Sony Rootkit Settlement Gets Judge's Approval 187
Lewis Clarke wrote to mention a ZDNet story about Monday's final approval of the rootkit settlement in the case brought against Sony BMG Music. From the article: "The agreement covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments ... At least 15 different lawsuits were filed by class action lawyers against the record label, and the New York cases were eventually consolidated into one proceeding. The parties reached a preliminary settlement with Sony BMG in December, leaving it up to a judge in a U.S. District Court in New York to make it official. "
Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4, Interesting)
At the end of all your time, you still can't claim the replacement CD + download + patch, (let alone compensation for your lost time) because you didn't buy the offending CD (it was a temp receptionist).
I really want to see someone go after Sony for a real settlement. For that matter, I'd like to see a government go after Sony. Corporations have the same rights as individuals, how about we give them the same responsibilities as well. I think a four or five years of community service for the entire company (say 20 hours a week), would be about what's deserved for a widespread crack attempt like this.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause clearly a filing clerk working at a completely unrelated division of Sony should be punished for this.
</sarcasm>
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, if I worked as a filing clerk, and got to do 20 hours / week cleaning the local church or helping old people or something whilst getting paid for and not doing my normal work I wouldn't consider it punishment.
But, what I meant was Sony as a company, doing the equivilant of 20 hours community service per week per employee for four-five years. They could pay others to do it, pay their employee
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Maybe they can hire someone who has to do community service anyway. Then they don't have to do it twice.
Efficiency is God. I think I'll be a management consultant. Maybe Dogbert has a vacancy. I'll go and buy a slab of liver.
then (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Thats how it works in the military when someone screws up. Remember the secretaries boss hired her and his boss hired him and so on. So in actuality its all their fault.
This is why interviews are difficult to conduct and be a part of. You need to filter the bad apples out and enforce policy within your company.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4, Insightful)
At least this will put record companies off this kind of behaviour.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree it sets a precedent. However, it's not the kind of precedent it should have set. It sets the precedent that a large corporation can do things that are completely illegal and cause widespread damage to the public and they'll just get a slap on the wrist.
A replacement CD, and a few DRM's music files doesn't exactly make up for the huge amounts of time it has taken and will take to fix their damage.
I know of a few computers just in my family that had this rootkit on it. My youngest brother is in college and the school provides a laptop to every student that the school maintains through an IT dept. They had to reimage his system when things got screwed up. My dad has a couple computers at work that got this thing. He had to reload everything on one and IT had to reload the other one. That was just from one CD that had been played on those computers.
There are countless people that have had to spend many many hours fixing what Sony did. What they did was illegal and very damaging. All they have to do is replace some CDs.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4, Insightful)
If this were the only action taken, sure. Fortunately, however, the *really* scary thing for Sony happened very early on: the DHS said they're choosing not to enforce the law on this basically because it was the first time any company had made this mistake, so they'll give the company the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't a deliberate attack. This one time.
Sony broke federal law (section 1030) many thousands of times, and the Feds noticed. Installing a rootkit on a computer owned by the government (one not for public use) is a crime even if you never use that rootikit for anything, and Sony was using it for profit. The DHS spokeman hinted that the only reason that Sony was still allowed to sell any product in the US was that the DHS was being nice, this one time.
This court settlement was nothing; the threat that Sony would no longer have a US division was everyhting.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies have directly plotted to murder a percentage of the population in some towns and gotten away with paying less in fines than it would have cost them to avoid killing the people in the first place. Even after it was revealed that this had been the prediction of estimates given to management before it made the decision. (The case was in Georgia, and I believe [with imperfect certainty] that the company was Dow Corning]. It involved the intentional poisoning of a town's water supply by illegally disposing of chemicals. It was a federal court.)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3)
There's a difference between killing a few unimportant villagers and messing with the government's stuff.
Sadly.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Against a *foreign* company, putting rootkits on government computers? Sure. There are guys who have spent their whole lives waiting for such an opportunity.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
This decision was made, of course, after some money changed hands behind the scenes. You know, a little bribe^H^H^H^H^H campagin contribution. If you think the Bush administration would have put Sony out of business for this, I'd really like a toke off of whatever it is you're smoking. Doing so is, after all, bad for business and bad for the economy, and if
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not if you opted out. Which EVERYBODY should do to class action suits.
The more people that opt of of class action suits, the less likely the punishment is to be a "slap on the wrist". The last thing Sony wants is a bunch of individuals out there with money hungry lawyers free from the confines of the class action settlement. It makes the class action settlement worthless.
We enable the slaps on the wrists because 99.9% of us don't take the time/effort to opt out of class-action scams.
