

[Anonymous Coward]

But people are stupid.

Days of War, Nights of Love.

[qualico]

The problem is that the typical consumer really has no interest in wasting their time with lawyers, paperwork, and beuracracy.

Knowing this, is how politics take advantage of the mass consumer thinking.

Days of War, Nights of Love is a collection of political essays which may touch on these ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_War%2C_Nights _of_Love

Re:Days of War, Nights of Love.

[westlake]

The problem is that the typical consumer really has no interest in wasting their time with lawyers, paperwork, and beuracracy.

In the run up to Easter people have other things on their mind than a refund from SONY. I don't give this "awareness" campaign much chance.

No thanks to ANYTHING from Sony

[erroneus]

I never bought one of these. Instead, I suffered at the office as the IT guy who had to clean up the mess that Sony left behind. I would like to sue them for the labor, time and frustration they caused... and continue to cause! Those things are still out there drifting about. Just last week I had to reverse the damage one of those CDs caused. A real pain in the ass it is. So far, that makes over 10 machines trashed because of that stupid crap.

And the "real" punishment, as far as I'm concerned, is that I had the opportunity to explain to a lay-person what Sony has done, why they did it and why they shouldn't trust Sony with their dollars ever again. I truly think it's a powerful thing since these people found out first-hand that it wasn't "their fault" and that trusting a big company like Sony to always do the right thing is pretty wrong. The opinion these people, and those they that hear their story, hold of a much lower opinion of Sony than they once did.

May Sony feel the wrath of the consumer!!

Re:No thanks to ANYTHING from Sony

[tomhudson]

Explaining it to the end users was probably a waste of time, since THEY didn't have to clean up their machines - they foisted it on you. Its the same as explaining to an IE addict why they should switch to Firefox ... over and over and over and ...

Besides, I see that there's a Celine Dion album on the list. I would argue that the world is a better place if everyone who bought that CD ends up with a non-functional computer.

Re:No thanks to ANYTHING from Sony

[Turn-X Alphonse]

"Sony put a virus on one of their music CDs. When you play it, it installs the virus and trashs your PC".

That's how I explained it to Joe sickpack, and it worked perfectly. They hated Sony as much as we do and it's the truth.

Remember "Virus" is a scary word for the uninformed, they think it means "everything gone" or "credit card details stolen". It also does it quick enough for them not to get bored, hence perfect solution and the truth in 1.

Re:No thanks to ANYTHING from Sony

[kcarlin]

Jeez, by this standard Microsoft owes me about $100K just in grandparent services, and Apple's in for at least an iMac.

Re:No thanks to ANYTHING from Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you letting users have accounts that let them install software ?

EFF "needs your help"

[gkuz]

From TFA:

"But Sony BMG won't be held accountable if music fans don't have an easy way to learn about the flawed software, the settlement, and how to submit claims. That's where EFF needs your help."

The help EFF needs is in growing a pair of balls. This "settlement" will in no way hold Sony/BMG accountable, and is just rolling over for a buck. I guess the new "Electronic Frontier" is the almighty dollar.

Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[Kristoffer Lunden]

In a way it's even sneakier though, as it teaches the public that DRM is ok. Just watch how many who otherwise claim to love freedom who readily defends it whenever the issue comes up. As soon as the mindset it firmly in place, there will be no problem rolling out worse and worse protections, until we have "Trusted Computing" telling you exactly where you want to go today.

No thank you.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

In a way it's even sneakier though, as it teaches the public that DRM is ok.

Because people knowing about a fair(er) form of DRM and agreeing with it is SO evil.

iTunes' DRM is very acceptable to most people, as its limits aren't very strict, and it only applies to music. Trusted Computing or whatever bollocks they call it now isn't in the same ballpark.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[scuba0]

If you give in to one DRM-type, it means you are more welcome to accept the next one. Some people might say that it isn't like that but it does not matter, the media industri and the lawmakers sees it as acceptable.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

It's not like that. The gateway drug thing didn't hold true for marijuana, and it doesn't for DRM.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[Kristoffer Lunden]

What can I say... you make an excellent job at illustrating my point.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[Anonymous Coward]

People who love freedom usually love the freedom to choose. iTunes, while restricting some of freedoms, offers value that many find worthwhile.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[honkycat]

Your logic is amazing! The way you refute his argument without even addressing its merits is a sight to behold. Aristotle would be proud.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

I'm used to it...this is after all Slashdot, where all DRM, no matter how unrestrictive, is evil and anyone who suggests otherwise is just deluded or stupid.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[mrchaotica]

Because people knowing about a [less intolerably unfair] form of DRM and agreeing with it is SO evil.

There, fixed that for ya. As we all know, DRM is unfair by definition because it is incapable of accounting for Fair Use.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

There, fixed that for ya. As we all know, DRM is unfair by definition because it is incapable of accounting for Fair Use.

Please tell me how FairPlay DRM restricts fair use. You can burn it to CD, you can listen to it...where precisely is the problem?

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[croddy]

I will NOT have encrypted data stored on my systems unless I know the keys to decrypt it... no matter how "friendly" the people are who withhold those keys.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[mrchaotica]

You can't resell it.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

Burn it to CD and then resell it.

