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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."
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.
My pics.
That doesn't seem fair. One CD could have infected multiple machines, but only the original owner gets "compensated" by Sony.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
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.
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
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.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
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?)
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?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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!!
Greetings,
.org
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:
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