As usual, the enablers of this nonsense is us.
established precedent (Score:2)
Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289) writes: You spend hundreds of hours following it up, removing the PCs from the network, checking to see there were no secondary malware infections, etc, etc, etc.
A blackhat would have been prosecuted for causing over $1 million worth of damage, easily. Such damage costs are mostly attributed to labor and downtime, so that's probably a fair claim.
Comparing
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me rephrase your question.
Why don't you blame the temp recpetionist for playing a music CD, instead of the amoral, multinational corporation that placed a piece of malignant software, designed to cripple the way a computer works on said music CD.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Insightful)
jacksonj04 wrote:
For me, this has become the saddest thing about the whole situation. I used to have confidence that a music CD was safe to use on all devices that could play standard CDs, whether it was a stand-alone player, a portable, or a computer. Due to this, I could walk into any CD store and, on impulse, by a CD without concern.
Since finding out about the problem with copy protection, I have stopped purchasing new music CDs. Now, when I pickup
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
I'm still not clear on what you're saying - do you think I should blame the secretary in my hypothetical scenario rather then sony?
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
What would happen is, if she doesn't sign onto the lawsuit, she is free to file her own claim because you fired her because of something Sony sneaked onto the CD.
You didn't fire her? That was nice... then this lawsuit does nothing for you, but since you weren't a party in it, you still have a claim against Sony with your own lawsuit, and now that Sony's lost this one, you'd have more ammo to win.
But I guess the point is that your company didn't join this lawsuit b
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
I don't know a single workplace that bans the playing of music cds (and I've worked in plenty).
Where I work the handbook specificaly says that I can listen to music CDs on my workstations PC as long as I use headphones and the CD is an original.
So, presumably (if you have windows admin access
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
If the company has a rule in place to prevent staff from using their CD players to play music, then she's done wrong. If that policy is in place specificaly to prevent rootkit and viral infections, and the staff are aware of this, then she can be blamed for the infection.
If it's just a "you can't listen to music" then she's not to blame for the rootkit, but would be subject to disciplinary action for breaking the "no music" rule. Which
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
I mean seriously so fucking what. If she can do her job while listening to music, why not let her use the PC to do it? Its a perfectly reasonable thing to do with the PC. Its something that 99.999% of the time, in fact, every time UP TO THE RELEASE OF THIS CD, has never caused an issue. Its something people have, and rightfully so, become used to being able to do.
Punishing her for something that she had no way and couldn't have known there was an issue, is asinine. It is sony that broke everyones trust,
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
For the longest time you could use the same argument about just about anything - personal email, IM, even installing a game here and there.... just so long as you're doing your job, right?
Heck, I'm doing this from work right now! But if slashdot were to suddenly put something malicious on their website... well, I've been using slashdot for 10 years and haven't had a problem up until now...
Most of the people where I work have their own CD/MP3 players, bookshelf sys
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Clearly it's her fault the rootkit was on the computer. She wouldn't have infected anything if she had just downloaded the CD like a normal person.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
When you left.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA: "Sony BMG still faces a separate lawsuit "over materially the same subject matter" from the Texas attorney general."
I've been trying to get Greg Abbott (TX's AG) to go after the antivirus companies, refuse to settle, and various other things that might keep this from getting swept under the rug. This was a devious and dangerous product that was released, not a minor technical flaw in a few CDs.
That's why I take Major issue (below) with the phrase "flawed digital rig
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Yeah... (Score:2)
I don't do Windows or Sony music CDs and wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the whole debacle. Did the rootkit still install if you had the windows auto-play-CD thingy turned off? Did it install corectly if you weren't running Windows in admin mode? It seems like the first couple of things someone administering a big Windows network should do is to turn off the CD autoplay and require all the users to
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing is preventing you from filing a claim against them. From the court settlement notice:
http://www.sonybmgcdtechsettlement.com/Notice.htm [sonybmgcdt...lement.com]
NOTE: the "Do Nothing" option is also for anyone who didn't buy the CD, whose computer was damaged because someone else loaded the CD onto their machine, etc. (for example, a temp office worker decided to listen to the CD and infected a PC). Write Sony, state your claim (number of pcs affected, time lost) and that you are not part of the class settlement and would like to know what they're offering you to avoid court action.
Heck, up here small claims handles stuff like this up to $7,000.00 If I were affected, I'd send them a demand/notice, wait 10 working days, then pay the filing fee. If enough people did this, they'd make a SERIOUS offer, one in line with the actual damages.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
It's in the big text at the top of the settlement document: http://www.sonybmgcdtechsettlement.com/Faq.htm [sonybmgcdt...lement.com]
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
As I point out elsewhere, the very top of the judgment includes people who didn't buy a CD but were nonetheless r00ted.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you think its OK that no government has gone after sony for distributing hundreds of thousands of rootkits, compromising hundred of thousands of computers?