Obviously.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[mrchaotica]

Sorry, doesn't work. First of all, because the music is compressed, selling a CD of it is not the same as selling the AAC itself, and is inferior because when the buyer goes to make an AAC again he'll end up with lower quality.

Second, you can't transfer ownership of the AAC itself:

iTunes Music Store Terms of Service, section 9c:

You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules, and that any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement. The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products. The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party. Apple reserves the right to modify the Usage Rules at any time.

Resale is not explicitly allowed by the "Usage Rules," therefore it is prohibited.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[afaik_ianal]

So DRM is bad because it involves encrypted information for which you don't have the key. Having encrypted information for which you do not have the key is bad, because it just is.

Regardless of peoples opinions of DRM, your logic is flawed (unless I just missed the silent <sarcasm> tags), and is exactly the kind of logic your PP was talking about.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[arminw]

......as it teaches the public that DRM is ok.....

The public outside of /. doesn't really care about DRM either way. All Joe user wants to do is use the purchased music in pretty much the same ways he/she is used to. Apple's DRM allows users to do this. You may copy songs to CDs to play in cars etc, copy songs to one or more ipods and play them on several computers. I doubt that the iTunes downloads would change much one way or the other if there were no DRM. Apple just had to do that to appease the recording companies. Maybe downloads would even go up because of the DRM haters not downloading anything now.

Apple also doesn't hold a gun to anyone's head and force the buying as much as a single song from the ITMS. Just go down to your favorite new or used CD retailer and buy your favorite plain or copy protected CDs. Sony's infamous rootkit CDs work on Macs like any other normal CD you buy. It's the crummy Windows "features" that allow such copy protection shenanigans to even work. DRM will die if it ever becomes draconian enough to prevent most users from doing whatever they have been used to doing with the content they plunked their hard earned cash down for.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[arminw]

.....I will NOT have encrypted data stored on my systems unless I know the keys to decrypt it....

I generally feel that way also, but in the case of Apple's DRM you can always burn your music onto CDs unencrypted for safekeeping. If you re-rip them into MP3s you do lose quality, but then any downloaded music is not for audiophiles anyway. You'll never hear the difference while sitting on a bus, jogging or riding in a car, while listening to your iPod. For anyone who has spent thousands on a top notch sound system, buying full quality CDs if really the only way to get the full performance quality such a system can provide. Some *real* dyed in the wool audio enthusiasts insist that vinyl LPs have the best sound still.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

Sorry, doesn't work. First of all, because the music is compressed, selling a CD of it is not the same as selling the AAC itself

Um, yes it is. You're selling a CD with exactly the same sound quality as you would get if you just had the original AAC file.

Inferiority of selling on doesn't factor into fair use. Nice diversion, though.

Resale is not explicitly allowed by the "Usage Rules," therefore it is prohibited.

By the same token, it isn't explicitly prohibited either, is it?

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[croddy]

Having encrypted information for which you do not have the key is bad, because it just is.

No, having encrypted information for which you do not have the key is bad because it puts you in possession of information you can't be responsible for. How would you like for someone to put some encrypted child porn on your computer? Bomb plans?

If there's a blob of encrypted data on your drive, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE KEY.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[Anonymous Coward]

You wrote:

Resale is not explicitly allowed by the "Usage Rules," therefore it is prohibited.

By the same token, it isn't explicitly prohibited either, is it?

The person you were replying to explicitly quoted Apple's terms of service, and highlighted this passage:

You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules

This means (pretty clearly, I think) that if they don't say it's okay, it's not okay. So while it may not be explicitly prohibited, this is clearly NOT ``by the same token.'' It's the whole point: they've got you by the short and curlies. You're letting them write the rules, so it should come as no shock that the rules are biased in favor of Apple.

Re:Not as bad... up front, maybe.

[jb.hl.com]

I don't think that. It doesn't seem very cut and dried, to me it looks like "You can use this service ONLY if you agree with this, this and this."

Of course the only way to test this for sure is to try and sell a burned AAC to someone...

My reply from the EFF

[cove209]

Greetings,

I just read on your website where the EFF has agreed to settle with Sony BMG.
What a pathetic settlement that does nothing to assist consumers with the costs of removing the rootkit software and in addition, fails to act as any sort of a deterrent to Sony BMG.
Way to knuckle under for the little guy.
Unhappy in California

Hi ,

I'm sorry you feel that way and there may be nothing I can do to
convince you otherwise, since I understand some people want Sony
BMG's head on a pike and nothing less will do. I don't necessarily
disagree, but the law limits what we can get in the context of a
class action settlement. But I hope you'll at least give me a hearing.

First, you understand that the settlement *preserves* the claims of
folks who have hardware damage due to the rootkit, right? They can
still sue to get more and we're happy to help. The scope of the
settlement is for a different harm -- the harm of merely having
bought these bad CDs.

