Rootgate Continues
If you're into digital music as I am, you watched with the Sony Rootkit (hiply referred to as Rootgate) fiasco with a sick sense of curiosity. I know I certainly did.
In case you haven't kept up with with saga, I'll summarize: For years now, the recorded music industry has been under seige from an aging business model, a falloff in radio listenership caused by bland music and stations that are more commercials than music, boy band after insipid boy-band, an increasing reluctance to take risks, changing consumer tastes towards DVD movies and videogames, and (during 2000 - 2003) a shaky national economy. To correct all of these problems, the recording industry decided to attack all of these problems at their source. Those pesky people who share music over the Internet. If only they can be stopped, all of these other problems will take care of themselves.
Enter a little software package called XCP, which Sony began to include on some CD releases from some of their most popular artists. At first, XCP appeared to fit the bill quite nicely. I know from my own personal experience that it prevented any music protected with it from being copied onto my PC. Of course, that is because I refuse to buy any CD that is copy protected, as that usually means that I won't be able to copy it onto my iPod. But that's Splitting Hairs.
For others who actually did buy the protected CDs, and allowed the rootkit to be installed, it opened a whole host of potential computer problems, mostly surrounding the possibility of receiving virus infections that utilized XCP's ability to hide itself, and be darn near impossible to remove. Even the United States Department of Homeland Security slapped Sony for that little move.
Skipping all of the boring class-action lawsuit nonsense that soon arose, which was soon settled, Sony indicated that all protected CDs would be replaced with non-protected ones. It was unclear if those unprotected CDs would eventually hit stores, or just be sent to those who had bought the album in its prior form. (In effect, making all of the protected albums "lost" albums).
Of course, I doubted my own stance and harsh refusal to buy any CD protected album, especially when the new Switchfoot album was one of the protected albums. However, I feel rewarded for the faith, as unprotected albums have begun to hit the market. I will continue to boycott protected albums, but now that unprotected albums are out, I want to reward Sony for doing the right thing (although they did have to dragged kicking and screaming into doing it).
I feel that a general boycott against Sony is a simplistic response to this that is doomed to send the wrong message. I witnessed many web sites and web forums that called for such a thing. The error is that Sony, like any other business entity, is driven by the botttom line. A general boycott is likely to send the wrong message, that is "All of your products are crap." A better message is instead "I don't like what you are doing with these copy-protected CDs, but I won't have any hesitation about buying an unprotected CD with your name on it." When the sales numbers are reviewed for those particular titles, someone's got to be astute enough to note what was behavior was rewarded and what behavior wasn't.
Is my own thinking naive? Possibly. I choose to view it instead as an expression of my power as a consumer who thinks for himself. As big a fan of Switchfoot or Our Lady Peace that I might be, noone's holding a gun to my head forcing me to buy their new albums, which have new onerous conditions that their previous albums did not. As a consumer, it is still my right to choose or not choose to buy these albums.
Rootgate Isn't over Yet...
In case you haven't kept up with with saga, I'll summarize: For years now, the recorded music industry has been under seige from an aging business model, a falloff in radio listenership caused by bland music and stations that are more commercials than music, boy band after insipid boy-band, an increasing reluctance to take risks, changing consumer tastes towards DVD movies and videogames, and (during 2000 - 2003) a shaky national economy. To correct all of these problems, the recording industry decided to attack all of these problems at their source. Those pesky people who share music over the Internet. If only they can be stopped, all of these other problems will take care of themselves.
Enter a little software package called XCP, which Sony began to include on some CD releases from some of their most popular artists. At first, XCP appeared to fit the bill quite nicely. I know from my own personal experience that it prevented any music protected with it from being copied onto my PC. Of course, that is because I refuse to buy any CD that is copy protected, as that usually means that I won't be able to copy it onto my iPod. But that's Splitting Hairs.
For others who actually did buy the protected CDs, and allowed the rootkit to be installed, it opened a whole host of potential computer problems, mostly surrounding the possibility of receiving virus infections that utilized XCP's ability to hide itself, and be darn near impossible to remove. Even the United States Department of Homeland Security slapped Sony for that little move.
Skipping all of the boring class-action lawsuit nonsense that soon arose, which was soon settled, Sony indicated that all protected CDs would be replaced with non-protected ones. It was unclear if those unprotected CDs would eventually hit stores, or just be sent to those who had bought the album in its prior form. (In effect, making all of the protected albums "lost" albums).
Of course, I doubted my own stance and harsh refusal to buy any CD protected album, especially when the new Switchfoot album was one of the protected albums. However, I feel rewarded for the faith, as unprotected albums have begun to hit the market. I will continue to boycott protected albums, but now that unprotected albums are out, I want to reward Sony for doing the right thing (although they did have to dragged kicking and screaming into doing it).
I feel that a general boycott against Sony is a simplistic response to this that is doomed to send the wrong message. I witnessed many web sites and web forums that called for such a thing. The error is that Sony, like any other business entity, is driven by the botttom line. A general boycott is likely to send the wrong message, that is "All of your products are crap." A better message is instead "I don't like what you are doing with these copy-protected CDs, but I won't have any hesitation about buying an unprotected CD with your name on it." When the sales numbers are reviewed for those particular titles, someone's got to be astute enough to note what was behavior was rewarded and what behavior wasn't.
Is my own thinking naive? Possibly. I choose to view it instead as an expression of my power as a consumer who thinks for himself. As big a fan of Switchfoot or Our Lady Peace that I might be, noone's holding a gun to my head forcing me to buy their new albums, which have new onerous conditions that their previous albums did not. As a consumer, it is still my right to choose or not choose to buy these albums.
Rootgate Isn't over Yet...
posted by BryghtSyde @ 6:29 PM
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