Trust your CD’s?
Think again. For those of you who have not been following the Sony-BMG fiasco, please read on.
Recently Sony decided that their DRM scheme wasn't draconian enough. So they hired a company to make some new software. This software, it turns out, is a rootkit that does all kinds of nasties to you.
- It hides all files beginning with $sys$, which allows virus writers more room to work.
- It "phones home" unidentified information, probably regarding your system.
- It contains GPL'ed source code, violating the terms of the GPL (another form of copyright).
- The "software" to remove it opens your system up to even more bugs.
- Finally, when this story first aired they LIED about the rootkit, and claimed that all this didn't matter since "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it? (Sony BMG's Global Digital Business President Thomas Hesse)"
Simply amazing. My jaw hasn't gotten off the ground yet, and it's almost been a month. I gurantee that more develops in this case, as four seperate lawsuits have already been filed, and hopefully the source code will be picked over with a fine tooth comb.
Now, for those of you wondering, what can I do, you've got a few options:
- Boycott Sony, not just their CDs, everything. Who knows what software (digital cameras anyone?) might be infected?
- Tell everyone you can about this. I admit it, the Hesse was right, no one knows what a rootkit is. So spread the word, point them to this site, or any of a dozen out there (check my "Sony Fiasco" link to the right).
- Finally, please guys, let this be a wake up call and start supporting open source and free software/media. There's artists out there who give away their work, support them. Support free operating systems and programs. I'll tell you right now, FOSS programmers dislike DRM for the most part, and will code around it.
For a full timeline of events, here's one that boingboing put together.
November 23rd, 2005 at 12:55 am
Yeah. This is really quite sad. I have always been a huge fan of Sony’s hardware – Playstation, TV’s, etc… The Vaio is the #1 line of desktop computers in Japan… Heck, I use Sony headphones.
They have an absolutely obscene market share, so it was inevitable that they fell to the dark side. I’ve noticed that this sort of problem invariably rears its filthy little head whenever a large company decides to break into yet another market.
BMG has always been evil, so nothing really new there, but the whole rootkit garbage is a new low. “Hey, we’re going to compromise your system’s security. It’s not wrong because you’re too stupid to know any better.”
September 20th, 2006 at 1:38 am
[...] First off, I changed my layout back to what it was when I started the blog. Mainly because that other one I used had some quirks to it I didn’t like. I hope to come up with a new one somewhat soon as well asadding a domain (Note, domain is empty as of right now not even a server for it) that I’ve always wanted which *just* became available. [...]
November 17th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
[...] Big posts I believe I created the blog to talk about the Sony BMG Fiasco. This was my first serious post, and it got some decent reads by a variety of people. Unfortunately for the world, this has pretty much blown over in a year. Heck, it had blown over within 6 months. What a shame a company got away with this when non-malicious citizens are thrown into court for downloading one song to the tune of $2,000. Had Sony gotten such treatment, it would be out of business (I refer to the fact that Sony included source code that was licensed. In addition they took it from a man whom the music industry tried to have thrown in jail.) [...]
January 2nd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
[...] about this? Because I was reminded of Sony’s recent crimes against humanity by Snarky’s new blog. Beyond the sentiments in my comment on his [...]