The main reason that we didn't settle those claims is that we haven't
had enough people come forward with proof that the CDs harmed their
computers to constitute a sufficient number for a class action. Class
actions require "numerousity" and "uniformity" of claims. If you
know of such people, please send them our way. They can bring small
claims actions. If we do discover enough folks with a common pattern
of harm, we will consider another class action.

Second, as for whether this will serve as a deterrent to Sony in the
future, I guess we'll see in time. Even if we had taken the case all
the way through to a trial and been completely successful, a court
would not be able to order Sony to cease using all DRM under current
law. So as much as I'd like to see Sony do that, this case alone was
never going to accomplish that goal.

Right now they have stopped pressing *any* CDs with DRM on them,
agreed to independent review of any future DRM (with a report to the
lawyers involved in the case), and agreed to allow non-DRM/non-EULA
versions of all of the music that was affected by the bad DRM. The
cash cost of the settlement is hard to value but Sony says that the
value of album downloads are $10 per album. If the 5 million people
affected by MediaMax get a free album download that's a cost of $50
million to Sony. That's before the $7.50 per album for the 3 million
XCP users and the extra downloads that they get, or the replacement
music for the MediaMax 3 users.

While the settlement terms are the product of negotiation and so
aren't perfect, I do think we got a good deal in the settlement for
purchasers of the CDs. Believe me it was hard fought and there is
much in there now that Sony started out by flatly rejecting. I
certainly understand if you disagree and want to try for more on your
own. You absolutely have the right to opt-out of the settlement and
bring your own action. I'd be very curious to hear how that goes if
you choose to do it.

Most important for us was:
1. stop production of any more CDs with the dangerous DRM on it.
2. get people non-DRM'd/non-EULA'd versions of their music (this was
strongly resisted by Sony)
3. do it quickly
4. get people some free music (or in the case of XCP, money) for
their trouble.

There's much more in the settlement than that, of course, but for the
purchasers these were the core goals.
Again, I appreciate your feedback.
- Show quoted text -
On wrote:
                                                          ---- .org
                                    ---- www.eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 436-9333 x

Re:My reply from the EFF

[rifftide]

At first I thought the EFF had sold us down the river, but now I think the settlement is reasonable. Sony agrees to cease and desist the practice, and they must provide a convenient mechanism for exchange of XCP disks. What it doesn't do is (1) provide reasonable compensation to people who suffered extensive system damage, or (2) blast Sony back to the Stone Age for having a corps of bozo executives running their music division. But as the EFF pointed out, those in the first category can opt out of the settlement and sue on their own dime (or perhaps join a separate class action), while the second criticism is just unproductive knee-jerk stuff.

The EFF gets their legal fees compensated, and I'm sure their hourly rates are of generous size by the standards of most IT workers. Sony did get off fairly cheaply. But in many class action suits involving low-ticket products, the law firm(s) representing the plaintiffs walk away with 40 percent of the pot while the consumers get peanuts, and the company does no worse than Sony did. The whole thing is basically a big reward for the law firm that filed the claim first. Here, we still get peanuts, and I personally don't intend to file a claim, but it probably wasn't a financial windfall for the EFF - just a nice little project for them.

Re:My reply from the EFF

[gizmonic]

But as the EFF pointed out, those in the first category can opt out of the settlement and sue on their own dime

But, what the EFF said was:

First, you understand that the settlement *preserves* the claims of folks who have hardware damage due to the rootkit, right? They can still sue to get more and we're happy to help. The scope of the settlement is for a different harm -- the harm of merely having bought these bad CDs.

That means that the lawsuit applies only to buying the DRM'd CD. It has nothing to do installing it, nor the damage done by it. You can collect on the current class action for having bought one of the CDs, and still be able to sue or join a second class action for damages caused by the CDs. Which is pretty darn cool, IMHO. It means this lawsuit actually has a VERY reasonable settlement value. You bought a DRM'd CD, you get a free non-DRM'd CD, plus $7.50, plus some free downloads. Not bad, if you ask me. Oh, the damage it did to your machine by installing it? Well, as they say, that's a whole different lawsuit. And inclusion in this class does NOT exclude you from the other. You don't have to opt out if it to get damages for the DRM hosing your system.

(All that assumes what the EFF said was true, of course...)

Re:My reply from the EFF

[qzulla]

Sony says:

cash cost of the settlement is hard to value but Sony says that the value of album downloads are $10 per album. If the 5 million people

Value is not cost. What is the cost of those downloads?

I bet a lot less than the value.

qz

Re:My reply from the EFF

[noidentity]

"The
cash cost of the settlement is hard to value but Sony says that the
value of album downloads are $10 per album. If the 5 million people
affected by MediaMax get a free album download that's a cost of $50
million to Sony. That's before the $7.50 per album for the 3 million
XCP users and the extra downloads that they get, or the replacement
music for the MediaMax 3 users."

Buying an album download: $10
Cost of providing download: $0.10 (I'm being generous)

Not much of a pain to Sony.

Wow 7.50 plus free downloads!

