Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Sony BMG, desperate to be done with the rootkit fiasco as quickly as possible, settled the consolidated class-action lawsuit filed by angry customer a couple of months ago. Customers who bought XCP-infected CDs will be given a $7.50 cash award and a free album download, for each disc. Good news for those who bought MediaMax-infected [...]
“Sony, I download your music”.
It’s a market with a particularly slim profit margins, so why bother? BusinessWeek says it’s a marketing tool—“Companies say they still feel compelled to maintain a presence in online music, both to get a toehold in a growing market and give a complete product offering.”
Also, David Card at Jupiter Research thinks that the subscription model [...]
Sony should be feeling pretty desparate: they will replace your rootkit-embedded CD with a DRM-free CD via mail (they’ll pay for the postage both ways), but in the interim—since that’ll take a few weeks and they’re desperate to boost their devastated PR—they’ll give you an authorization code to download the album in MP3 format. I [...]
“I ♥ rootkit” t-shirt: “We don’t know about you, but when we buy a music CD we consider it a friendly invitation for complete strangers to come in and make our computer their personal playground. Install hidden software that hijacks basic components of our system? Open us to attack from viruses and hackers? Sounds perfect!” [...]
Sory Electronics – DRM has got to go: let boycotting fun begin! “Every dollar spent on a Sony product sends a message that you are OK with a corporation who spies on your personal computer habits and opens up your PC to malicious hackers.” [via]
From the “rootkit update” department—Sony recalls CDs for posing risks to PCs: 5M discs will be recalled from store shelves, customers who bought over 2M such discs will be offered exchanges. The EFF is feeling rightfully happy. And Brad Hill says: “I would love to eavesdrop on conversations between Sony BMG execs and their counterparts [...]