Damn the Man!
November 17th, 2005 . by JillyThere has been a lot of drama over the debate of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Who has the right to dictate how you use your music? Some companies will sell you a song and then say you can only make copies of it up to a certain number of times. Some companies will sell you a song and then only allow you to use it on certain music players (ie. Windows Media player only, or iTunes only).
Some of you may have heard Sony mentioned in the news in the last few weeks and something about them sneakily installing a rootkit on their customers’ computers. If you’re like me, you’re probably like what is this all about? What the heck is a rootkit?
According to Wikipedia…
A rootkit is a set of software tools frequently used by a third party (usually an intruder) after gaining access to a computer system. These tools are intended to conceal running processes, files or system data, which helps an intruder maintain access to a system without the user’s knowledge.
Sony made it so that its invisible, and even if you went looking for it in your computer, you wouldn’t be able to find it, because the files are hidden. That was insidious. Sony put this rootkit on 52 albums that they sell. Here’s a list of the infected cd’s.
If you only listen to your music on cd players and in your car, then you’re safe. But if you’re a person that listens to your cd’s through your computer, and you’ve bought one of Sony’s infected cd’s then you have a problem. Sony wants to dictate how you use your music that you bought. They force you to use their media player to listen to their cd’s. They also installed spyware that talks to their homebase and tells them what you’re doing with your music. If you try to uninstall rootkit it will kill your Windows operating system. If you leave the rootkit on your computer, you’re left vulnerable. This makes it very easy for people that write viruses to do extremely scary things, such as giving up bank account numbers and login passwords.
On November 4, in an interview with NPR, Sony BMG’s Global Digital Business President Thomas Hesse downplayed the recent DRM fiasco saying he objected to terms such as malware, spyware and rootkit. “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” he said.
Sony released something that was supposed to help its customers remove rootkit from their computers. Come to find out that the remover doesn’t work and it makes your computer vulnerable to viruses. Sony will stop shipping infectious CDs. Sony will no longer be putting malicious rootkit software on its CDs. Sony is beginning a limited recall of some of the CDs from stores. But they still haven’t fixed the problem that they caused.
Granted Sony’s not the only company that is guilty of being so evil. For a long time I didn’t get why Digital Rights Management was such a big issue, but now I get it. Its all about control. The record companies want to dictate how you use your music, music you bought with your own money. Informed consumers can play a vital role in this DRM controversy.
Most of this information can be found at Boing Boing here and on Beta News here.
I really hate modern corporations that try to take advantage of an uninformed public. It’s irritating, not only because companies aren’t looking out for the best interest of their consumers anymore, but that they also think we’re dumb, or we don’t care.
So other than not buying the cd’s that carry the rootkit software, is there anything else we can do to prevent corporations from controlling the music we buy?
I really liked this article jill. thanks
Quintus:
Some people are boycotting Sony entirely, but that’s difficult. Last week we bought a DVD burner, and it was Sony. I think the new Fiona Apple cd was put out by Sony.
People that were affected by the rootkit are bringing litigation against Sony and the EFF is the one organizing it. That should send a sharp message.
You could also only buy music put out by independent labels, but that means denying yourself the Johnny Cash boxset you’ve had your eye on.
jill:
that’s true. but if I put the Johnny Cash boxset on my xmas wish list, I wouldn’t feel bad about accepting it as a gift.
it would be difficult to boycott Sony entirely. a lot of times I don’t check the record lable of a cd I’m buying. Sony owns so many lables, and so many other things. my phone is an Ericsson. but I think I’ll burn it in effigy.
apparently, sony released it’s statement today regarding the rootkit issue at sonybmg.com and click on the ‘information on XPC content protection’
Mark Russinovich, the fella credited with finding the rootkit posted an interesting comment on his blog, too. check it out.
MySpace\’s choice of DRM-less MP3 makes sense, given that its target audience for this service is new, unsigned bands who already view MySpace as an invaluable source of exposure and give away music (or samples of it) through the site.