[billybob]

Gee, that will really teach Sony a lesson they'll never forget. We can be sure that such harsh punishments will encourage all companies in the future to never do things that they shouldn't do!! /sarcasm

This explains piracy

[ZachPruckowski]

If this is a risk of buying CDs, no wonder so many people pirate. I don't, but I can't understand how this is supposed to help Sony stop piracy. I'm sure some people pirate now just as a result of that, saying, well sorry, but I can't risk a rootkit.

If you want more blood

[codepunk]

If you want more blood out of sony here you go.... Nothing at all stopping you
from taking them to small claims court and getting what you deserve. Most small claims courts have a very small fee like $10 for filing, 5 minutes in front of a judge and bingo you have got cash!

        * damage to a computer or network resulting from interactions between the XCP Software or the MediaMax Software and your computer (e.g., damage to your hard drive);
        * damage related to your reasonable efforts to remove the XCP Software or the MediaMax Software; or
        * copyright, trademark or other claims arising from the development of the MediaMax Software or the XCP Software, or any uninstallers or updates thereto.

You may still sue Sony BMG for any such claims, whether or not you choose to take advantage of the settlement benefits. As part of the settlement process, Sony BMG agreed to waive its overreaching New York forum selection clause and $5 limit on damages, so you can take them to your local small claims court for your damages.

See here for more information about the small claims process.

Re:If you want more blood

[trooz1]

See here for more information about the small claims process.
--

Got Code?

Have you got code? For the link?

Re:If you want more blood

[westlake]

Most small claims courts have a very small fee like $10 for filing, 5 minutes in front of a judge and bingo you have got cash!

and if you believe this, I hold a lease on a bridge into Manhatten that you can buy out cheap.

Re:If you want more blood

[Stevyn]

I think that people who feel they are not justly compensated by this lawsuit, going to a small claims court might be a good idea. However, they still need to show damages. They have to have evidence that Sony cost them money. Maybe that could be hiring some geek squad guy to come over and fix it. Maybe it could simply be their time.

It would be great if Sony was treated the same as some punk kid who hacks into a computer owned by MegaCorp and is fined thousands and given jailtime, but that's unlikely in this environment. I'd love to see people win their case in small claims courts, but they have to understand that they still need to show real damages. Punitive damages will be too difficult to get in small claims courts.

only the bad publicity harmed Sony

[Lazy Jones]

The settlement was a joke (sorry EFF). What kind of message is that - the typical guy who installs malware/spyware on a computer is fined heavily and sometimes goes to jail, while a big corporation Sony gets away with a ridiculous amount of cash per malevolent action? Where's the justice in that?

What I love is...

[danpsmith]

...even provided that everyone that bought the CD does all three of these things, I doubt that Sony is really even losing money on the initial sale to begin with. This penalty they are paying may wind up not even costing them any money at all.

Fairness Hearing Scheduled for May 22, 2006

[marklyon]

SonySuit.com has information about the fairness hearing on May 22, 2006 at 9:15 am at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse for the Southern District of New York at 500 Pearl Street, Room 2270, New York, NY.

Don't forget -- claims MUST BE submitted by December 31, 2006. If you want to be excluded from the settlement, you MUST FILE before May 1, 2006. If you do not exclude yourself, you can attend the fairness hearing, at your own expense, and be heard by yourself or through your attorney.

I run the SonySuit.com website an plan to start collecting messages about the settlement to submit to the court as exhibits to my statement at the fairness hearing. If you have a comment about the settlement, send it to sonysuit@gmail.com.

The best customers can get now.

[Jachra]

/offtopic I hope that DoJ will sue SonyBMG and that the CEO and other responsible managers will serve sometime in jail. Maybe that will send a clear message to the industry. /ontopic

I think this is the best the EFF can offer right now. SonyBMG has to many cash to spend to take it further than the EFF. Too bad, but it is the sad truth these days.

Payment

[unix_core]

Can I please pay by paypal the next time I install a rootkit on one of Sony's workstations? $7,50 each, right? They pick some stuff from my mp3 collection too, if they want.

Maybe so, but...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Maybe so, but... You can froth at the mouth, and wave your arms around demanding this and that. Or, you can take a more realistic approach, and join a class action that has a much much bigger chance of success.

Not doing a good job

[HunterZ]

EFF's Derek Slater in an awareness campaign ... is urging those inflicted with one of Sony BMG's rootkit infected CDs to collect what is due to them."

Well the EFF isn't doing a very good job. Almost nobody I know - even computer geeks like myself - has heard or taken note of the whole Sony rootkit fiasco. I only know about it myself because of Slashdot. I was dragged along to Wal-Mart when visiting my brother recently, and had to explain the whole thing to several members my family when I saw that they were shopping for music CDs.

Incidentally, I didn't find it very easy to identify which ones were Sony discs (some said BMG or something similar, but other than that I didn't recognize any labels). I ended up just warning them away from anything that didn't have the official "compact disc digital audio" logo on the package, just to be safe.

Everyone send in a CD!

[MadWicKdWire]

After RTFA... I've decided it's in my best interest to download one of the listed CDs from the Interwebs for free. Then, after burning it to CD, producing a receipt of my web request for a torrent and finding enough stamp monies for my envelope, I will send my nice NON-drm-riddled into the company with my full name and address for some fun lawsuit action.

