There's been a lot of news during the last month about Sony BMG, but there aren't really any good short summaries around. This is partly because it's such a big story it's difficult to know where to begin, and partly because any summaries that have been written tend to be obsolete quickly...
Over 300 Sony BMG music CD titles (totalling well over 20 million CDs) contain what can only be described as malware. This affects people who play those CDs on Windows machines (rarely, Macs). Intended to prevent piracy, it does much more than that - and also fails altogether to make any difference to piracy.
For instance, it reports your listening habits to Sony - every time you listen to one of those CDs on your PC, if you're connected to the Internet, Sony knows about it. This is of course illegal, and earns the label "spyware".
Naturally, the software takes up space on your disk and in memory; and it interferes with the CD drive (so as to limit CD-burning). It's also not very well written, and the uninstaller is even worse, with major security holes. Even without those, though, any software can have a conflict...
There are actually (at least) two different kinds. One of them, called XCP, burrows deep into Windows and cloaks itself; this technique is known as a "rootkit", and is more often associated with malicious hackers... It's also rather carelessly implemented, so that it cloaks rather indiscriminately and other malware can and does also hide under its cloak. This is the part of the story that broke first, so "rootkit" tends to be used for the whole fracas.
This same one also infringes copyright. The hypocrisy of using pirated software to prevent piracy is astounding, and with over two million illegal copies sold certainly doesn't make for the high road in the copyright debate.
The other one (MediaMax) has the interesting feature that it installs even if you click on "No" on the agreement.
There are a bunch of lawsuits against Sony over these - two class actions in
California, one in NY, one in Oklahoma; a suit in the District of Columbia
(as in, Washington, DC); the Texas AG is suing; and a criminal suit in Italy.
I'm not aware of anything in Australia at this stage. Hopefully someone will bring something at some stage.
What to do: Boycott Sony Christmas 2005. They've been very naughty this year.
In the long term, this is part of a piece. The recording and motion picture companies have been heading in this general direction for years, sometimes through technology (as here), other times through legislation, litigation, even just influencing public thought. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but it requires continuing opposition.
To read: the story's been all over both the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Boing Boing, for instance, has a roundup in four parts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV,
Part V. Of my own previous entries, probably the most useful is my feature comparison table.
(other previous entries: Boycott Sony this Christmas (or see on right), on the copyright infringement, extinguishing fair use, mistakes vs intentions, the recall, I heart rootkit, who do they serve and who can we trust?, bloggers vs Sony, EULA, my Sony link collection and DRM of adhesion)
3.12.2005: added link to Part IV of the Boing Boing roundup
17.12.2005: added link to Part V of the Boing Boing roundup
⇦ Boycott Sony this Christmas | ⇨ Link: The Complete Story of the Vienna Conclusions |
