RIAA President: Sony Has Acted Very Responsibly

The impartial and well informed president of the Record Industry Association of America (read USA) says:

"The problem with the SonyBMG situation is that the technology they used contained a security vulnerability of which they were unaware. They have apologized for their mistake, ceased manufacture of CDs with that technology, and pulled CDs with that technology from store shelves. Seems very responsible to me. How many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they've taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?"

The full interview is available at CP NewsLink.

SonyBMG are being forced to act (at least partially) responsibly. In response to the exposure, SonyBMG lied about the effect of the installed software. The EULA incorrectly described what the software would do. SonyBMG dragged its feet in coming up with a response and made the removal solution cumbersome to implement, relying on the well known inertia "I give up" response of Joe Public. SonyBMG tried to dismiss the security issues as trivial, and that nobody really cared. There are a plethora of legal suits against Sony right now, which I postulate is the real reason for Sony heading in the right direction. Check RealTech's take on the matter.

The full interview has the RIAA president using a lot of fragile analogies, misinterpreting points of law and producing unsubstantiated factoids. A propaganda genius that I have not seen the like since Telstra sent me a full email explaining why they are increasing the line rental so much. Don't read this article unless you are familiar with what he is talking about, you may be influenced to believe. If you do end up on Cary's side then avoid Scientologists at all costs!

"Sony Has Acted Very Responsibly" ... to it's share holders. And in the end, that is what is important, right? The shareholders' dollars over the rights and freedoms of the client. Public relations from Sony sucks. Always has. Apparently they have to change PR firms very regularly.

I am sure people are getting tired of this, I know I am. Kicking Sony was more fun when I would do it and people would wonder what I was talking about - you know, the really poor quality items they sell and the exceedingly poor after sales service. I didn't mean to post yet another entry for SonyBMG DRM evilness as I am more in the habit of updating older entries. However DIGG has this new "blog this" feature that I had to try out and I wanted to test it on something that I could say more on. I recycled the graphic. See, no new pixels were harmed in the making of this blog entry.

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