It did not specify that the CD must be the original did it? AND Do you think they will give me sweet iTunes downloads for the frees?

MadWicKdWire

What this is really about....

[tverbeek]

Don't you people realize that this so-called "settlement" is just a trick to enable the courts to collect the names and addresses of people who listen to creatively bland corporate musick?!

The Linked article was bad

[sgent]

this is a claim merely for having bought the CD's in question -- it IS NOT COMPENSATION for damages that may have result from your network or computer. See http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/settlement_faq. php for full information on the settlement.

exert...

Why does EFF think the settlement is a good deal for purchasers of the Sony BMG CDs?

EFF agreed to the settlement because we believe it provides a good compensation package for the group of people who purchased the CDs but did not experience any hardware damage as a result. This means purchasers whose claim is primarily based on their purchase of the CDs and experiencing the hassle of having to patch or uninstall their systems, or in the case of MediaMax 3, having had files installed prior to giving you a chance to agree.

EFF's goals for purchasers of the CDs were to :

1. Stop production of any more CDs by Sony BMG with the bad DRM on them.
2. Get people non-DRM'd/non-EULA'd versions of their music.
3. Get this relief to people quickly, rather than after years of legal wrangling. This is in part why some of things in the settlement, like uninstallers, were available before the settlement itself was announced.
4. Get people some free music, or in the case of those who were at risk from the XCP rootkit, a choice of some money for their trouble.
5. Ensure that people get notice. Sony BMG has agreed to use the banner functionality on some of its CDs to give individual notice to purchasers at the time they put the CD into their computers, as well as put notices on many artists websites and purchasing adwords giving notice more broadly. We're still working with Sony about what these will look like, but EFF believes that taking extra steps to give people notice of the need to patch their systems, and of the settlement, is important.
6. Ensure independent security testing and pre-launch EULA review of any future DRM, with a report to the lawyers involved in the case of at least the security testing.
7. Agree to a quick process for response by Sony BMG, involving independent security reviewers and enforced by the court, in the event of any future discovery of a security flaw in their DRM.

There's much more in the settlement than that, of course, but for the purchasers these were EFF's core goals and the settlement meets them all. That's why we think the settlement is a good deal and we endorse it.

So much for compensation, how about the damage?

[Opportunist]

Who's gonna pay for the damage Sony's rootkit did to the poor fools' computers?

Imagine you're a computer illiterate. Like about 70% of the people out there, who just know how to slip a CD in and hope that autorun works. Who is going to pay for the expert they need to get the computer back into shape? Or, if they don't, who's gonna pay for the consequential costs those backdoor'ed and trojan-prepared machines are going to cause? Who's going to pay the hours necessary if you do it yourself?

My time has a price! It is currently $22.86 an hour. That's what I get when I spend that hour at work instead of trying to get buggy, shoddy, half-baked malware out of my system!

Who is going to pay that?

Title should be...

[danwesnor]

... EFF Finally Sells Out.

I would think they would be encouraging victims to withdraw from the class action. Maybe the victims who did so would get nothing (as opposed to next-to-nothing), but every victim who withdrew from the class would cost the lawyers who agreed to this worthless settlement a little bit of their fee.

Not only does the agreement not compensate the victims for real damages ($7.50 is what, 10 minutes of tech support?), but contains no punitive damages. Let's not forget that Sony didn't just use DRM, they infected their victims computers with a virus, stole personal information, opened up their computers to further attacks, and then took deliberate actions to cover up their wrongdoing. If you or I did that, we'd be facing jail time.

Where are single-screen multiplayer PC games?

[tepples]

If you don't play console games, then what shared-screen multiplayer video games (if any) do you play when you have friends over? Or do you buy four PCs for this purpose? Or do you require them to carry in their own PCs?

MOD PARENT INFORMATIVE!!!

[mrchaotica]

There's way too many people who forget stuff like this nowadays, and that's what's allowing shit like this to happen in the first place!

Hey, everybody: you are not "consumers," and you are not sheeple! You are CITIZENS, and you had damn well better start acting like it!

Very Lame Compensation

[Nom du Keyboard]

This is very lame compensation. Sony got off just short of scot-free so far. The CD's cost well under a buck to press. The damage to your computer, time and efforts to clean it up, cost far more than this.

I don't see a single thing in this settlement that punishes Sony sufficiently to absolutely convince them to never even think of attempting this again.

Worse yet, I don't see anything here to scare off any other big music or movie company from trying the same thing.

Sony should have gone down big time over this one.

And the lawyers should have only gotten a replacement CD and 3 free downloads as well.

Are there still any other suits in any other state/countries pending that will hurt them more?

Re:Very Lame Compensation

[Kjella]

Well, they got some bad PR. They didn't even sell the CDs in question here, but it was a front page story online on our biggest national newspaper. Didn't check the coverage in the paper version. Plus, they had to pay up something, which despite being a slap on the wrist is always useful to point to (certainly more than some massive criminal charge that is dismissed). Next time (and there will be), you can point to this and say: "This is over the line. You very clearly knew it was there, because we drew it quite clearly when Sony stepped over it." In any case, I think it won't matter because your next Vista PC will be pre-rooted.

