The revelations concerning Sony's loading rootkit spyware onto its music customers' machines has sparked a call for a boycott of Sony products. I am all for that and would love to participate, except I stopped buying Sony gear a long time ago. As have many of you. I haven't bought any music lately. but if I do I'll make sure it isn't Sony BMG.
Sony used to be a manufacturer of great consumer electronics products. In recent years, Sony has become an also-ran. Sometimes this happened because the company has forgotten customers in attempts to protect the intellectual property of its entertainment businesses. More often, Sony has simply not created products that customers want to buy. The Sony magic is gone and won't be returning.
So, as much as I'd like to boycott a company that loaded malicious code onto its customers machines, I am simply unable to purchase any fewer Sony products than I am already not purchasing.
I am, however, thrilled to see a company that has a well-deserved bad reputation having its behavior finally come home to roost. Sony has mishandled this episode in about every way possible and even though they've promised to "temporarily" stop shipping rootkits on music CDs, many such discs remain in stores and the company has done little to help customers whose hard drives it has already infected. Meanwhile, criminal exploits have been developed to take advantage of the backdoor Sony has opened onto its customers' systems.
Sony needs to make a preemptive offer to settle the legal problems that are developing, make arrangements to fix the systems it has infected, and display some senior executives' heads on platters. Figuratively, of course. [:D]
Sony also needs to look deep into its corporate soul to discover and remove the roots of its anti-consumer behavior. Another screw-up like this and there will be even fewer customers around to stage the next Sony boycott. In the meantime, if you want to hurt Sony, give someone an Xbox 360 for Christmas.
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November 12, 2005 7:02 PM
The news about the Rookit on Sony's music and video discs is disturbing. It would be helpful to know the extent to which the rootkit is pervasive in other Sony products. It is known that the rootkit is contained on Sony music CD's. But, what of other Sony products? I recently purchased a Sony DVD drive :-(. The drive comes with a bundled software suite by Nero. Is the rootkit also on this disc (and yes, it is a Sony disc)? How can I determine if the disk is free of the rootkit? If the rootkit is also on this disk, what alternatives do I have to installing the software?
November 14, 2005 1:46 AM
Be sure to tell them it's because you don't trust any software distributed by Sony. By associating with known (and admitted!) spyware/rootkit distributors Nero have shown you that they are not trustworthy. As Coursey said, Sony has demonstrated they have no interest in maintaining a good relationship with their customers (if they ever had one!). That's a two-way street, and it's time to take a detour with your pocketbook. That's the only thing that Sony will (maybe) understand. I despair that enough consumers will be outraged by Sony's spitting in their eye to make a difference in the company's bottom line. Now a lawsuit, and more importantly the attendant publicity, would be something different...
November 14, 2005 12:54 PM
..but I am afraid I have too much invested in my PS2. My son has 50 games and I shudder at the prospect of rebuilding a library for the xBox. I think Sony is big enough that I can avoid the music arm and continue to patronize the PS2 division right? Although I haven't purchased music recently either. which brings us back to why Sony feels the need to load DRM toolkits on music CDS in the first place.
December 3, 2005 6:21 PM
I mean seriously... what were they thinking? Still... I haven;t purchased a piece of Sony hardware since My First Sony... a walkman when I was a kid..... I will never buy Sony again.... not just because of the rootkit (although it did little to raise my already low opinion of them) but mostly because of the appaling way they treated a VAIO customer having problems..... they are just an appaling company. I was unfortunately unaware of Nero.... not having owned any burning media until very recently.... but a nice warning screen popped up today as I installed Nero.... WTF? That's another program I shall not be using then.... can i get a refund please?
December 27, 2005 1:04 PM
So, yeah, I went to upload a cd the other day to iTunes and low and behold that was the last cd I was able to play in my brand new Dell rocketship I just got last year. Since the cd neither of my drivers are working nor does my computer even recognize them. The Rootkit totally disabled them both. There should be a law against this shite! Now I've gotta spend hours trying to figure out the safest way to uninstall the crap and I'm hopeing I'm not having to completely wipe my machine off and reinstall Windows. Man, what a bunch of freakin asses at Sony. I'm TOTALLY boycotting them forever. After googling the class action lawsuit for Sony... I found many more other lawsuits they've got going on. Geesh! Glad I don't work there.