Kerblam! by Christopher

Sunday, November 6
The SonyBMG rootkit fiasco: Part 2

Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG's Global Digital Business division president:

"Most people I think don't even know what a root kit is, so why should they care about it?"

What you just read was a quote from the spokesman for one of the largest music companies in the world, effectively saying, 'most people don't realise that this potentially harmful software is being installed onto their computer, without their permission - and because it's not common knowledge what a 'rootkit' is, and we're not telling them, what they don't know can't hurt them'.

Yes, until the badly-coded rootkit that's been installed (without informing the user) spectacularly breaks the person's computer - and all because someone bought a legitimate Audio CD and wanted to play it on their computer while they worked, or transfer the tracks to their MP3 player.

Disgraceful. Sony BMG needs to be hauled up into the dock for this one, and I won't stop complaining (along with all the rest of us!) until they are brought in front of an adequately-empowered court of law over this one. What they and First4Internet (the developers of the actual software, based in the UK) have done is breach several UK laws, including the Sale of Goods act and the Computer Misuse Act, by modifying a person's computer without express permission or knowledge - I've seen individuals sent to jail under this very law quite recently, and it will be great to see these kinds of actions from a corporate body scrutinised by the Metropolitan Police's High Tech Crimes Unit.

At the very least, if it means that Sony has to press up CDs without this awful attempt at an antipiracy solution for the UK market, that'll be the least worst solution - and it will still mean that people in the US can buy the imports! Though this is very much the lesser of two evils, I'd much rather see laws revised and heavy fines slapped on Sony and the RIAA for this. I sincerely hope it happens. This has taken even more credibility away from their piracy-is-losing-us-money arguments - it's their own poorly-chosen actions to screw over just about everyone potentially, which has brought hard times upon them. I see many smaller labels, such as Ninjatune, performing extremely well, and they don't penalise listeners for buying copies of the CDs they sell.

Wake up, bloated music industry.

In other news on the same subject, Sony has released a 'patch' for their rootkit, which in reality does nothing more than unhide the dastardly thing (where before it was totally hidden from view) - it's still a massive security threat, and I'm glad to see that even the BBC (article one | article two) and NPR (National Public Radio) in America has taken this up (listen to the audio interview with Thomas Hesse via the above NPR link, it's worth it). Mark Russinovitch's SysInternals blog has further information on the SonyBMG rootkit, including more news on modifications to the EULA, changes to the software, and more discussion on everything (plus links in the comments section).

This is great for the consumer though in the long run - it gives us more freedom to vocalise our complaints of companies, and actually start the publicity wheels turning in our favour! This is one of the few good things to have come from this, and I hope that the new leverage we have can be used to good effect.

Also, if you have a few more moments, read my comment on the above SysInternals blog post, I won't repeat it here for now, as it would make the biggest blog post in history (and waste a lot of desktop real estate). Might post it later, though. :)

I do this this is some kind of justice for what Sony has done though - look at what you get if you google for "van zants cd" on Google:
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