Arrr, it's Sonybeard the Pirate!
Posted: Tue, 15 November 2005 | permalink | No comments
In what can only be described as a massive display of SCO-you-worked-on-Linux-2.7-grade stupidity, it appears that the infamous Sony shiny-disc-that-pretends-it's-a-CD DRM is not only bad for your computational health, but is in fact a copyright-infringing work, as it looks as though it contains chunks of the LAME MP3 encoder/decoder library.
I don't think my commentary can beat what BoingBoing had to say on the matter:
Sony claims that it needs to install dangerous, malicious, underhanded software on its customers' computers to protect its copyrights, but in order to write this malware, it has no compunction about infringing on the copyrights of public-spirited software authors who make their works available under free software licenses like the GPL.
I suppose it's natural to believe that everyone is at least as sleazy as you are: for Sony's rip-off artists, assuming that paying customers are planning to rip them off must come easy.
How can anyone even vaguely involved in the tech industry possibly believe that anything they write can't be popped open and peeked in, to find out what naughtyness they've done? The mind boggles.
Sony, you are on my official shit list. It's a long and prestigious list, but you've managed to climb very quickly to the upper echelons. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the nether regions of every Sony executive who may have had anything to do with this whole fiasco.
The original article is available, and is quite informative. Yay for BoingBoing, also, who provide me with so much of my daily interesting news.
Post a comment
All comments are held for moderation; markdown formatting accepted.