Sony hit by lawsuits over root kit

The Register ^ | 10 November 2005 | John Oates

[ShadowAce]

[Terpfen]

Sony BMG will be regretting this one for years, and the rest of the music industry should be taking notice. (Probably not, but they should.)

Here's hoping this insanity hasn't spread to Sony Computer Entertainment. The PS3 is too important to screw up.

[ken in texas]

FYI: Also posted here.

[BikerNYC]

Rootkit is Sony's Vioxx.

[oceanview]

the MPAA and RIAA will just write some more campaign checks and get more laws to actually make this practice LEGAL. just watch.

[Terpfen]

And I bet Orrin Hatch will introduce the bill.

[oceanview]

indeed. the Digital Millenium We Own Your Computer Act.

[ShadowAce]

Nah--that's about the first trojan--this article is about the lawsuits starting to pop up.

[oceanview]

The music industry essentially wants to make it illegal to place a CD or DVD you pay for, into a computer. and these trojans are the "penalty" you pay for violating that. that's going to be the basis for the new laws they seek.

[miliantnutcase]

Yeah, they're punishing the people who are actually buying their music..lol

[steve-b]

If you file for bankrupcy you must delete all relevant files.

Proof positive that Sony is trying to figure out some way to charge you over and over again for the privilege of continuing to own a copy of the CD. What other possible rationale could there be for such a clause?

[ken in texas]

my goof... was about to post a similar article from ENT News and got crossed up.

[Prime Choice]

I loathe the turbo-litigious nature of our society, but I have to say that Sony really had this one coming.

They really need to be put over a barrel for this crap.

[Windsong]

The PS3 is too important to screw up.

I was pretty psyched up for the PS3, till I read Blue-Ray's security specs. I dont like the idea of the PS3 dialing up some unknown Sony server to authenticate (similar to DirectTV) movies/games. My money is on Xbox360.

[steve-b]

the MPAA and RIAA will just write some more campaign checks and get more laws to actually make this practice LEGAL. just watch.

If the GOP had any brains or balls, they'd be rolling back existing laws, since that is 1)the right thing to do in any case and 2)a bit of well-deserved payback to Hollyweird interests. It's simply incompetent to ignore such a confluence of good policy and good politics.

[HEY4QDEMS]

I downloaded a rootkit detector from sysinternals and ran on a bunch of our in house computers.

Al in all I found and removed about thirty or so all together.

As far as I can tell, they didn't cause any damage.

[MineralMan]

Hmm. Sitting on my desk, right above my monitor, is a music CD player. I cannot imagine why I'd put any music CD in my PC's drive.

[zeugma]

Excellent news.

I'm already actively making sure that those people who occasionally come to me for tech advise have been notified of the dangers of purchasing Sony/BMG disks for Christmas presents. Sony/BMG need to PAY for this through the nose. They need to take a massive PR hit, and I want people to get a bad taste in their mouth when they even think of buying a BMG disk.

[ShadowAce]

I cannot imagine why I'd put any music CD in my PC's drive.

Many people like to create mp3/ogg files for use on their personal music player.