Tainting the CD format
p2p news view / p2pnet: Sony knew they were dead in the water when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admonished them on the CD rootkit scandal – at a Chamber of Commerce event on combating intellectual-property theft. According to Briand Krebs of the Washington Post the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker, made at the event “a remark clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels”:
“It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.
The Recording Industry Association of America’s CEO Mitch Bainwol was in attendance and you knew that these words had to run a shiver down his spine. He is spending quite a bit of time on the beltway these days pushing several new bills to give Hollywood control of how consumers use future electronic products. But, it is hard to call certain activities illegal when one of your members spreads what security pundits called malicious code to millions of home computers. It just undermines his argument, especially when a senior Bush official looks him straight in the eye and says he agrees with the pundits.
Bainwol has another big worry. The controversy from the Sony scandal has the potential to go beyond Sony by tainting the CD format itself in the eyes of consumers. This could kill the format, though it is not clear yet what effect, if any, this will have on record sales. The word-of-mouth building on the Net looks ominous right now. The industry is now looking to lay low and hope this passes.
That’s why Sony backed down yesterday and declared that they would remove this particular DRM from all of their products…temporarily. Sony and the industry as a whole are in damage control mode. So far they have not done a very good job as recent comments by senior Sony exec Thomas Hesse only inflamed animosity on the blogosphere. Sony is also unapologetic about their tactic, which in itself is playing very badly in the press.
One thing is for sure, the industry will not give up on installing DRM tools on their wares. In the end, as more artists continue to use file sharing as a promotional tool, DRM may just become a costly solution looking for a problem.
Rich Menta – MP3NewsWire
November 12th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
“DRM may just become a costly solution looking for a problem.”
I think thats the bottom line, you hit the nail right on the head. Good job.
November 12th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
The record companies ought to realize this type of behavior of theirs is one of the reasons for declining CD sales.
November 12th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
I am a collector of music, been doing it for 40 years. I have vinyl, 4-track, 8-track, casettes and CD’s. What is beginning to worry me is how I’ll be able to transfer my purchased CD’s to the next predominant format. If these CD’s are restricted, would I still be able to do this, let’s say, in 5 to 10 years ? What about the music that goes “out of print” ?
It appears that this could be the end of my music collection activity, and probably thousands of others who do the same. I’m grateful this didn’t happen during the best music years up to about the 90’s. At least I can savor what I have now. Besides, most of the pop music today is too violent and caters only to the teen crowd. I don’t believe this would be part of anyones “historical collection”.
November 13th, 2005 at 1:14 am
“It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.
wow, he sure did “admonish” sony good!
Give me a break will you please. Sony will probibly be sued in class action lawsuits that could span decades, no help for it now that the cat is out of the bag, but lets not over state things here. Any legal actions taken against Sony will rest squarely on the shoulders of consumers. The governent will most likely not get involved. If they do get involved, they will do what they always do , a token slap on the wrist then its back to raping the consumer.In case you didnt know, appaently our country is run in part by big music and big buisness. When they snap their fingers our governement bends over backwards for them, passes outlandish and quite frankly offensive laws such as the DMCA which errodes our rights and gives them full use of the LEA across the country. If this were some teenage hacker that just compromised secuirty of hundreds if not thousands of personal pcs , not some multi national conglomerate , that person would be in jail right now.
If homeland security wants to do something, how about taking the head honchos of Sony into custody, deporting every single one of them back to japan for high treason. This is BTW the same people that came sneaking up on Perl Harbor in the middle of the night like cowards in 1941 to attack us, to kill us. Why? They wanted control over trade in the pacific basin, all of it. The way they figgured it, they owned the pacific ocean, they owned the trade, the commerce, all of it. After we kicked their sorry asses, we made them rewrite their constatution so they were not allowed to have a standing army. 75 years later they now are able to have a (sorry) standing army and they really are controlling comerce here in the US. You can not point your finger at any one market in the USA and say they are not involved in it. They would control the stock market if they could, fortunitly for us, the stock market is world wide and thus too large for them to control. Sony is a japanese company. They talk out of both sides of their face. Selling prolduct that encourage copyright infringment out one side of their face while suing anyone that uses those technoligys.
If our governemnt wants to renew MY faith, Kcik sony the fuck out of my country, pull every single product that has in our stores and make it a crime to sell Sony products ever again.
For the record, I served in our armed forces, I love my country, and I think Sony should be forced out of our country for not just the rootkits but their entire buisness model.
Chad Hodge,
webmaster@discwatch.com
November 13th, 2005 at 3:13 am
One thing is for sure, the industry will not give up on installing DRM tools on their wares.
I think we might be able to persuade them to stop. Thanks to sony we are now in a position to stop drm in it’s tracks. All it takes is to turn their tools against them. Take FUD for example. If all the readers regular or casual who visit this site explain that all drm software is essentially the same and use only the sony rootkit as the example, what will that do to the reputation of drm as a whole?
“It’s just big brother, they want to know what you’re watching, how often, when, etc etc etc and they don’t care what it might do to your gear.” Push that msg to everyone you know who mentions they can’t copy certain cds to their portable music player of choice, or complains about their pc doing weird things. Don’t mention viruses first, mention drm, then viruses.
Bigbiz are not the only ones who can exploit FUD, we just need to realise that, and beat them at their own game.
November 13th, 2005 at 5:21 am
These discs that Sony are selling aren’t cds. That’s why they don’t hold the cd logo. Simply they are a combo of software and music with a specialized player included. Because they have the software and the player and don’t meet the playablity standards, and because the cd itself isn’t of the cd formats specfications in dimensions, it can’t hold the cd logo.
