http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/more-on-sony-dangerous-decloaking.html#113125271962005222
I’m exceptionally worried about Sony BMG’s dangerous tactics – but at the same time I’m exceptionally relieved to know that I have someone as knowledgeable as Mark and the SysInternals team to point out these things! Major kudos for your tireless investigative work, you should get a reward for discovering all of this. 😀
No-one is above the law, and it’s about time the recording industry realises this and realises that they’re also culpable for their actions, be they misinformed or not. I hope they get brought down at least a few notches by the repercussions from this fiasco. It’s interesting to read Courtney Love’s article on the music industry from almost six years ago – nothing much has changed at all in the music industry’s attitudes towards piracy, methods of selling their goods, digital rights… All that’s changed is that artists are getting smarter and cutting the labels out.
Time for SonyBMG to wake up from their 1980s-style make-money-at-all-costs attitude, I think.
My thoughts on F41’s XCP_support comments… These comments are coming from the same company whose programmer (a Ceri Coburn) once requested help in modifying a component supplied as part of a software Developer’s Kit to make it load new drivers into Windows’ CDAudio interface to make this rootkit work as it does.
A programmer who’s asking for help on an open source programmers’ mailing list to code a VERY tricky piece of low-level system driver (one which has very little margin for error)… And SonyBMG is willing to mass-market this potentially lethal bit of code? We’ve all seen the damage it can do to some installations of Windows. This isn’t protecting digital rights, this is corporate arrogance on the highest level.
I’ve copied CDs before, but I’ve always BOUGHT a CD or a DVD if I’ve felt that the artist deserves recompense (as with many other people, there’s music that I’ll listen to maybe a couple of times but never have any intent of buying, be there a download available or not) – but these kind of actions have given me the impression that it’s nothing less than an all-out war on anyone and everyone. This is beginning to sound to me like one of the American Government’s ‘pre-emptive strikes’ (and look at the damage they’ve done) – there should be laws against over-reaching EULAs and increased onus on corporate responsibility.
I hope that these events will kickstart these changes, set the ball rolling and give the common consumer the ability to make the US Government and Congress review all the last-minute, subtle changes to laws passed through the years with an aim to curbing the far-extending reach that the RIAA, music industry and certain individuals seem to have over US Law (Orin Hatch seems to be a name which springs to mind immediately).
This almost makes me want to copy my CDs and share them with friends on a matter of principle, hell, if Sony can do what they like to my PC, I can do what I like to music that I’ve purchased… But oh no, wait, the music industry managed to get the idea of music as “works-for-rent” codified into the US constitution (and therefore it’s now pretty much part of the DMCA, which seems like it can be applied worldwide – how did that happen?), so really, I don’t actually own the music at all, I’m just renting it.
Hmm.
On the flipside to all of this, it’s both nice to see the little man fight back and get somewhere for a change – and great to see that indie media, bloggers and individuals within a particular sphere of interest can effect massive public media interest (and rightly so) when the time requires it – this has also lent further well-deserved credibility to already-respectable figures, and I again applaud Mark for his efforts. Don’t stop now, you caught them with their pants down 😀
# posted by Christopher : 10:51 PM, November 05, 2005
netweb.blog... 