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3)
According to this page [sonymusic.com], they're in New York, NY.
Read here. http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/nyc/smallcla
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:4)
Print out all the stuff where its obvious that Sony is in the wrong, and then a summary of your time that was wasted fixing this (a reformat, reinstall, and then reinstall of all software, and restore data from backups) + filing fee, if any, for the small claims action, + postage for the demand letter.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:5, Insightful)
I like that idea but for most of us small claims and legal stuff is unknown territory. Most of us don't know what to do from start to finish because we haven't done anything like that before. I would like to see (as in, someone else do it :)) someone like Groklaw post templates and procedures for filing small claims specific to a case. e.g.: how to stick it to Sony in small claims.
All the research of what to do is too difficult and I'm lazy and a bit intimidated. If it were made easier, I would do it and I'm willing to bet a lot of others would too.
A thousand people each filing small claims at $500 a pop would be more potent then one lawyer representing a thousand people in a class action. Think "Slashdot Effect" in the legal sphere. It might even set a legal/business precedent: don't screw your customers so bad that they'll mobilize against you.
I'm willing to overcome my laziness and contribute, but I need help and direction. Others need it too.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/5/15/114512/03
I thought it was fairly informative even though there was a settlement.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:3, Informative)
Up here, its very simple. You send them a letter by registered mail, explaining the problem and giving them 10 business days to get back to you. If you haven't heard from them in 3 weeks (the courts like it if you cut the defendant some slack), then you go down to where you file, and fill in a form (bring a copy of your demand letter).
The important words to put at the top of your demand letter:
How about a Replacement Computer?? (Score:2)
It seems to me that the issue was their choice of HOW they enabled DRM. Installing a hidden rootkit that opened up millions of computers to hacks was the real damage they inflicted. How will a new CD secure these computers and remedy those affected in an appropriate way? It's like saying, "I'm sorry for smashi
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
This is normal for class actions. You get 'actual damages' for anything that can be proved to apply to everybody in the class. Not everybody who bought their crappy CD had to clean up the mess at considerable expense.
I really want to see someone go after Sony for a real settlement.
And that is exactly what you're supposed to do. If you were one of the smaller group who were severely impaired by Sony's reprehensible actions, you're supposed to take them to court and hit them for the whole thing. Yo
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2)
You can. No one is bound by the class action settlement. You can opt out of the settlement and pursue your own independent damages claim against Sony.
Re:Wow! A replacement CD! (Score:2, Insightful)
You must not be in the US. Here, corporations have way more rights than individuals do!
Re:Fines (Score:2)
The worst case scenario for white collar crimes is your Martha Stewart incarceration with a felony conviction. You have to really screw many things up to get penalized like her though.
No one is ever going to jail over this one or anything like it because the corporation is the "individual" being prosecuted. Individuals within a corporation rarely get penalized. It's your average American "win-win."
Take them to small claims, it's absolute
Opt-in website (Score:5, Informative)
The solutions given almost don't seem worth it, but I'll probably opt-in anyway just so that little bit of money gets drained from Sony so they don't do this again.
Re:Opt-in website (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony is getting away with basically paying nothing here. Sure, they'll put it on their books as having cost so many millions in lost revenue or whatever for tax purposes, but the actual cost is pretty much zero.
Re:Opt-in website (Score:3, Funny)
Flawed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe it didn't (Score:2)
1. stealthily put a general-purpose rootkit interface on your computer, that leaves it wide open for any script kiddie to hide their malware with,
2. utterly break your computer if you try to uninstall it, even after you no longer own the CD or are interested in listening to the music on it
3. have exploitable bugs in both the original rootkit and in the "solution" to the problem they created
then no, it didn't do exactly what it was supposed to do. Pushing DRM on t
Well, yeah. (Score:2)
If... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone should be incarcerated over this.
LK
Re:If... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If... (Score:2, Funny)
n.
1. Influence; pull: "Women in dual-earner households are gaining in job status and earnings... giving them more clout at work and at home" (Sue Shellenbarger).
2. Power; muscle.
Re:If... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If... (Score:2)
From a technical point of view his methods sound rubbish, and I've seen him on tv- he's an idiot. But the US government is treating him like he's murdered 2000 people, not 'hacked' into a computer system...
Re:If... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound harsh? I'm a professional engineer. I own a corporation. If somehting bad happens due to my negligence in a design, I am still personally responisible, and can (1) lose my license to practice (2) lose my corporate authorization to do business (3) face financial penalties (4) be found guilty of various criminal offenses personally for acts done as a managing officer of the corporation. I only ask that Sony be held to the same standard.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I'd like world peace, too.
Re:If... (Score:3, Funny)
That will only happen when Sony can no longer purchase the US government.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I'd like world peace, too.
