Over the past month Sony has shown in the most spectacular way everything that is wrong with the music publishing industry. I suspect that this story did not have in the real world quite the impact that it had in the demi-monde of pop technology that I sometimes inhabit, so in case you have not heard: On October 31st Mark Russinovich broke news on his blog that he had discovered that certain Sony Music CDs he had played on his computer had without due warning, installed what is referred to as a rootkit, a piece of software that is completely hidden from the operating system. Furthermore, if you tried to remove it, your DVD or CD drive would stop working requiring a complete reinstall of Windows. Not only that, the software would also automatically cloak any files starting with a specified string hence becoming a handy method for other bad guys to infect your computer. The software was also found to be sending information back to Sony from the affected machines. And why did Sony do this: to prevent unauthorized duplication of the CD content.
Sony’s initial arrogant reaction was best encapsulated by Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s president of global digital business, when he told NPR that “Most people don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”. Though at first they offered only a fix for the software to address its vulnerabilityver the past few weeks they have retrenched and will pull all CDs with the scheme off the shelves and repace customer’s CDs. But what about the estimated half million computers worldwide that are infected with the rootkit?
The fact that it took them that long to get going and that they still don’t have a full solution has left Sony with serious egg on their face. I for one will explicitly avoid any and all Sony Music CDs and so will many others. Not only has Sony alienated people who bought their content, but has ensured that in the future, if they want that content, customers will turn to illegal sources such as peer to peer sharing (Limewire etc.) and Rusian MP3 download sites like mp3search.ru.
This is so true!
Once music listeners learn about Sony’s rootkit install, it will only become harder for Sony to sell their artist’s CDs. Listeners will download music at a higher rate than they did when a CD was just a CD an nothing more. I’m sure that CD sales will drop for not only Sony, but for other labels as well in fear of rootkit technology being not only Sony specific.
Comment by Nicole Reihl — January 3, 2006 @ 2:35 pm