Poor Sony, please help them out!

[grimJester]

If all Slashdotters pull together and upload at least ten albums each, we can help Sony handle this terrible upload requirement! We're with you, Sony!

7.50 per album? I've got an upstream that will save you a cool 10k/day! Hang in there, if we can get 100k Slashdotters to help out, you'll be saving a billion dollars per day!!

You have it in your wallet to hurt them

[Opportunist]

It's your money they want. Nothing else. Not your love, not your sympathy, not your admiration. They want money. Simple as that.

Now, it's not like Sony produces anything so essential that you have to have it or you die. They're in the entertainment business.

All we gotta do is realize that we can live and stay healthy without their music. Personally, I think it ain't that hard, considering the crap they sell.

Infections forever

[justthinkit]

Libraries will be dispensing Sony rootkit infected CDS forever.

Has there been ANY mention of Sony contacting all libraries to prevent this, let alone track down and assist those patrons who checked out and played rootkit CDs on their home computers? I doubt Sony will ever do anything about this.

This is the most serious corporation-assisted mass infection in history. And it continues...

Not true.

[babbling]

I'd argue that in some ways, the iTunes DRM is worse. At least with the Sony CDs, the DRM stayed the same. Apple has changed what you can do with the music AFTER you have purchased it.

Apple has changed the number of CDs you can burn it to, and the number of computers you can have the music on at the same time. Apple also force upgrades by requiring new software for new model iPods, so not updating iTunes isn't a viable way of escaping changes in the DRM permissions.

If Apple ever decided to build backdoors into iTunes, people would still have no choice but to upgrade and have all the backdoors affect all of their music, if they want iTunes to work with their latest iPod... or if they chose not to buy the latest iPod because of the backdoors, they would lose the ability to play all of their music on-the-go, since the music can't be played on any competing MP3 players.

Re:Not true.

[VoiceOfDoom]

Use tunebite.

As long as you are the legal owner/licensee of the tune in question, you can use tunebite to rip to mp3 or wav or whatever. Probably illegal in America due to the DMCA, but I don't think anyone's been arrested for using it......yet......

I have good news and bad news for Sony

[merc]

Sony:

The good news, you don't have to recompense me for the malware-infected CD's you sold on the market.

The bad news, it's due to the fact that I don't buy music anymore. I can do without you, I hope you're fine without my money.

MediaMax Comp is a joke

[n9uxu8]

I have one of the MediaMax-infected albums, and the compensation offered is a free download of the songs on the album? If I had wanted a limited-quality download of the songs (probably rife with drm), I would have bought the album online in the first place. What I wanted was a CD that I could play anywhere and rip to whatever quality/format I wanted whenever I wanted. This is a joke.

Dave

jailed is better really

[Anonymous Coward]

"operating an attractive nuisance" is the term you are looking for maybe. Something bad happens because you didn't follow common sense with other laws. This *might and could* apply here given a favorable court and creative prosecutor.

  In the cyberworld, hacking as the cops and press call it, is "illegal", small fry go to jail for it all the time. Someone at sony and at their subcontractors needs to go to jail for it. It's that simple. Civil suits for cash can be brought on by any number of other laws, and that's a separate issue. Until we start holding corporate officers responsible, criminally responsible, they will just use cash as a cost of doing business and pass the cost of the fines on to their next customers, which in and of itself should be HIGHLY illegal. The fine money should come out of the executives personal paycheck, not the corporate accounts.

iTunes DRM does not restrict.

[Viewsonic]

They tell you to burn the music into audio CD format after you purchase it. iTunes even does the burning for you. What this does is make a 100% DRM free audio CD. You can then rip that CD to any device you want, as many times as you want, for the rest of your life completely, and 100% DRM free. The only thing that is restricted is being able to pass around that original file, which sits on my hard drive just long enough to burn to audio CD and rerip and it's gone forever.

DRM? NO THANKS!

[crhylove]

DRM, including the kind put into Apple's AAC files is not a good thing. This should be fought on every level. I refuse to acknowledge iTunes whatsoever, and refuse to buy products from Sony, Apple, or any other corporation foisting them on me, or society at large. This is the police state that we've been reading about for years in Sci-fi coming to pass. Do not accept DRM in any form. You may say, "yeah, it's just a sheryl crow song" or whatever for now, but all information needs to be VERY CAREFULLY managed as a resource for all and for all of our futures. Do not accept iTunes, iPods, or any other drm technology that is going to limit your freedom. Don't do it no matter HOW convenient it is.

rhY

PS On a related note, anyone know of an iPod type device that is made out of steel, has no moving parts, stores 2 gb of mp3s (no DRM!), and doesn't require iTunes spyware? I'd pay double ipod price for one of these, and so would LOTS of other music professionals.

Re:DRM? NO THANKS!

[itsmekirby]

Really? I happen to have one right now. It cost me $300 two years ago, and I'll sell it to you for $800 since you are willing to pay double iPod price.

This new fantastic product is called an "iPod" and it matches all of your requirements.

