Murray Williams lives and works in Northwest Arkansas. He tries to keep his blog up-to-date, but the pressures of life squeeze in and sometimes he just doesn't have the time. You can check out his full site at www.murdog.com.

11.09.2005

Sony = BAD

This is old news for people who stay on top of tech stuff, but for those of you who don't, Sony has started putting Digital Rights Management (DRM) software on their new CDs (Including Switchfoot's newest CD). This wouldn't be so bad except that their DRM includes rootkit technology. (See my entry from 2 posts ago.)

For those of you who don't know what rootkits are, and I know there are a lot of you, rootkits are hacker tools that allow a writer of a program to hide things on your computer so far down in the bowels of your computer that your Operating System cannot see it. What the Heck?!? To add insult to injury, it is a poorly written rootkit that will allow any script kiddie (a very unsophisticated programmer) to hide viruses and other malware on your computer. AND, the rootkit also "phones home" to Sony some absurd amount of times per hour to track your usage of Sony's Music.

I hate DRM. I believe it robs us of fair use. I believe it punishes those of us who are law-abiding music lovers. The people who are really the problem in the stolen music market won't be stopped by DRM. But, those of us who just want to listen to music that we have purchased on our iPods are left out in the cold.

Boo Sony! I will not by anything from Sony if at all possible. I just hate it that Switchfoot, a band that I like, is caught up in the whole debacle. If you agree with me, I invite you to join me in avoiding Sony products.

Rootkits... I mean really!!!!

MurDog OUT!!!

2 Comments:

Blogger John Nelson said...

I hear that Sony is taking a lot of flack for this, too.

In an interview about it, one of their executives basically said "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is...why should they even care?"

Umm...hello! Sounds like a dumb hacker's comment to me.

8:00 AM

 
Blogger anje said...

Hi- Virginia's mom here just to let you know I feel your pain. I've been saying Sony is a sucky company for as long as I've had my Sony Clie.

When I got my PDA, I had to call the company for support and basically there was none. And everyone I talked to was ESL-challenged (English as second language).

I ended my relationship with Sony, and am just waiting for my Clie to die so I can move on. I know. That's so cold. =)

BTW, here is a news article dated yesterday of interest to iPod users:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/09/sunncomm_drm_ear/

:-/

1:29 PM

 

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