Here's more, from wired.com:
"Should the average person write software that took control of a computer at the system level without a user's knowledge and distributed that software across the world, there are plenty of laws that would put him behind bars. But what happens when Sony does this, ostensibly to protect its intellectual property?
Jennifer Granick, executive director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society and Wired News legal columnist, sees this as a question of how well-written Sony's end-user license agreement is, a topic of much conversation in the media lately."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69573,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2
See also:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/16/sony_withdraws_xcp_cds/
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony_anticustomer_te.html
Amalyah Keshet
Hi Diane,
I should point out to everyone that Microsoft has now deemed it a threat ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10050095/) and is preparing to remove it from systems via their antispyware kit. I suspect that the real question here is has Sony violated the DMCA act for trying to break the IP of Microsoft vis a viz cloaking their software from the OS?
Tim
From: Diane M. Zorich [ mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 9:54 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: IP SIG: THe Ghost in the CD
Recent news about how Sony's placement of DRM code on their music CDs is backfiring because the code, which gets copied onto your computer when you play the CD, opens up security holes that hackers have already taken advantage of. (The old law of unintended consequences....)
Now I wonder if you are violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if you change the code to close the security hole? Hmmm..
Diane
_________________________
See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/business/14rights.html?pagewanted=2
The Ghost in the CD
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By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: November 14, 2005
The latest album from Johnny and Donnie Van Zant, "Get Right With the Man," delivers "anthems with the sort of conviction that will inevitably inspire raised fists and chorus sing-a-longs," says Amazon.com's official music reviewer.
Fists are raised all right, but not in the way the Van Zants would have hoped.
After years of battling users of free peer-to-peer file-sharing networks (and the software companies that support them), the recording industry now identifies "casual piracy" - the simple copying and sharing of CD's with friends - as the biggest threat to its bottom line.
And in one company's haste to limit the ripping and burning of CD's, a hornet's nest has been stirred. By the end of last week, that company, Sony BMG, which had embedded aggressive copy-protection software on the Van Zant CD and at least 19 others, suspended the use of that software after security companies classified it as malicious.
At least two Internet-borne worms were discovered attempting to take advantage of the program, which the CD's transferred to computers that played them. And the company was facing lawsuits accusing it of fraud and computer tampering in its efforts at digital rights management, or D.R.M.
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