Wow, I could make a lot of money selling this thing to all those music professionals you talk of.

Re:DRM? NO THANKS!

[Anonymous Coward]

> PS On a related note, anyone know of an iPod type device
> that is made out of steel, has no moving parts, stores 2
> gb of mp3s (no DRM!), and doesn't require iTunes spyware?
> I'd pay double ipod price for one of these, and so would
> LOTS of other music professionals.

iTunes isn't spyware unless you allow it to connect to
teh Interweb. Even modest (and some free) software firewalls allow you control what programs can and can't do in terms of connecting to the outside world.

Block it off with the firewall, and iTunes can still format your iPod, which is, in the end, all you REALLY need iTunes for. After that, seek out the 3rd-party pod-manager of your choice, for loading up your hardware with all of the completely DRM-free, self-ripped music you can fit.

I can't see how it's possible for someone to not know this in 2006, but I guess this is a troll.

Re:DRM? NO THANKS!

[crhylove]

No troll, I tried futzing with a friend's ipod the other day and was dismally disappointed by build quality, software interface, and a host of other features. Then my friend said the top of the thing scratched really easily as well.

There is A LOT OF SPACE for another company to make a superior product, and bundle it with a killer open source library manager, or even just make it appear automagically as an external hard drive when you hook up the USB, and this would kill the ipod. So far, I've only seen real ipods, a zen, and some rio thing, and they were all horse shit with crappy build quality and bad interfaces. Somebody lend me 100k and I'll start the company myself and put apple and sony quickly behind the consumer curve.

rhY

Re:DRM? NO THANKS!

[Richard_J_N]

The Rio Karma is an excellent machine - if you can still get them. Also, the newer ipods + ipodlinux aren't so bad.

Follow up:

[crhylove]

Can we recover economic costs from computer data that was work related being damaged or compromised by their actions?

For instance: I've been working on a $5 million dollar picture, and now 3 of our servers are infected and we are looking at reshooting $2.5 million dollars worth of footage. If Sony would like to settle out of court for $1 million they can make a check out to Rhy Thornton, and I'm in Escondido, California. Thank you.

rhY

Then file an objection!

[MacDork]

This is very small compensation for machines that may have been damaged by this rootkit.

But we can file an objection... Here's mine. I'm open to suggested improvements:

Name
Address
Telephone Number

In re SONY BMG CD Technologies Litigation:

I am objecting to the settlement process on the grounds that,

A) The settlement excludes people who may not have purchased one of the listed compact disks from Sony/BMG, but have otherwise been affected by the software contained on it. It is conceivable that someone may have legally borrowed a compact disk, been affected by the rootkit, and have no receipt to file a claim in the settlement.

B) The settlement excludes people who may not have used any compact disk from Sony/BMG but may have otherwise been affected by the nature of the software. There has been no investigation into what, if any, personal information protected by law was surreptitiously obtained by Sony/BMG's use of the rootkit or by others who may have taken advantage of security holes left open by the rootkit itself.[1]

C) The settlement does not address the criminal actions of individuals at Sony/BMG. If this were the case of a "computer hacker" distributing a rootkit, that person would have been jailed on charges of computer trespass. Sony/BMG shipped an estimated 20,000,000 affected compact disks, some of which installed software REGARDLESS of whether or not the end user accepted the terms of their license agreement.[2] All members of the settlement class are potentially victims of Sony/BMG's criminal actions. Yet there have been, to my knowledge, no charges regarding criminal actions brought against Sony/BMG or any individual of that company.

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sony s_drm_rootk.html
[2] http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=936

Hmmm, after that last bit, I wonder if I should instead file for exclusion. One or the other must be done before May 1, 2006. You can't do both... and I'll probably just get lip service from the courts with my objection...

Apperantly

[Giometrix]

Any time spent removing the rootkit, your privacy, risk of viruses, accidental data loss due to having to format your PC is worth 7 and half bucks and a few shitty songs that costs them next to nothing to distribute digitally. Gotta love lobbyists.

"To be fair"

[Penguinoflight]

Actually the DRM on iTunes still infringes on many fair use rules. I wouldn't call the sony rootkit DRM, it's just uncontrolled corporate greed. Am I the only one who finds this settlement a little under satisfactory? I certainly wont do a wipe/clean install of windows for $7.50. Even if your system wasn't infected with anything, hiring a professional just to remove the rootkit will cost more than $7.50.

This really isn't to discourage people from making their claim. Do it just to hurt Sony, they need some feedback. What is bothersome to me, is that every time a large company breaks the law and scams their customers they get off with something worth under $15. You can get in more trouble than that just mowing someones lawn.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, looks like you fell for it too. Never question someone's logic when they're speaking out against DRM or MS, no matter how illogical it is, or you will be modded down.

This is Slashdot, not some intelectual discussion. Logic has no place here.

Note, the mod who modded you down didn't even bother giving a reason. Why? Because they don't have an option "-1, Goes againt my religiously held dogma".

