Sony DRM - Just how bad can it get.

[NoddY]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4459620.stm

"In California, digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is suing Sony for allegedly collecting personal data."

I would have thought this would be a test case on the integrity of the GPL license (some of the code was taken from GPL software without acknowledging the fact). Interestingly, the EFF feel they will have greater success pursuing the privacy breach.

[threaded]

I think what Sony actually did wrong here was go to the lowest bidder to write them this. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

It is really quite an irritation, Sony aren't the only firm doing this, and this isn't the first time Sonys been caught (any readers here own a Viao, hæ hæ hæ), but now everyone and their dog is looking for these things.

Some people write really good quality viruses and their collective reputation is being besmirched by these cowboys. Something ought to be done about it, questions ought to be asked in Parliament!

I blame the industry, any fool can now get a certificate in point and click (level 2), install visual basic, and call themselves a programmer.

[DaveB]

Maybe we need to explain the concept of irony to the Japanese as well as our American cousins. This story has appeared in the register here; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11..._infringement/

It's Sony's North American music operation - Sony BMG - that are the culprits here. Most Japanese I've met in the past have a nicely honed sense of irony already

[zathras]

Well, it looks like Sony just keep pushing the envelope on this one. It seems that far from being content to simply cripple cutomers PC's with badly written DRM software of questionable legality, they stole the code to do it as well. Not only that but the guy they stole it from is none other than 'DVD Jon' Johansssen, the guy the MPAA spent considerable time effort and expense to fail in prosecuting for circumventing DVD encryption.

The XCP application "written" by First 4 Internet contains code from, among other sources, a function called DRMS.c which is part of the VideoLan project and written by DVD Jon. It's released under the LGPL license and as such is copyright subject to the conditions of that license which include making it clear where the code used originated from and making source code available on request. It's intention is to stop lazy programmers nicking chunks of code and reusing them without acknolwledgeing the source of that code. So it would seem that the programmers at First 4 Internet are not only incompetent they are Lazy Buggers as well!

Maybe we need to explain the concept of irony to the Japanese as well as our American cousins. This story has appeared in the register here; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11..._infringement/

[DaveB]

Well, it looks like Sony just keep pushing the envelope on this one. It seems that far from being content to simply cripple cutomers PC's with badly written DRM software of questionable legality, they stole the code to do it as well. Not only that but the guy they stole it from is none other than 'DVD Jon' Johansssen, the guy the MPAA spent considerable time effort and expense to fail in prosecuting for circumventing DVD encryption.

The XCP application "written" by First 4 Internet contains code from, among other sources, a function called DRMS.c which is part of the VideoLan project and written by DVD Jon. It's released under the LGPL license and as such is copyright subject to the conditions of that license which include making it clear where the code used originated from and making source code available on request. It's intention is to stop lazy programmers nicking chunks of code and reusing them without acknolwledgeing the source of that code. So it would seem that the programmers at First 4 Internet are not only incompetent they are Lazy Buggers as well!