November 11th, 2005
Sony stops DRM cd's - temporarily
Sony BMG announced today they will stop producing cd’s with the DRM rootkit technology. But, according to the eWeek article, it’s temporary. So what does that mean? There is no indication of duration of "temporary" or what happens next. Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking peoples’ stories for a possible class action lawsuit.
EFF is collecting stories from EFF members and supporters who have purchased Sony-BMG CDs that contained the "rootkit" copy protection software. We’ve previously posted at least a partial list of CDs infected here
We’re considering whether the effect on the public, or on EFF members, is sufficiently serious to merit a lawsuit.
If you satisfy the following criteria, we would like to hear from you:
1. you have a Windows computer;
2. First 4 Internet’s "xcp" copy protection has been installed on your computer from a Sony CD (for more details, see our blog post referenced above or SysInternals blog);
3. you reside in either California or New York;
4. you are willing to participate in litigation.We have not made any final decisions about filing any legal action, but we would like to hear from music fans who have been harmed by the Sony-BMG "rootkit" copy protection technology. Please contact allison@eff.org.
Other websites have published lists of DRM rootkit affected cd’s, here and here. Sony BMG is taking a real whippin’ at Amazon.com in customers reviews of Van Zant’s Get Right with the Man cd. I’d like to know what the artists are saying about this. If anyone has links to artists’ statements, please post them in the talkbacks. I did read a few mentions of artists speaking out agaimst the use of DRM last week, but I can’t find the links now.
Some links via SunbeltBLOG.
