Posted on 11/17/2005 6:09:52 AM PST by ShadowAce
work now, read later
I have a question...I use Symantec's Internet Security Spyware Edition. Is that as sufficient as Microsoft's removal tool?
How is this helping the artists?? And what is the law about me buying a CD and burning a copy for my Husband to use at work? He's a contractor and wouldn't want to take anything but a burned copy to a jobsite.
The Sony debacle is worse than the one by Intuit in their TurboTax a couple of years ago. Intuit implanted a tiny file on the boot sector of the hard drive, and the only way to remove it was to completely reformat the drive. They lost me as a customer after over 10 years of continuous business, simply because of their attitude toward honest, paying consumers.
I honestly don't know. I use AVG as my anti-virus for those times I am forced to be on a Windows machine.
Same here. I use TaxCut now.
I believe that "fair use" laws allow that, as long as it is for personal use only (like you described).
Sony has ever right to protect its products.
"I understand that there are probably a few people here who refuse to believe anything PJ says, but please--refute her on the facts rather than using any ad hominem attacks."
I believe that in this article she's the one doing the attacking with little by the way of facts.
First 4 Internet is responsible for the software they write.
It's doubtful that First 4 Internet revealed much of their copy protection software to anyone without NDAs in place. The DMCA also makes it legally difficult to go public about flaws in copy protection schemes.
At worst Microsoft or Symantec didn't rigorously test someone else's product. It's not Symantec's fault that First 4 Internet created a product with incredibly huge security holes, unless they were being paid as consultants to investigate such issues for First 4 Internet.
It's First 4 Internet that did a horrible job on their product, and it's they that should pay the price.
It appears that they are trying to spread the blame to avoid full accountability.
It appears that PJ is looking to try spread the blame onto others as well without any facts justifying it.
Understood. However, during that initial software review by MS, shouldn't MS have denied access to the low-level APIs for this purpose? With that one action, MS could have headed this off before it ever became an issue. With a refusal by First 4 Internet to play along, MS could have gone ahead and warned the public about it, or at least incorporated this rootkit into their Windows Defender software.
It's First 4 Internet that did a horrible job on their product, and it's they that should pay the price.
Agreed. 100%.
It appears that they are trying to spread the blame to avoid full accountability.
There may be blame here to go around. I'm not saying that MS is culpable in this farce, but they could have (if they knew about it) incorporated the detection for this into their own product.
You are absolutely correct. So what? Sony does NOT have every right to protect its products in every possible way. The point is that the method they used crossed the line between what is acceptable and what many think is unacceptable.
Sony has ever right to protect its products.
What MS is doing is CYA. And to be honest, nobody (users and MS) expected a computer virus to come from the CD-Rom through a Music CD. A-drive yes, but not a CD-Rom drive.
This attitude has been pervasive since the virtual dawn of personal computing. Every time it causes lost customers. Sometimes a company literally goes under and then blame their customers for not embracing the company in light of its hostile efforts.
The efforts attacking the consumer are statistic noise when it comes to the problem of piracy. These efforts will not stop the well organized illegal duplication efforts in China, for example.
How would Microsoft like it if a hardware manufacturer decided to break the XP activation requirement? That's the kind of position they've taken regarding SONY's DRM-enabled music discs.
More and more mammoth media interests have been buying off Congress to shape intellectual property law to hinder competition and narrow consumer rights. The notion that works will pass into the public domain has become all but meaningless in our life times all the while some content creation companies, such as Disney, reaped the benefit of past works which have moved into public domain.
We need to demand reform. We need a patent office with competent and qualified reviewers, skilled in the technical arts who won't be handing out patents like pez candies. We need to take back "public domain" as the founder's intentioned.
Sony has absolutely no right to implant a file on my system that causes a security compromise. They should be held legally liable for any such activity, including (but not limited to) the cost in hourly wages and/or cost of having a professional IT person remove it from my computer.
This is a classic lawsuit just waiting to happen.
How can you take Sony's action and turn it into a "blame Microsoft" situation? Sony is the culprit here, Microsoft is merely taking action to protect their own customers through the removal procedure.
The fact that the code was "cloaked" makes it damn certain that they knew that what they were doing was wrong; I believe the legal term is "evidence of concioussness of guilt", or something like that.
What Sony did is a felony in many countries, including the US.
This is going to be *very* interesting as it plays out, and I predict that it is NOT going to go away quietly.
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