Copy protection an experiment in progress — Here is an excellent run-down on the Sony debacle which includes a quote from the head of Sony/BMG indicating that he’s an arrogant A-hole. The entire Sony Corporation has developed this very un-Japanese arrogance.
It has to stem from upper management.
“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” the head of Sony BMG’s global digital business, Thomas Hesse, told National Public Radio.
But once it turned out that the rootkit gave virus writers an easy tool for hiding “Trojan horses” and other malicious software, Sony BMG had to back down. It put up an online tool for removing XCP – only to find that process itself opened new vulnerabilities in computers.
Click Here from complete list of all 52 discs that used the rootkit
I personally love this quote: “Lawyers don’t have any better understanding of technology than a cow does algebra.”
When you have half of congress paid off and in your pocket, you can have all the arroganace you want. I you don’t like it, tough. Try to go around us and we’ll sue. The is the equivilant of Sony giving everyone the finger.
Will Sony offer an exchange / recall program so that these disks don’t wind up on eBay to infect machines for years?
Did you look at the titles? I seriously doubt anyone who would buy those would have the foggiest about a root kit, removal or otherwise…
😉
I have yet to hear about anyone saying:
Sony’s just the one that got caught.
Or:
Does anyone really think this is only about DRM?
What makes anyone think that any of these entertainment corpocracies aren’t trying some sort of spyware? DRM is what they will call it when they are caught but in reality they are after more than that. I’m sure they aren’t all doing it yet but I’d bet my last dollar that they are all working on it or have deployed it and it, whatever it is, hasn’t been noticed.
Now that Sony has been caught they’ll all be working on something better. Or saying “Hey we got away with it!”.
To comment #2:
That’s called “fascism” you moron.
Milo, I agree with you. You’ve probably heard about the wide-open backdoor the uninstallers leave. You’ve probably heard about how Sony needs your email address to get the uninstaller. Put those together and what do you get? Sony has the ability to install whatever it wants on your computer. All it has to do is send you an email (which it has) and have you click a link, and without you even knowing, something gets installed.
I just couldn’t make sense of the convoluted uninstall process until I learned about the back-door it creates. Now it’s perfectly clear.
Actually I hadn’t heard about that one Ima but I knew they weren’t going to quit. I worked at a telecom for 7 years! This is a great argument for file sharing! Not that I do…
You read about so called Google bombing, but I just searched Google and Sony is at the top of the Google search list.
“Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far … I scrounged through my CD’s and found it, Sony BMG’s Get Right with the Man”, only shows up on the 2nd page of a Goog search, at least it did when I searched.
A MSN, Sony search also provides all Sony stuff on the first page up to and including the third page. It’s not until page 4 at MSN until you get “Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a …” It’s a big problem, so you would think that it would be front and center at the top of the search page.
All of which goes to show that a security issue isn’t a priority, at least as far as search engines seem to go. You really need to be searching for this problem to find it. A search for sony root turns up this Sony VAIO RA842G VGC-RA842G – $1,823.99.
People someplace are sticking Sony CDs into PCs, totally clueless about the rootkit they are installing. People don’t even know what’s up and Sony just wants to sell more stuff. They just might see sales increase since the public is careless.
Obviousman, why am I a moron. Just saying like it is, I’m not agreeing with it. Maybe I should give you the finger.
National Security Threat From Sony Rootkit.
Stars & Stripes, a military newspaper, prints an article on this issue.
http://stripes.com/article.asp?article=33184
The implications run deep.