Why Does Sony Hate You?
Posted on November 13, 2005
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 217 views |
The Sony saga gets stranger and stranger. Once upon a time a guy would think about buying some consumer electronics, ask a bunch of friends for their recommendation, and often as not a couple people would say “Buy the Sony, you can’t go wrong with Sony.” Then Sony discovered DRM and decided that those same people it was making some not-so-bad electronics for were a bunch of low-life criminals who deserved to be treated with contempt and loathing, like so many millions of juvenile deliquents needing to report into Parole Officer Sony every afternoon.
Sony has decided that when we buy media from Sony, say a CD, we don’t actually own that media. Somehow in Sony-land paying $20 for a CD means that we just get to borrow it from them for an indefinite period.
They started out with the MediaMax DRM scheme which was laughably by-passed by holding down the Shift key while the CD was starting up (oddly enough, under the DMCA in the United States holding down the Shift key while the CD is starting up is actually against the law, qualifying as a “circumvention measure”).
Then they shipped the XCP DRM rootkit/malware which I’ve writen about here, and here, and here which is such loathsome, potentially dangerous software that Microsoft itself is updating its anti-spyware software to remove the Sony rootkit from your system.
Then it was suggested that the software Sony suggests its users use to remove the XCP DRM infection is so poorly written that it may itself pose a massive threat to your system. The investigation continues but right now it appears that the uninstall ActiveX control may allow anyone to reboot your machine, and possibly execute malicious code on it. Seems like absolutely no consideration was given to the safety of their users when they released this “utility”.
And now it comes to light that Sony has filed for a patent (6,816,972) that will lock console games to the first console they’re played in, effectively preventing you from ever taking your game to a friend’s house, a LAN party, reselling it, or playing it in another console should you need to buy a second one. It will also effectively kill the used-game and game rental market:
”A device and method for protection of legitimate software against used software and counterfeit software in recording media… A specific title code is read, and if this title code has been registered, the main unit shifts to a normal operation. If the code has not been registered, verification software is initiated… If matching does not occur, the disk is processed as illegitimate software… Since only titles for which legitimate software has actually been purchased and which have been initially registered in the machine table can be used, resale (so-called used software purchase) after purchase by an end-user becomes practically impossible.”
- Disk recording medium, reproduction device and method for performing reproduction on disk recording medium
See? Sony really does hate you, and me, and everyone. And judging from the merciless web-reaming they’re getting over all of this they must hate themselves too. Only a masochistic company with a deep sense of self-loathing could take all that previously-earned good will and flush it so readily and quickly.
Update: Wow, even Wired is supporting a boycott of Sony.
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