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Sony's unbroken stream of fail

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LoKyBuckeye

LoKyBuckeye

I give up. This board is too hard to understand.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php

Some intersting stuff here.... if you Google you get some interesting reading about this.... no wonder I rarely buy CD's anymore.

Are You Infected by Sony-BMG's Rootkit?
November 09, 2005

As we've mentioned before, Sony-BMG has been using copy-protection technology called XCP in its recent CDs. You insert your CD into your Windows PC, click "agree" in the pop up window, and the CD automatically installs software that uses rootkit techniques to cloak itself from you. Sony-BMG has released a "patch" that supposedly "uncloaks" the XCP software, but it creates new problems.

But how do you know whether you've been infected? It turns out Sony-BMG has deployed XCP on a number of titles, in variety of musical genres, on several of its wholly-owned labels.

EFF has confirmed the presence of XCP on the following titles (each has a data session, easily read on a Macintosh, that includes a file called "VERSION.DAT" that announces what version of XCP it is using). If you have one of these CDs, and you have a Windows PC (Macs are totally immune, as usual), you may have caught the XCP bug.

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)

Several other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:

My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album

This is not a complete list. So how do you recognize other XCP-laden CDs in the wild?

Tip-off #1: on the front of the CD, at the left-most edge, in the transparent "spine", you'll see "CONTENT PROTECTED" along with the IFPI copy-protection logo. A few photos make this clearer.

XCP Spine Label

Tip-off #2: on the back of the CD, on the bottom or right side, there will be a "Compatible with" disclosure box. Along with compatibility information, the box also includes a URL where you can get help. The URL has a telltale admission buried in it: cp.sonybmg.com/xcp. That lets you know that XCP is on this disc (discs protected with SunnComm have a different URL that includes "sunncomm").

XCP Label

If you haven't been infected yet, to protect yourself from XCP in the future, disable "autorun" on your Windows PC. Once you have done so, however, these CDs may not be accessible under Windows unless you have specialized ripping software installed; these CDs are encoded in a way that intentionally confuses standard Windows CD drivers. For a smarter audio grabber for Windows, you may want to consider using Exact Audio Copy, which reportedly can read these CDs if you have turned off autorun and avoided infection by XCP.
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How Sony BMG's Rootkit Is Impacting Sales
Failures Contributed by Mike on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 @ 02:49AM
from the not-going-well dept.
One common refrain that we all heard from lots of people after the Sony rootkit story became news was that people weren't going to buy Sony offerings any more. Of course, it's easy to say that -- but how many people actually follow through? At least when it comes to certain CDs, it seems to have had quite an impact. The artists whose CDs were outfitted with the rootkit quickly saw their sales plummet and it seems to be impacting a few other Sony BMG artists also. It sounds like those musicians are not happy. They're hearing about it from fans, and it's impacting their own publicity efforts -- even if they had no say in the decision to include copy protection technology on the CDs. So how long until a Sony BMG artist sues the label for damaging their reputation with copy protection?
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Sony Has Gone Nuts

Not only is Sony selling the PS3 for $600-$700 and they are only making 10 million units for the release day, but now this...
Furor Over Sony Patent

Technology that could prevent resale of games and other digital goods raises speculation, fears.
By Dawn C. Chmielewski, Times Staff Writer
July 10, 2006


Sony Corp. has patented technology that would prevent its PlayStation consoles from playing used, rented or borrowed video games — raising questions about whether the electronics and entertainment giant may attempt to redefine what it means to own something in the digital age.

Sony has said little about the technology, patented in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 2000, or how it might be deployed. But speculation over Sony's plans has sparked a furor online as game fans and consumer advocates fret that the company may incorporate it into the upcoming PlayStation 3 console, due to hit stores this fall.<o:p></o:p>

They worry that it would wipe out the $1-billion-a-year market for used games and could even prevent someone from playing their games at a friend's house.

It is not unusual for technology companies to patent innovations and then never incorporate them into products.

Documents filed in April 2000 with the U.S. Patent Office describe a method of copy protection by which the game system would verify a disc as legitimate, register the disc to that particular game console, then wipe out verification data so the disc would be rendered unreadable in other PlayStations.

