Sony goes to hell…

I love it when a large company does something so inanely stupid – that it is forced to quickly and decisively eat the very crap it was trying to force down consumers throats. Sony falls into this category quite nicely. Way go, jackasses!

So, in a world wind of complete and utter abandon, Sony began to place rootkit software on some CDs, check the list here, which would place malware on your machine to make it so you cannot rip MP3s of CDs on your computer. WTF?! I’m not exactly who they think they are. If they are not careful, someone at Sony could wind up in jail. In fact, they may be sued for illegally using LAME against the LGPL. Ha! Serves them right.

I have been a big fan of Sony electronics for greater than a decade, but this is about as ignorant as it gets. If it is legal for Apple to sell an iPod, then it is legal for me to RIP MP3s and put them on my iPod. So for someone to try and stop me, by placing some sort of spyware/malware on my machine is not only unconscionable but border (if not flat out) illegal.

Sony has received so much crap over this that they have reversed their stance, stopped putting out the CDs altogether, and have issued a statement that they will supply MP3s to folks who own these CDs. Sounds like they are hemorrhaging customers faster than money at this point. Full-on, get down damage control. Even some dude at Microsoft condemns it:

• Rootkits have a clearly negative impact on not only the security, but also the reliability and performance of their systems.

Jason Garms
Architect & Group PM
Anti-Malware Technology Team
Microsoft Corporation

The real travesty is that some folks in the IT dept. are the ones who will take the heat on this. Not the idiotic Execs who demanded this be done.

So Sony, what exactly does Crow taste like?