Posted on 11/03/2005 8:44:21 AM PST by holymoly
Sony BMG is currently using a rootkit-based DRM system on some CD records sold in USA. As far as we know, this system has been in use since March 2005.
Or we can just throw up our hands and forget any pretense that we have a rule of law that applies to everybody.
It's good work if you can get it.
Write software that breaks the law by rooting XP boxen, then sell the end user the clean up tool.
It's sick. Sick, twisted and not a legal thing to do.
Yes, but we need to keep this issu front and center. Sony/BMG are using music CDs to infect computers. I'll be going out of my way to make sure that noone in my family or immediate friends will purchase any Sony/BMG products this upcoming Christmas Holiday.
Seen this one?
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/34
LOL! It's amazing the things people will do to cheat their way through.
i never bought a cd for 10+ years... now probably never...
They already do. They have for decades. It's called radio.
These same companies annually spend millions of dollars promoting their product on the radio for free public consumption. Recording music from the radio is legal. Calling a station to request a song, then recording the song when it's played, is legal.
The only difference between this process and P2P sharing is the technology, not the activity itself. Why is one method actively supported by the recording industry and legally upheld by the courts, yet the other is criminal?
True, but that doesn't help the folks at Blizzard - what are they going to do, ban everyone who's bought a Sony CD?
Anyway, just thought it was fun to see what sorts of things this little proggy was turning into a vector for. Aside from some sloppiness in the implementation, it's kind of a clever idea, in a perversely evil sort of way ;)
Now what happens if some other music publisher also wants to use a rootkit, and the two rootkits are incompatible? This is wild west on your hard drive. Unacceptable.
Regarding the WoW folks using it to hide things, I would imagine or hope that a patch could come out to test for it. I'm not into the gaming scene so I'm not sure how it would be enforced. Folks who cheat on such things are pretty low IMO. They probably cheat in solitaire too.
They probably cheat in solitaire too.
Hey, I only did that once and you can't prove anything anyway, pal ;)
It's sick. Sick, twisted and not a legal thing to do.
That does it. I have now lost any shred of respect I may have once had for the entertainment industry's copyright system. May the hackers bust it whenever they can and set music and film free from the Hollywood middlemen.
Oh, and there's a delicious bonus: this would strip the Democratic Party of its biggest source of funds.
There's another difference: the RIAA companies use radio stations' oligopoly over the airwaves to control what music is advertised in that fashion.
Ironically, the real threat to the RIAA comes not from people who "share" RIAA music, but people who share NON-RIAA music. If more artists start realizing they can have almost as good a shot at popularity via the Internet as via radio, but keep most of the profits from their records instead of giving them to the record companies, the RIAA companies will have a much harder time finding new slaves to work for them.
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