SONY STRUGGLES TO KEEP CONSUMER CONFIDENCE

Having burned through reserves of cash developing a system of securing CDs which unfortunately left a wide-open door on people's PCs to let hackers, virus writers and god knows who else have fun on your machine - and which effectively broke your computer if you tried to shut that door - a stung Sony BMG has suspended making any more CDs with the copy-protection software on them.

Their bad days continue coming, though, as the US Department of Homeland Security has even given them a ticking off:

A senior Homeland Security official cautioned entertainment companies against discouraging piracy in ways that also make computers vulnerable. Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at DHS, did not cite Sony by name in his remarks Thursday but described industry efforts to install hidden files on consumers' computers.

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property, it's not your computer," Baker said at a trade conference on piracy. "And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

Meanwhile, Sony is being a little disingenuous on its website - offering people the patch which switches off the cloaking aspect of its malware, it reassures consumers this component is not malicious and does not compromise security. Which is fine, except that's a double lie. Installing something on a machine and hiding it from the administrator of that PC is malicious. It's like squatting in someone's house and telling them they're not suffering when you change the locks. Equally, the fact that virus writers are already using the cloaking technology to hide their beasties means that, yes, it does compromise security.

Meanwhilewhile, even more astonishingly, if you've got their bungled spyware on your machine, and want it off before it does any damage, do they provide instructions on uninstall? No, they ask you to fill out a form asking where you bought the CD, which CD led to the stuff being installed on your machine, and so on. But since Sony haven't actually provided a list of discs which use the protection, and since the nasty is disguised, how are you meant to know what disc you may have played which might have installed stuff on your machine? Sony should be making a download to uninstall available online, for free, on demand - at the very least - rather than asking you to fill out a survey.

Meanwhilewhilewhile, Slashdot posters have been pawing over Sony's troubles, some suggesting that this latest screw means it might actually be more ethical to download your music from the net than to embrace the increasingly wonky music industry approach to copyright protection. And the Electronic Freedom Foundation has been looking into the End User Licence Agreement you agree to if you play a Sony-BMG CD on your PC.

It starts off with the question of why you need a licence to play a CD on a piece of equipment anyway, and then points out that if someone breaks into your house and steals your CD collection, under Sony's rules, you also have to delete the tracks from your PC as you no longer have the CD. You can't play your music while you're at work, as you're only licensed for home use; if you emigrate - or go on holiday - you have to delete the tunes from your laptop. Sony-BMg reserve the right to hack into your computer at any point, and if that screws your machine, tough. Oh, and if you sell your computer, even if you include the Cd in the deal, you can't sell the music on it.

We really wish this latest debacle would mark the end of the stupidity; but we suspect it will just lead to more cash being spent on producing a new version of stupidity.

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