"We're the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing!" - from Sneakers
Re:If... (Score:2)
Not to excuse Sony's sleezy actions and subsequent pat on the wrist,
Re:If... (Score:2, Insightful)
2. All someone has to do is write something that changes the position of decimal places on infected systems.
3. Deaths
This world is run by managers sitting on the shoulders of engineers and scientists. When it hits the fan the managers come out smiling but engineers and scientists are often not so lucky.
Re:If... (Score:2)
Re:If... (Score:2)
Re:If... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If... (Score:2)
The problem is that a _company_ did the bad thing, not a "person". Can't put a company in prison, now can you?
Now, you can fine a company. I don't remember who, but if I remember correctly, a second company, not Sony, actually wrote and packaged the rootkit for Sony, and Sony was only wrong in that they did business with said company. We all know it was an innocent mistake, right?
The thing is that I don't hear anything about the company that created the thing, and
Re:If... (Score:2)
No, that's what the board of directors is for.
I'm sorry, but that's not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like when Ford and Bridgestone decided to go ahead and release the exploding tires. Sure a few people got killed, but we can't press criminal charges! These are our captains of the industry! Reason #122,234 that this country is seriously messed up.
Re:I'm sorry, but that's not enough (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hey, the worm we were developing to track down...um...terrorists...got away from us and got released to the net. Sorry about that. Hey, we'll bankrupt the company ok? We'll dissolve it and go on our merry way....oh, can we get some venture capital cash from you government types so we can continue our...um...research? Yeah yeah, national security and all that."
See, bullshit your way out of it a
Close, but not quite. (Score:2)
I hope it's a really, really big settlement! (Score:2)
How much $$ did the lawyers get? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How much $$ did the lawyers get? (Score:3, Informative)
This story should probably have waited until the attorney's fees were decided, since that's what these lawsuits are about.
Re:How much $$ did the lawyers get? (Score:2)
Re:How much $$ did the lawyers get? (Score:4, Informative)
You can read more about it here: http://sonysuit.com/ [sonysuit.com]
Worthless! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are Living in a Empire, get over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
While you serve the sufferance of the 5% of the families in this empire that own 95% of everything here, please be advised that you do not and cannot own:
Any sort of source code, any sort of music, any sort of transportation, any energy source.
You can however, license it from said 5% of the population here that own 95% of everything else.
You may buy a "rights" upgrade to your license to do as you please here, if you get caught violating the law. But bear in mind, sometimes we have to not accept your cash so we can calm the masses and throw them a "justice bone". In that instance should it happen, your "rights" license is null and void.
Above all else, while you are here please be advised that any government official can be purchased for a limited time depending on how much cash you have, and how much influence you want.
Just do not make it obvious and please use foreign banks to make sure transactions are not traceable.
Thank You and enjoy your stay!
-The Empire USA
The Socialist Republic of Canuckistan (Score:2)
Note that if you chose to become a citizen or landed immigrent and become ill, you are forbidden to pay a doctor for treatment. You must stand in line, and wait your turn for state medical care. We are not responsible for your death in this case.
Welcome to Canuckistan!
If you chose to accept state medical care, you may not leave your province of residence. To do so requires reimbursing the province for any medical care received, at the rates the province prescribes.
Welcome to C
That was fast! (Score:2, Insightful)
Quid pro quo (Score:2)
Sounds fair.
Re:Quid pro quo (Score:2)
Re:Quid pro quo (Score:2)
from TFA (Score:2)
Now, at least we know which CDs to avoid and if Sony keeps including any kind of copy protection software, their sales will plummet even more than they already have. The only thing left now is the drawing and quartering of the CEO and other upper-level officers, along with the dissolution of Sony's artic
Who will get the money? (Score:2)
Justice (Score:2)
Attorney's Fees and an Appeal Still Pending (Score:2)
Where's the criminal prosecution? (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want is criminal prosecution of the people in Sony's management who directed that this be done, and directed that this malware be distributed. I can't imagine that if I, Mr. John Q. Public, recorded some of my own songs and packaged them with a rootkit of my own, that I'd be prosecuted for it. More than that, I can't imagine that if some employees of S
OH the irony... (Score:2, Funny)
in allowing Sony to give out free downloads of DRM-laden music files
to people who's computer(s) they made vunerable with their DRM software...
Flawed, my ass (Score:2, Funny)
Flawed, my ass
If I get caught burning Sony Music's HQ to the ground than that's a "flawed" bonfire.
Bought a Sony CD? Get Compensated (Score:2)
These CD's are still out there (Score:2, Interesting)
Not enough time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about the $1000? (Score:2)
Re:Where can I find a complete list of CD's that.. (Score:2, Informative)