Internet beats Sony
On Halloween, a rootkit was discovered to be installed as part of DRM software on Sony CDs. Today, Sony announced that they will stop using this software, and reassess their DRM measures.
How'd this happen? Well, the guy who found the rootkit posted this information on his blog. BoingBoing and Slashdot found this, and thousands of nerds, primed by endless discussion of intellectual property law, were made aware of Sony's bad behavior. Many of them blogged it themselves, and this explosion of traffic eventually made it to the major media. Subsequently, hackers were found to be using the rootkit to crack affected computers, and a lawsuit was mulled in California. Under pressure from the Department of Homeland Security, Sony has retreated.
This is a win for decentralized power over big business. I hope we get to keep an internet that makes more of this possible.
How'd this happen? Well, the guy who found the rootkit posted this information on his blog. BoingBoing and Slashdot found this, and thousands of nerds, primed by endless discussion of intellectual property law, were made aware of Sony's bad behavior. Many of them blogged it themselves, and this explosion of traffic eventually made it to the major media. Subsequently, hackers were found to be using the rootkit to crack affected computers, and a lawsuit was mulled in California. Under pressure from the Department of Homeland Security, Sony has retreated.
This is a win for decentralized power over big business. I hope we get to keep an internet that makes more of this possible.
posted by onlooker at 9:14 PM
2 Comments:
Sony needs to put out something that lets us use the CDs we have already that contain this software. I can't put my Santana album on my iPod nor will it play on my system without their hack-job software. I am not installing that grief on my system.
The information on the label of the CD is so small it can't be read by normal human beings. Nevermind that it was gift from someone who didn't know to look for the bogusly worded warning - even if they knew it was there they could not have read it without a magnifying glass. So, essentially, since I only listen to tunes on my computer or my 'pod, this CD makes a nice picture for the wall.
I expect there will be a lot of people in this fix when the Holidays roll around and folks buy CDs as gifts.
Maybe Sony thinks folks in this situation will go out and buy their CD players...Ha! Nothing with the name Sony comes into this house ever again. And I mean it.
Yeah, I think these DRM schemes are bound to backfire against the record industry as more and more of their customers find that what they expect to do with content isn't possible. I know I'm not going to buy anything that won't play on an iPod.
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