Is there a click-through license agreement for this software?

What if your 15 year old child tries to play one of these CDs on the computer? If these clickable licensing agreements are considered binding contracts, a minor is legally incapable of entering into a binding contract without explicit parental consent in the USA. The arguement that the parent let them use the computer and thereby implicitly consented will hold absolutely no water. That’s like saying the parents didn’t lock up all of the matches and therefore consented to a child playing with matches and burning down the neighborhood.

–TurboGeek

Which i’m sure they’d declare as an expense for tax purposes anyway.

I wouldn’t trust Sony not to put more junk into their cds or their patches. As far as I can tell, the very best thing is not to buy cartel products and if you play one the only answer maybe to junk the product (either by trashing it or saving it on a shelf and downloading it from p2p) and formatting your pc. Now that’s what I call making it difficult for your customers!

In all of this Sony has been most quite on the spyware/phone home aspect. They have been anything but forthcoming on the abilities of the software installed with these cds. No where in all this does Sony say in the EULA that this sort of software will be installed. However Sony has rewritten their corporate EULA to be seen on their home website. Not only rewritten it but it looks like a childs attempt at getting a report right before turning it in to the teacher. It’s been rewritten over and over. Insertions being put in here and there trying their darnest to either make it go away or to cover their butts with legalise.

Nothing in the responces of Sony give me any indication that Sony is sorry for anything other than they got caught. Every move Sony has taken, it has been made to take. Even there, no such animal as lets jump out and get it done.

All this does is demonstrate to me that Sony and the rest of the cartel are not to be trusted. They won’t do anything not in their own best interests. Rarely will their best interests and the customers come together.

These sort of actions do more for the idea that buying product is rapidly being an antagonistic experience for the customer. Who in their right minds wants something like this?

Isn’t this bit plainly against the law in the US?

Its the same here. This security exposure is a common issue with novice programmers and no company worth its salt should have left it happen. Yet, it was an outside company that found the exposure and not SunnComm itself. It should not have got by even the most primitive of testing methodologies, yet SunnComm missed it.

You can read Sony-BMG’s frustration with SunnComm by the way they had to get NGS Software to help SunnComm develop the fix and then help them test it. It must be utter humiliation for SunnComm when your customer doesn’t trust you to get it right yourself and forces you to work with outsiders.

The reason SunnComm are mute on this is because it is just too embarrassing for them.

It is significant that the announcement of the patch came from Sony-BMG and the EFF. SunnComm have remained mute.

Instead of alerting the non-Sony CD purchasers, SunnComm would prefer to say nothing in the hope no one will notice. That is not good enough. They were quick to issue PRs on the spoof piece on the Apple DRM and PRs on suing Halderman, but they are silent now when they should be out helping the CD purchaser fix the problem that SunnComm created.

http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/mediamaxfaq.php

Are there any more security issues with SunnComm’s MediaMax software?

We don’t know. We have identified one security issue, but there may be others. Even before this vulnerability came to light, security researcher Ed Felten noted “the MediaMax software will still erode security, for reasons stemming from the basic design of the software.” See Freedom to Tinker for more. We urge Sony BMG to undertake rigorous security testing on all of its software, and we will continue to look into this issue.

Does the patch resolve all the issues with CDs with SunnComm MediaMax software?

No. There are other severe problems with MediaMax discs, including: undisclosed communications with servers Sony controls whenever a consumer plays a MediaMax CD; undisclosed installation of over 18 MB of software regardless of whether the user agrees to the End User License Agreement; and failure to include an uninstaller with the CD. EFF will continue to raise these issues with Sony BMG.