Sony DRM Fallout #2, Plus Telstra

On my way to find the subject of this article, I found Telstra to sack 12,000, Contractors First. Sucks to be employed by Telstra at the moment. They would be feeling the pinch in a lot of areas. The rise of VOIP over here (Australia) means they will be losing percentages not only on Internet, but also their primary function (at least in my mind), that is, as a telco.

Their foray into I-Mode sucked big time. I remember getting excited about it at the start of the year, even delved into some development on it (a Snake clone, whoah — the link is not to mine, it’s what came up on Google). The hoops just to get something working on I-Mode were pretty crazy. I imagine there weren’t too many Developers who would choose it over the more established frameworks. I haven’t seen an I-Mode advertisement for a while. Maybe they’ve given up on it? Not sure.

Anyway … onto the other.

Sony says no rootkits on locally made CDs, although they say that some retailers are probably selling foreign made ones. I’ve been telling people about the DRM fiasco, so I guess I’ll continue to tell them.

I’m not sure what the future holds for Sony, but something will happen. As powerful as the blogosphere is, there has to be outside movement to call them to some kind of explanation. Although … maybe the blogosphere does hold that kind of power. Imagine if major sites refused to review their products. Nice.

Absolute power … something.

A few thoughts on the ongoing Sony "scaandal", and Telstra’s. Aussie Style.

Sony DRM :: The Fallout

Man, so can you imagine … somewhere deep in the bowels of the Sony fortress there’s the Sovereign Council … and right now, they’re starting to sweat.

I only started following the news about it on the blogosphere this morning … but man alive! what a ruckus.

The best place to begin is Mark’s Sysinternals Blog, which has a lot of other cool stuff on it too. It just hits me when I read a blog like Mark’s how cool the internet is. I would never have been able to "meet" Mark, and yet here I am, learning from his wisdom.

Anyway, the place I actually found the link to Mark’s posts, was J. Angelo’s post, First Sony/BMG rootkit trojan discovered. Another cluey fellow, who has it going on … so to speak.

And of course, here’s the latest Slashdot post about it, Trojan Using Sony DRM Rootkit Spotted.

Now, back to the topic. The fallout.

How much fun must it be to work at Sony BGM right now? While reading the above articles, my brain started wondering.

Did anyone think that this wasn’t going to happen? What about the ramifications of creating software that allowed for the hiding of files? Wasn’t that part big on the planning/strategising agenda?

And what of the spin-doctoring? To my mind, their refusal to admit fault or release a proper solution suggests that they have about 1.23 million over-paid people trying to create some facade that will get them out of this mess.

And this could have been avoided with some planning. Why wouldn’t you, in a company as big as Sony BGM, have considered the possibility that this might have happened? That people would get up in arms? And if they did, was it just to say … "We’ll deal with that when it happens"?

On the other side, how cool must it be for anti-virus software people? I’d be jumping on the bandwagon RIGHT NOW … releasing statements and emails and all the other parafanalia (spl?) that could be mustered, pushing the product’s ability to combat the Issues Raised By Sony’s DRM scandal.

Man, it’s a lot of free advertising. The ground is set.

And there’s other fallout possibilities. The whole EULA thing. How strong is the EULA now? What about copyright?

Finally … the big question.

How will Google use this to their advantage?.

Heh heh. What sparked that sentance was this article I read today … Google’s Tough Call. It’s possible that these things could be related. Maybe.