As far as I am concerned, Sony has ruined the cd music market for all cartel products, not just their own. Why? Because they are the only ones with their fingers in the cookie jar doesn’t mean they are the only ones trying to steal the cookies. According to First4Internet, Sony isn’t the only cartel member this rootkit was sold to. Only Sony got caught, I suspect the rest were planning on issuing theirs out as soon as it was seen how Sony fared with their little adventure. The only reason the rest aren’t on the same chopping block is because Sony’s little venture was discovered far sooner than it was expected to.
Not only was it discovered but world opinion took a far different view than they figured. The cartels thought they had it sewed up. Copyright laws on their side, the media is controlled, and public opinion shouldn’t matter as the media has yet to tell them what to think about it.
Funny thing is, it hasn’t made a big splash anywhere but on the internet. There it has made a whole different type splash and one they weren’t counting on to make a difference. It has made such a splash that the politicians are telling them be careful. Now that’s NEWS! Politicians don’t care that Joe Public on the net thinks about it. They do care what the rest of those major corporations think and compared to them, the cartels are small peanuts when those corporations combine their weight against an idea or practice. This business of security in corporate intranets from their little rootkit that they have yet to offer a removal tool for makes a big difference there. Should the policitians ignore the majority of those corporations concerns for security, then there will be a new batch in office next voting time and it is well to respect that point if you are to have a future in politics. Not evey Sony’s money and influance will budge them off of self-interest preservation.
The rest of the cartel is quite happy to shut up and holler we don’t use that and let Sony take the heat. Had it went as planned, there would have been a rootkit for every computer that played cartel music.
I don’t like what I see now happening in our legal system by politicians willing to take the money and run. They are laying the enforcement and the determining if anything is unconstitutional in the courts laps. What they are also ignoring is that the countries directions are changing. We are no longer a viable force in manufacturing as a nation. Simply we are too expensive to compete with other nations that don’t have to meet all the requirements for OSHA, workmans compensation, and the ways that the Federal Register says big business will run its business. All those add expenses to the making of a product which a corporation sees no return on other than indirectly. What it does in the accountants pages is weigh the costs heavily against domestic production. So they make it out of the country, do a few things here in country and claim it is domestic to dodge the import tariffs.
What it has left behind is workers that are losing ground on the economy. Law makers that instead of taking care of the economy and jobs are catering to the cartels. Unlike the other major corporations, the cartels are always vocal, aways in the news, and aways in their faces. Now that another feather has called attention to what the cartels think is ok, the politicians are between a rock and a hard place.
So are the cartels. I didn’t want their product before this. I am supposed to want it more now? They want to claim that newer is worth more money than older? Since newer contains these rootkits (or did) I KNOW I don’t want the new stuff even if the rest of the world thinks it is the hottest thing since sliced bread. Nothing Sony has done has lead me to believe anything but the worst of them. What they haven’t said and haven’t done speaks louder than all the squirmming and hem hawing they are doing. In the process they have ruined all possibility of ever becoming something in the form of a business you can believe that the product is worth the money.
November 14th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Switch to Linux. This is one way you can have your computer stay working for you instead of the cartels. Yes Linux takes time to learn. Yes, Linux does things differently than Winblows, and yes, using Linux can be very frustrating until you learn the ins and outs. However, the reward for having a computer that is not infected with DRM, spyware, adware, viruses, trojans, worms, and other malware make it worth it as far as I am concerned. With Linux, you can make a non infected copy of what you bought and use it on other computers without installing malware that cripples computers.
Better yet, augment your collection with the works of independent music. As you stated, none of pop music is really listening to. I just wonder why people are still stupid enough to spend hard earned cash on crap that may cripple their equipment. I guess in that way. people are just like lemmings, they will run off of a cliff simply because others are doing it. As far as I’m concerned, people should not allow vulgarity-spewing sissies tell them what they should or should not listen to, watch, or wear.
November 14th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
As far as I am concerned, your preaching to the choir here. I already run linux, having given up on winblows. The Win OS is just far to open by default. Can you secure Win? Surely but it takes a lot of effort to do so. Even then I believe the rootkit showed holes in that lower accessability that is used to secure winblows.
Is linux harder to run that windows? No. Is it harder to learn than windows? No. What the problem is for most is it is different. Had I spend the years learning Linux I spend learning Winblows there would be no issues now with linux.
The gamers have a problem with it because it is harder to get games to run, if they can be run in linux. More users to linux would cure that one too. Simply as folks get tired of this malware issue, slowly some like me will change. Critical mass has yet to be reached with linux. Those that go to almost always give raving reviews to spyware and malware freedom. There is a reason for that. I too now give raving reviews for the same reasons.
November 15th, 2005 at 7:38 am
After buying watermarked CDs with songs in Spanish (Shakira), to aid my learning of the language, and having said CDs skip tracks I returned them to the store.
They told me it was my fault. Even though they admitted other people have had the same problems, it was my fault somehow. And no, they will not warn customers about these faulty CDs.
I went from buying 2 CDs a week, to a CD every 3 months.
It’s easier to download songs illegally than it is to buy a CD and guess whether it is going to work or not. And there is no way in hell I’m buying a DRM audio file. I have legal DRM pdf files I have purchased. Acrobat upgraded their software last year. It took months before they upgraded the DRM files. If I had upgraded Acrobat first, my legally purchased files would have been unusable.
Fast forward 5 years. Any guarantee my legally purchased files will be usable.
NO.
To hell with that.
Copy protection/DRM punishes legitimate customers.