| Home > Community thoughts > SonyBMG's fiasco presents a marvellous opportunity to send a very 21st Century message about privacy and trust |
| SonyBMG's fiasco presents a marvellous opportunity to send a very 21st Century message about privacy and trust | | Date Created: 13 Nov, 2005, 12:32 AM |
 In an earlier blog entry, I called for a NO SONY DAY to sheet home some hurt on SonyBMG for its DRM fiasco.
As the days go by, the story has developed into a story about a story:
1. Who has reported on it,
2. Who has not reported on it,
2. Who passed comment about SonyBMG's ethics before the fiasco was "heroically" uncovered and once it offered a very weak mea culpa and stated it would not continue production of CDs equipped with it trojan-like software
3. Who has weakly reported on it despite it being mentioned, in passing and without SonyBMG being specifically named, by a US Office of Homeland Security official in the context of keeping America safe should there be an outbreak of avian flu and communications systems, relying on PCs, needs to be operational.
(That makes it look like the US Government didn't yet want to give ammunition to those now bringing suit against SonyBMG. For Sony's sake, let's hope no one in Homeland Security installed one of its CDs into a Windows PC in breach of SonyBMG's EULA.)
Microsoft remains conspicuously silent, busying itself with releasing memos of its leadership's vision of the company's future. This is all good for making press releases, but it seems to me its past is what it needs to be considering too - a past of missed releases, unfinished yet released apps., purchased competing software which goes MIA, and security holes partially responsible for the current fiasco.
That past leaves it untrustworthy, as I see it. It needs to step forward boldly now and seize an opportunity to turn its ship of untrustworthiness around, and help its users deal with protecting themselves against the kind of DRM SonyBMG is promoting for its own alleged self-protection.
Microsoft needs to turn its capacity for ugly aggression towards those who like Sony would disrupt the relationship between content creator - musicians, filmmakers, etc - and content consumer.
The PC and its artifacts, like Windows or OS X or CDs or DVDs which enable content to be consumed in a variety of forms, places and times at the users' discretion, is not to be tampered with unless so chosen by a well-informed end user.
A return to trustworthiness - heck, its establishment in the case of Microsoft - would be a welcome seachange in a world of seething mistrust from Governments on downwards.
But it won't happen will it?
No, it will now be up to self-informing consumers accessing blogs like sysinternals.com to deliver a stinging message.
(UPDATE - November 14: Microsoft has an anti-malware engineering team. In a November 12 blog entry, team leader Jason Garms described how the beta of Windows AntiSpyware having "analyzed this software,... determined that in order to help protect our customers we will add a detection and removal signature for the rootkit component of the XCP... We also plan to include this signature in the December monthly update to the Malicious Software Removal Tool. It will also be included in the signature set for the online scanner on Windows Live Safety Center.")
So, as well as a NO SONY DAY, my next suggestion is directed to those who continue to purchase CDs - whether in stores, or via the internet.
Leaving aside SonyBMG for the moment, if you purchase a CD from another of the big 5, locate and write to their CEO and state quite boldly that it is your express wish that while their CDs' content-protection mechanism might not be as intrusive as SonyBMG's, you are now aware of the potential practice to emulate SonyBMGs', and it will not be tolerated.
You are putting them on notice that any tampering with your equipment will cause you to inform the appropriate authorities, and if you care, cite them (plenty of news about those authorities is popping up now in mainstream media).
Tel them you will also be writing to the artists' representatives affording them the same courtesy (heck, if you do it by email, just Cc it) and boldly state that it would cause you to reconsider your relationship with them. That relationship would be retrievable by the artist locating a form of DRM you can live with - yes, for some that will mean none, but let's be pragmatic here.
Whether it knows it or not, SonyBMG has presented consumers with a marvellous opportunity to express themselves strongly and vociferously about what irks so many in this early part of the 21st century: privacy and trust issues.
The concerns go way beyond music and video, but go to the heart of how one chooses to take control of one's life at a time when such control seems under considerable threat. Taking action to curb those threats, starting with music companies given the centrality of music to many people's lives, is as good a place as any to start.
So is buying a Mac. (You think I could leave a blog entry to conclude without a pro Apple statement?)
Now go write those letters!
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