Sony’s latest plans
p2p news / p2pnet: Nothing loathe by the exposure of his company’s appalling attempt to secretly plant DRM spyware on customer computers through an application hidden on music CDs, Sony boss Howard Stringer says Sony plans integrate video and music content “more deeply into its technology”.
“He defended fiercely Sony`s ownership of both content and the technology used to capture, store and distribute it,” says the Financial Times, quoting him as saying:
“No other content company has such a complete understanding of technology and no other technology company has Sony`s insight into content. Content and technology are strange bedfellows but we are joined together.”
Right.
“Sometimes we misunderstand each other, but isn’t that the nature of a marriage?”
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Stringer, “Sony`s first non-Japanese leader,” said the company will concentrate on high definition video and audio technology; digital cinema; video gaming and “e-entertainment,” says the FT.
Stringer defined e-entertainment as products reflecting consumers` desire for more choice and convenience in how they access entertainment and, “Content is no longer pushed at consumers, it is pulled by them,” he said, adds the story.
But back to Sony’s grotesque DRM spyware blunder, Michael Geist writes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
With Sony slated to appear in a New York courtroom on Friday to seek approval for its class action settlement for the rootkit fiasco, its Canadian arm is now facing several Canadian class action suits.
The Merchant Law Firm, based in Calgary, launched class action suits in both the Ontario and BC courts yesterday (Ontario brief, BC brief). This follows a less-publicized class action launched in Quebec against Sony last November. All of these cases arise from the rootkit issue.
The briefs make for interesting reading as the Canadian cases raise a long list of legal issues including the violation of Canadian privacy law, breach of contract, violation of the Competition Act, and a host of tort claims.
The cases should generate significant additional attention in Canada on the risks associated with technological protection measures and the need for statutory protections against their misuse.
This week I raised the prospect that the US Sony settlement could provide the starting point for a model law protecting against TPM misuse in articles that appeared in the Toronto Star, BBC, and Ottawa Citizen. At a minimum, however, the US settlement terms seem likely to work their way up across the border for these Canadian cases as Sony begins to confront the global legal liability that is not going to disappear anytime soon.
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
Also See:
Financial Times – Sony chief outlines new strategy , January 5, 2006
January 6th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Sometime after the initial Russinovich analysis of the DRM-ware, it was revealed that it installed even if the user clicked the “No” button. If anyone other than a large corporation did this, he or she would be in jail now.
So why aren’t the executives of Sony or the malware vendor subject to criminal charges? Apparently the law has nothing to do with justice; it’s just about money and power.
January 6th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
“global legal liability that is not going to disappear anytime soon”
UK? Australia? Japan? Some of these countries have stronger hacking and computer misuse laws than the US.
January 7th, 2006 at 5:46 am
Sony continues on as if nothing has happened. As far as they are concerned it looks like they are putting on a happy face and hoping the public buys it.
After all the crap surfacing over Sony; payolla, false critics, XPC, mediamax, and now investigation to see if they are once again in calhoots with the other cartel members for again fixing prices, I see nothing in this corporation I want to do business with. No matter if the music company is but one branch of Sony or not, the head of the corporation sets the rules. Apparently, anything goes that will gain Sony monetary increases.
It is from just such behind the scenes actions that lead to the Enron story. Here is Sony, up to its neck in dirty dealings, getting its hand slapped but not seriously over the rootkit disaster. The payolla has already been ruled illegal in court, what 30 years ago? So too, was the price fixing charges. Yet here we are again, with Sony being one of the ones that doesn’t seem to think that laws are to be followed unless it is for their benefit. Had this been an individual, they would be below the concete of the floor for doing this. I expect we will once again see Sony recieve a hand slap and business as usual.
From me, they won’t be recieving any money from here on out. It is the way I personally punish those corporations and businesses whose practices I don’t believe in. If everyone does the same thing, they eventually get the message.
January 9th, 2006 at 12:51 am
I guess this would be Sony’s response to you
>>>>>>
Stringer also said he was worried about the negative impact the controversy could have had on Sony as a whole because of Sony BMG’s actions. Sony BMG is a joint venture with Bertelsmann.
“Every headline was about Sony, as if Sony Electronics was behind all of this and we took quite a beating but it was a Sony BMG copyright protection tradition and this was a bad situation. We obviously retreated from that position.”
“Sony as a company took a bit of a beating for it, which was somewhat unfair,” he said.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124271,00.asp
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Unfair?!? Sony just completely refuses to realize the magnitude of what they did. They completely violated the trust of their paying customers and the only thing they deserve in response is contempt. If they had any respect, whatsoever, for their customers they would have stepped up from the very beginning, actually pulled the cds out of the stores, and offered realistic compensation for the damage they caused. What we got was the complete opposite.
If the name “Sony” can be found on the product…
I’M NOT BUYING!!!
January 9th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
“So why aren’t the executives of Sony or the malware vendor subject to criminal charges? Apparently the law has nothing to do with justice; it’s just about money and power.”
Judges are simply paid off to look the other way. So are the lawyers that allegedly represent anyone against a corporation.
As long as the power is in the hands of crooks, nothing will change.