The Sony Boycott Blog

An interesting open thread at Freedom to Tinker is developing two competing points of view: that Sony BMG got off lightly in their settlement agreement, and that the settlement is a fair and reasonably complete redress of customer grievances.
My $0.02 is that, with the exception of some of the MediaMax provisions, the settlement does […]

News on a sleepy post-Christmas day, courtesy the Washington Post’s Security Fix blog: Sony BMG has apparently agreed to settle the New York based class action lawsuit. Terms of the settlement include a permanent cessation of the use of XCP and MediaMax on Sony BMG CDs, a pledge not to collect personal information from customers […]

Yahoo! Finance: Texas Expands Lawsuit Against Sony BMG. This is the sound of another shoe dropping, from what at this point appears to be a herd of well shod lawyers. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has decided, along with suits filed in Oklahoma, the District of Columbia, and California (the latter by the EFF), that […]

PCWorld: Winners and Losers of 2005. On a fairly evenhanded list (both Apple and Google are listed as both winners and losers), Sony BMG manages the distinction of being cited as a loser. Twice.

LOSER: Sony BMG Entertainment
Adding copy protection to CDs is onerous enough, but Sony BMG Entertainment and its tech partner First 4 Internet […]

According to Betanews, the newest release of the Malicious Software Removal Tool from Microsoft, which is available through Windows Update, removes the XCP rootkit and the vulnerable ActiveX control from the XCP uninstaller. Microsoft still hasn’t stepped up to the plate to uninstall all of XCP, though; you still have to go to Sony BMG […]

The Register: Sony BMG shortlisted for “Internet villain” gong. Heh. I didn’t even know that there was an Internet Villain award, but the trade group ISPA UK now has my undying appreciation. Sony BMG was shortlisted for “compromising the security of its customers’ PCs with its copyright-protecting rootkit technology.”

Interesting post on the faculty blog of the University of Chicago Law School, by professor Doug Lichtman, that argues that the end of DRM would be disastrous for the music industry and music lovers. He suggests that without DRM, the industry will have no incentive to invest in music or will develop some other draconian […]

According to the St. Petersburg Times, the count of Sony BMG discs with the vulnerable SunnComm MediaMax DRM software is 5.7 million. But there’s no recall plan, and nowhere near the level of noise there should be to make customers aware of the problem. Good to see Sony is continuing to learn from its past […]

Talk about a non-statement: Thomas Hesse, of “nobody knows what a rootkit is” fame and President of Sony BMG’s Global Digital Business unit, says that the company is reconsidering how it employs DRM “because of the bad publicity” around its two badly flawed systems. But he says that the company is still committed to blocking […]

Talk about a non-statement: Thomas Hesse, of “nobody knows what a rootkit is” fame and President of Sony BMG’s Global Digital Business unit, says that the company is reconsidering how it employs DRM “because of the bad publicity” around its two badly flawed systems. But he says that the company is still committed to blocking […]