Kerblam! by Christopher

Saturday, November 5
Sony & its nefarious actions in the name of copyright protection: a bridge too far

Read:

SysInternals article on the Sony rootkit DRM (original, VERY informative and thought-provoking) and a companion F-Secure Sony rootkit DRM article, published around the same time (the discoveries were made independantly by both organisations, but the F-Secure guys were in discussion with Sony BMG and other people at the time when the SysInternals site made the news public).

I feel a little ashamed, because the company behind this nasty business in the first place - first4internet - is based here in the UK, owned by an ex-Sony director - it's all keeping it in the family at the end of the day. (And, even worse than that, the code that they've written and the manner in which it literally infiltrates and modifies a system without express consent) is tantamount to a breach of UK law, at least that's how I feel (along with many other people!)

This is very bad for us as consumers, and evidently Sony is ABSOLUTELY out of step with public opinion in this case. Have a look at the reviews on Amazon for a poor band called The Van Zants, whose CD called "Get Right With The Man" was used as a recent rootkit-DRMed guinea pig disc by Sony to see how the technology takes off.

I feel very strongly on this issue, as do many others (Peter Forret being just one example, and I advise you read his post on the very same thing, as it's a very interesting read). It's a solid case of a conglomerate overstepping the line between legality and taking the law into its own hands under the pretence of preserving Intellectual Property rights, harming their very core consumer base and - in the end, and this is the ironic bit - promoting file-sharing as the sole means to obtain a 100% clean copy of the tracks.

A shame for Sony, really. But I have no sympathy for a company who would slyly install something which would modify my Operating System at the very lowest, core level - and then proceed to almost irreperably damage it, especially if I then tried to remove said software - which I hadn't agreed to allow to be installed in the first place, either! This has been proven illegal by precedent, back a while ago a guy brought a Class Action suit in America against a company which installed malware onto his computer in an underhand way, and he won the case against them - so the case against Sony is not without merit, not in the least.

More info, and a mini campaign site, coming from me soon, as this is something I think many more people should know about - and it'll probably be at sony.totallysucks.co.uk (the domain's just sitting there registered in my name, itching to be put to good use for something like this right now). Read and be aware! That's the only way the common user can stop companies from infiltrating computers in this way and opening up all sorts of cans of nasty worms in terms of security vulnerabilities, future conflicts, major problems and legal issues.

Also read: suesony.com.

Dragged out of Christopher's memory and pasted
into his blog at 11/05/2005 06:17:00 AM. Roughly.
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