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Sony Fixes Problems With New DVDs
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on reports that DVDs for some Sony titles were causing problems, Video Business is reporting that Sony has fixed the copy-protection problem on recent DVD releases, and will provide replacement discs to customers. The problem was with the ARccOS DRM system. The company issued the following statement: 'Recently, an update that was installed on approximately 20 titles was found to cause an incompatibility issue with a very small number of DVD players (Sony has received complaints on less than one thousandth of one percent of affected discs shipped)... Since then, the ARccOS system has once again been updated, and there are no longer any playability problems.' Customers can call 800-860-2878 to inquire about replacement discs."
0.001%? Did they even ship enough disks in the first place to get such a small number of complaints as one in 100,000?
:p.
*crosses fingers and hopes my maths is right*
It's called the AVI file format...
Instead of calling the 800 number, consumers can visit their local torrent site and download the movie for free long before the replacement disc reaches their door.
Have a great day Sony.
1 percent is 1/100. One thousandth of that is 1/1000 * 1/100 = 1/100000
Or one out of a hundred thousand. Your argument still stands, though.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Anyone surprised this happened to Sony?
there are no longer any playability problems
So, the update consisted of removing the DRM? Not even Sony can deny that the soul point of DRM is to create playability problems...
Don't be crazy anymore!
So as soon as this story started to gain momentum, they issued a fix and a statement offering a replacement disk. Well, full marks to Sony for learning from recent public relations disasters, but I doubt I'd be so impressed if I was one of the people who had experienced this problem, and I had been complaining left right and centre to no avail for several weeks. Seems as though Sony only back-pedalled on this issue once they feared another DRM PR-storm was the brewing up.
What's to stop me whipping out DVD Decrypter and just stripping this copy protection? If need be, I could then fire up Nero Recode and do my own menus too. How does any copy protection scheme work on a format that doesn't expect one or have any way for a player to enforce it? Seriously I wonder if Sony HQ shouldn't muzzle Sony BMG and tell them to forget about retro DRM schemes because it seems to be fuckups all the way. The whole company is getting a bad reputation because of one small part - a part which in truth should be subservient to the rest, and not the other way around as it seems to be at the moment.
When your stuff works too well, you have to "fix" it. When it doesn't work well enough, you have to fix it. And in the theoretical scenario where you get it to work just right, you'll be hated, and likely out of a job.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
STOP buying SONY media all together. First they plant rootkits on the PC's of their loyal customers and now this headache. I vote with my wallet plain and simple. Any company that is going to be a pull these sorts of antics simply won't be getting any $$ love from me. People forgive and forget far too quickly and thus the big monster doesn't learn it's lesson.
One lesson here: Vote with your Wallet and don't give your money to prick companies.
But this 'fix' came a lot quicker than their debacle with the broken CDs.
On the other hand, this fix would not have been necessary, had they not used DRM in the first place.
And it doesn't leave the fact, that I'm still not buying anything that Sony makes.
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Look at the way their DRM currently works:
Which really, really makes me wonder exactly what players it was intended to kill...
I think I've seen these before, incidentally. But it seems that the whole point is to fuck up their disks exactly enough that they won't play on certain players (God knows which ones, if mplayer can play it), but not enough that they won't play on real players. Thus, it's based not at all on actual standards (like CSS), and entirely on existing DVD players.
They could be calling it an "update" meaning an actual removal, as a marketspeak word. Or it could really be an update, basically figuring out exactly how the cheap DVD players play discs, and making these DVDs playable in that, but still a PITA for something like dd.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sony pays people to find a way to have a perfectly good product not work. And they're not the only ones, either. Almost all the major movie and music industries are paying people to design a way to stop their products from working. Their goal is to redefine what "works" means by taking away all the innovation required to create such glorious things as DVDs or CDs and limiting everyone to a subset of the original features, and continuously do so until we forget that the original set existed.
Vote with your wallet, and your geek-conscience. Don't put people in power that support bullshit like the DMCA. See if you can find a candidate who thinks selling products that don't work should be illegal. Write letters to companies telling them WHY you're not buying products designed to not work. Fight the man!
Now if only we could all be so bold when it comes to Microsoft?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
We've only got a report about this not the actual Sony statement to go on, but it seems to me that there's a total lack of apology here, just a blatantly absurd claim about how few complaints there were. Come on Sony, at least have the guts to say you are sorry... if if it's only 'we're sorry we got caught'.
Sony's PR department really don't seem to understand that they have a monumental image problem. A bit of humility in their press releases could have won back some respect for free, but instead they sent out something that reeks of arrogance.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
After the PS2 class action, the rootkit DRM fiasco, and now this DVD DRM fiasco, how many more times will it take for the public to wake up and realize they have ALL of the power in this situation?
Check out http://defectivebydesign.org/ for details on how DRM hurts consumers.
If you don't buy ANY of their stuff, including movies, you can't get hurt. The last Sony product I purchased was a movie ticket to a showing of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
As for Microsoft avoidance, that's what GNU/Linux systems are for.
" Sony Fixes Problems With New DVDs"
.. Thus the global announcement.
;-), but our lawyers disagreed and we thought the brackets were a good compromise.
Customers ordered to only watch movies in cinemas.
"Recently, an update that was installed on approximately 20 titles was found to cause an incompatibility issue with a very small number of DVD players"
"(Sony has received complaints on less than one thousandth of one percent of affected discs shipped)..."
We've put this sentence to you in brackets as subtle acknowledgment that this a lie. Our public relations disaster recovery team wanted to use a
"Since then, the ARccOS system has once again been updated, and there are no longer any playability problems.'
'Or else!' sneered the SONY spokesliar, shaking his fist and the audience,
" Customers can call 800-860-2878 to inquire about replacement discs."
Customers can also call the same number for replacement rootkits.
War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. SONY are a respectable and much-loved corporate citizen.
Could SONY be any more unpopular? Why don't they branch out into genocide and sell ballistic missiles to North Korea?
I can honestly say it wouldn't hurt their stock price.
They should dig up Morita-san and prop him up at the boardroom table. He couldn't do a worse job that Howard "Eat your damn Rootkit and love it" Stringer
DRM will always cause problems with some older players that aren't designed to handle it. The industry has decided that they should warn their customers with a clear label that the DVD may not play on DVD branded equipment. The label looks something like this
plus DVD Decrypter and DVDShrink will rip all the ones I've seen. PGCEdit automates the use of these and strips out the dodgy Arccoss stuff...Takes me about 30 mins to rip a DVD and burn a new one.
Sony has the math right. Only one out of 100,000 discs sold had a complaint, you just don't understand their logic behind it.
They sold 200,000 discs. Complaint #1 was from Wal-Mart, and #2 was from Best Buy.
You didn't really think they include what consumers think in any of their decisions, do you?
This sentence no verb.
Think about it. You go out to the store and buy a DVD and have this problem. Say that you have the persistence to play with the problem and somehow figure out that it is the formatting of the disk that causes the problem.
How are you going to "contact Sony"? This company has a billion contact points and none of them are labeled "call here when your DVD disk has a problem". The likely course is that you return it to Circuit City or Best Buy and the pimply kid behind the counter certainly isn't going to call Sony and report it.
Basically there is almost no chance that Sony will hear a thing because they are structured so they don't have to listen to customers.