"Since only titles for which legitimate software has actually been purchased and which have been initially registered in the machine table can be used, resale (so-called used software purchase) after purchase by an end user becomes practically impossible," according to the patent documents.

Although Sony has been vague about its plans for the technology, "I actually think they're toying with this idea," said Michael Pachter, a game industry analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Pachter said he thought Sony probably would not tighten the software locks on PlayStation 3 games but might employ bolstered copy protection on other forms of entertainment downloaded to the console over the Internet.

"Maybe they'll copy protect movies or music downloads," he said.

Whatever Sony's plans, the tempest illustrates the changing nature of ownership as millions of people accumulate vast collections of digital entertainment. Few people realize that when they buy software, music or movies, they are actually buying a license to use, listen or watch.

That's why it violates copyright laws for people to sell copies of their music collection.

Sony was attacked this year for including software on some of its music CDs that surreptitiously installed itself on computers playing the disc. The software was intended to prevent unauthorized copying. Sony later apologized.

Taking that sort of copy protection one step further would be, in the words of one analyst, "crazy."

"What does Sony get from that?" said John Taylor of Arcadia Investment Corp. "Sony gets a black eye. It doesn't make sense to me."

Several analysts said the patent appeared to principally be aimed at deterring game piracy. Indeed, Sony's patent notes that through the complexity of its copy-protection scheme "manufacture of counterfeit software becomes extremely difficult."

And it's not unusual for technology companies such as Sony to register patents either in anticipation of one day collecting royalties from someone seeking to license the technology or to prevent someone else from deploying it.

"These are all things technologically possible to do in any computing device," said one cryptographer, who requested anonymity. "In the video game business, it would be suicide for someone to do this. It's actually possible Sony filed this because they wanted to keep people from doing that."

Nonetheless, online speculation that Sony would use technological or other means to ban the sale of used PlayStation 3 video games prompted one analyst, P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research, to study its potential effect on the industry.

"While we believe it is unlikely that SNE will ban PS3 pre-owned games from being sold by the same chains that sell new PS3 games, we believe this issue remains under consideration," McNealy wrote in a research note issued June 23.

McNealy estimated that game fans spent about $990 million buying used games, primarily from GameStop or through EBay. Much of that spending — about $620 million — is for used PlayStation 2 games.

Were Sony to ban the sale of used games for its next-generation PS3, the effect on independent video game publishers would be negligible, McNealy said.

Used-game sales are a growing source of irritation for game publishers, which receive no proceeds from the resale of games. Executives privately complain that cheaper secondhand games are available for sale shortly after a new game's release; publishers, which give retailers marketing money to promote games, end up competing with discounted versions of their own titles.

Major independent game publishers Electronic Arts Inc., Activision Inc. and THQ Inc. declined to comment.

Meanwhile, used games are a lucrative source of revenue for retailer GameStop, which began reporting pre-owned game sales after its acquisition of competitor EB. Last year, secondhand game sales accounted for $930 million in revenue and $418 million in profit. The profit margin was 45%, compared with 21% for new games, according to Arcadia Investment Corp.

Analysts say used-game sales contribute to the overall growth of the video game market, in the same way that the ability to trade in a used vehicle fuels the new-car market.

"A used-car market creates currency to buy new cars. Same with games. Everybody acknowledges that," Pachter said. "The problem is if the used game is available a week after the new game is out for a $5 discount."<o:p></o:p>
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Upvote 0
The entire software industry (and by that I mean music & movies as well) is going to collapse under it's own weight before they figure out that the more restrictive they try to become the more they drive people towards "other" options.

The more you tighten your grip Sony, the more consumers will slip through your fingers.
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leia_headshot.jpg
 
Upvote 0
If they do this, Sony is officially out of the video game market. None of the retailers are going to bother carrying the crap at all. Gamestop makes 95% of it's profit off used games and such, and they will tell Sony to go fuck themselves if they do indeed attempt this crap :biggrin:

Console games are way harder to rip off than PC, hence it's not worth the chance of this.​
 
Upvote 0
sandgk said:
That's not the real problem though, is it?

The problem is that the games are too easy to copy.
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Actually, the problem is that the game was probably crappy. They either beat it in less than a week, or only needed a few days to realize that it sucked.

EDIT: There is no way Sony integrates this into the PS3 by the way...
 
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