Slashdot Mirror
Sony BMG Settles Over CD DRM
aurispector writes "Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay $1.5 million and kick in thousands more in customer refunds to settle lawsuits brought by California and Texas over music CDs that installed a hidden anti-piracy program on consumers' computers. The settlements, announced Tuesday, cover lawsuits over CDs loaded with one of two types of copy-protection software — known as MediaMax or XCP.
Although it's great to see this as a victory for consumers, I can't help but wonder about the next wave of DRM schemes."
After having dealt with some of these people, I'd say the next wave is coming from a little company called SparkArt. They also get into 'Viral Marketing'. SA deals with Sony as well, so this little company would be one to keep an eye on in the future......
"Customers have 180 days to file claims, which must include a description of how their computer was harmed and documentation of repair expenses."
Granted, $175 is still a decent amount of money. So if you're computer was reasonably fscked, it would probably be a good idea to go through the paperwork. Unfortunately, Sony is probably betting that most people will probably decide it's not worth the hassle. Then, there's the fact that about half of the paperwork customers file will end up going to some overworked, incompetent paper-pusher office slave who will either take way too long to approve the request, or reject it for some bullsh*t reason,...
I'm wondering how vigorously the claims are checked. If it's mostly just a matter of filling in the applicable paperwork and waiting for it, I can see people just deciding to get free money and filing a claim, regardless of actual damage. Heck, it might be fun to figure out how/where to get the form, what needs to appear on it and get as many people as possible to send one in. Sort of 'slashdot' the system.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
This story report is horrible! First it's the Sony rootkit. Name it as such. Not some "DRM" bullshit. Second: "victory for consumers" ? This is wrong on so many levels, I don't believe it. We are customers, not consumers. And no, it's not a victory, not at all. Sony did commit thousands of computer crimes for purely financial interests and got a slap on the wrist. Kevin Mitnick would be in Jail for 3000 years for this. And if my information is correct, the settlement states explicitly, that Sony does not recognize any guilt. Sorry for this rant. But how can such a misleading article be on the front page?
think real hard about this one, .. given the choice consumers will choose non-drm over drm. It's really a hard sell to consumer. I'm for the unlimited download 5$/mo.club and the artist get paid directely from that, cut out the middleman, the artist/inventor get paid more money and that can be based on a useage of IP percentage.
As an aside... they are offering $175 to each person who complains to them about the rootkit... or fills out their form...
Ok, that is reasonable. But that they can get out of this without any criminal liability is just not ritght. In what way are they different from a common hacker, except that they commited the crime far more often, for commercial gain and in a conspiracy?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I would pretty much bet that they'll charge this whole thing against the cd sales of the artists that had this crap on their cds, effectively costing sony nothing. Remember that this is a company that still makes artists pay for "breakage" on iTunes sales.
Do you have ESP?
Sheepish Acceptance on whose part? Not mine. All it did for me was convince me that when my contract with Cingular was up I wouldn't be going back to Verizon Wireless. I am one of those people with a regretable tendancy to bookmark the FCC complaint form and use it when I can't get proper service.
You forget that the whole thing happened months ago. The exchange would go more like this:
Muckety Muck: Last quarter your unit had profits of $1.5mil. But this quarter you have a loss of $.5mil. Care to explain?
Weasely Sony Music Exec: My predecessor was trying to prevent piracy, but chose a flawed product to do it. It could have cost us tens of millions, but I managed to get it down to $2m. Also, if you give us another 10 million dollars, we have this surefire thing that is guaranteed to work!
Muckety Muck: You sound full of confidence, so you must be right. Here's another 2 million dollars, and a bonus for saving the company money.
These kind of decisions are always made by people who intend to have been promoted into another division by the time the lawsuits roll around.
No, it is Digital Rights Management. Its just not YOUR "rights" they're managing...