Amazingly I haven’t seen any big Sony news today, but there are a couple stories out that are worth noting… First up is freedom-to-tinker with their take on the lawsuits announced yesterday and the one thing that isn’t getting much press coverage, the MediaMax DRM software. XCP is the name of the rootkit that Sony had used for Digital Rights Management that’s caused all the fuss lately, through it’s way of hiding in the system, it’s security vulnerabilities, it’s difficulty to remove (damage to the system) and vulnerabilites in the uninstaller. Well…
Tag: SONY
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Cleaning up after the Sony Rootkit
Sunbeltblog has a suggestion (from Ben Edelman) for SONY on how to get the word out to customers that they have the problem laden XCP/ rootkit/ trojan/ drm software that’s been burning up tech news… Distribute an ad through their own rootkit. It does, after all, “phone home” from time to time and…. it looks like a banner can be displayed. Details on Ben Edelman’s site.
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The Continuing Stooo-ry of the Sony DRM rootkit debacle….
Let’s see there are a couple more notes to pass along on Sony DRM rootkit news. This story could go on for some time, it’s already had legs for about a week or more and just when things started to wind down a bit, there’s a bit more. First up, the EFF has a writeup on the EULA that Sony sends along with it’s DRM-ified Cds. Among other things it obliges you to wipe any copies of songs of your pc if you’re cd is lost or stolen, it cannot be played on a work computer, you can’t take it with you if you leave the country, you MUST install any and all updates to their software or the content is forfeit, SONY-BMG reserves the right to install backdoors or other means to protect their content, SONY will only be liable for a maximum of $5, if you declare bankrupcy you must forfeit all the music on your pc, no derivitave works, (photo albums for family/friends, mash-ups, or sampling), music on the pc may NOT be transfered even if the cd accompanies the transfer.
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Sony BMG is still having a bad week….
Unfortunately a LOT of people that have bought Sony-BMG cds (or borrowed, whatever…) are going to have some headaches too. By stock in Tylenol or Aleve or something…. anyway… here’s todays roundup of Sony Rootkit news. Including a virus borrowing the gift of SONY…
First up is some “backstory” that reminds us of Sony’s attitudes in the past on the issue of piracy and what should be done about it, along with the precient “I think most people don’t know what a rootkit is” satatement.
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Sony’s DRM song sounding worse by the day
Well, let’s see…. I didn’t cover the original story since I was covered up with other work, but let me take a stab at starting from the beginning before I tell you how it’s gotten worse. It seems that SONY is concerned about piracy and computers being the tools of pirates (of course, everyone that uses a computer to listen to music is a pirate right?…) they came up with a clever way to put a stop to the piracy of their music. There would be a piece of software on every sony music cd that would install and run quietly in the background invisible EVEN TO WINDOWS that would prevent the inevitable. It would prevent the user from copying the disc and sending it out en masse.