EFF WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

This lawsuit of the EFF is a sad sad joke. Compare the issues: on the one side its very clear that this isn't the best thing on the computer to have (the sony 'rootkit') and yes its rude and everything. Compare with everything else the EFF is trying to fight for. This 'rootkit' is one company screwing up and making a techinical error. Theyr'e wrong. Everyoone knows that. Its also a 'straw cow'. It is not big company screwing over your fundamental rights. Then compare with surveillance, not by some cd that the rootkit wont work half time anyway but from the right of systems to do any darn thing they want and listen to any of your conversations, etc. Issues like that.

Not completely false, either

[abb3w]

Apple has changed what you can do with the music AFTER you have purchased it.

True — and Apple lost a LOT of my goodwill the first time they reduced user rights. However, Apple's DRM still allows you to burn purchased songs to CD, in a form that can be re-ripped and abused in all the standard ways. The four times I have been decided to buy via ITunes, the first thing I did afterwards was create a physical CD, and re-rip to MP3; this reduced my inconveniece when a DRM downgrade occured between purchases 3 and 4. Fortunately (?), I own more than one PC. The "games and toys" box has iTunes on it. The "serious work" machine does not... but does have several semi-pro and pro-am grade audio packages, and an external hard drive (which is backed up) with all of my MP3's. (And yes, they are all from my ripping legal purchased CDs, legal CD burns, or various free legal downloads.)

While a real paranoid wouldn't have the machines on the same home network, I settle for keeping them firewalled behind separate NAT routers, dangling off of my main home router. (I can accept the extra 2 ms packet latency in my gaming.)

At least with the Sony CDs, the DRM stayed the same. Apple has changed what you can do with the music AFTER you have purchased it.

To make a blatantly prejuducial analogy, that's like saying that being detained (and gang-raped by the guards) indefinitely in a Pottsylvania prison isn't as bad as being quietly detained without charges for two months at Gitmo before being released, because only the US constitution ever said you had any rights otherwise. They're both immoral, but do differ in both character and degree.

Class action?

[bestalexguy]

Isn't this a situation eligible for a class action? Any lawyer here hidden among scores of tech geeks?

HAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, when I read about the compensation thing, my first thought was that I should run out and try to find some of the affected discs so I could do this. Lol, probably there's a clause in there to prevent people from doing this (if not, Sony isn't paying their lawyers NEARLY enough...) I'm glad to hear EFF is trying to get people to make this a little bigger. It's a molehill, but, if we make a mountain out of it, maybe, just maybe, we can help slow down their attempts to take away user rights in favor of their money.

Refute.. what? There's nothing but knee-jerk there

[Kristoffer Lunden]

He didn't come with any argument and he didn't refute anything of mine - what he did was illustrate the knee-jerk reaction such a statement always yields from the ones who have already bought into the scam. It's a human, natural reaction - but it is not an argument.

Re:Refute.. what? There's nothing but knee-jerk th

[honkycat]

Oh come on.

Your argument is that anyone who defends DRM is doing so as a knee-jerk reaction from someone who's bought into the scam. Sure, you didn't phrase it as an argument, but you can't make a statement like yours and then pretend that you were not making that argument. If your whole point is that people will respond in disagreement when you call them fools, well, I'm not sure why you think that's a clever observation.

His response is that he and others who bought DRM protected content did so knowingly and the obvious implication is that in their opinion, it was a good bargain. Your answer is, "See? I was right!" As I said before, bravo.

I guess no one can argue with you -- if they do, obviously it's because they're too embarrassed at having been taken advantage of. Only an irrational moron or someone who hates freedom could be duped into believing that you can rationally pay for something that has any technical limitations whatsoever. We know this is true because you told us that if you posted your opinion that people who disagreed with it would post in disagreement. Therefore they must have bought into a scam. Is that how your logic works?

There's nothing inherently wrong about technical limitations in a product. Every product has them. As long as the seller does not misrepresent their product and its limitations, a buyer can decide whether he is getting a fair deal. Some feel that the compromise presented is fair and provides a good value, and they'll purchase these. Some feel it's not, and they won't. This is what we call a free market.

Well allow me to retort

[Kristoffer Lunden]

I'm used to it...this is after all Slashdot, where everything iTunes, no matter how restrictive, is good and anyone who suggests otherwise is just deluded or stupid.

You see, cheap shots go both ways.

You think that I'm narrowminded because I don't think any DRM is good, while I in fact have pretty good reasons for this. I think that Apple and RIAA want to lull people into thinking that DRM is a good thing before they crank it up a notch. In the end of the tunnel is Trusted Computing, something which they both, together with others actively stand behind. I agree that Fairplay isn't *very* restrictive *today*, but it is restrictive and make no mistakes on who is the actual owner of your content no matter who pays, and make no mistakes on what your rights are or how locked you are to a platform. OTOH, you have bought into the concept and mindset and now you - like all humans would - seek to justify this by arguing that it's really good. That is just human psyche.

I, on the other hand think You are narrowminded - or maybe at least shortsighted for not even acknowledging any potential bad sides to buying into this. You have given up your Manhattan - your freedom - for a few shiny pearls, and maybe you don't deserve any more than that then. But you are selling your whole tribe, not only yourself.

Just think about it.