The outrage is spreading beyond the world of bloggers and other lunatic fringe sites like this one. Wired Magazine has come out in favor of a boycott of Sony’s products. Count me in.
Their position is prompted largely by Sony’s completely un-apologetic approach to the mess they’ve created with their spyware-like DRM. Sony essentially says ‘OK, we’ll stop for now because everyone’s pissed, but we really don’t see what the big fuss is about. Oh, and we plan to get right back at it as soon as the shit-storm blows over.‘
Here’s the Wired article
Count me in too – I’m pissed off with DRM.
I’m very tempted just to use limewire – I am already doing that with all music produced by sony (perhaps I shouldn’t admit that here) because of this. I will probably start doing the same with Warner.
Will the record labels ever understand that DRM and copy protection DOES NOT HELP. There are still plenty of tracks on limewire and Bittorrent.
Why? – Because if you are intent on piracy you can get round these things. You just end up pissing off the honest consumer.
Pierce: I agree that Sony’s handling of this is very unfortunate, but that is not really good enough a reason to steal from artists. As the Wired article says, the online download stores (like iTunes) should let you PAY for your music without letting the labels look at your harddrive.
Also, there seem to be a Mac version of this Sony-DRM-spyware thing too, how does that actually work? I can’t seem to find any articles covering it.
No – perhaps it is not OK to steal from the artists. I feel sorry for the artists as I understand that they don’t have much influence in these issues. However, I think it will be good i the long term for these artists if Sony and others stop shipping these CD’s.
P.S. To be honest not much of the music I get is from Sony or Warner anyway so this doesn’t affect me much.
Let’s face it: we will never avoid DRM. However, DRM rules have to be clearly explained to the users, to the customers. Hiding protections has never worked, so why protect anyway? I say, let me pay for my music and then do whatever I want with it. If I want to give it to a friend, fine, I’m not going to kill the industry because of that. In the past, when only K7 were available, people were copying anyway, it never killed the industry. Yes, you have to punish people illegally downloading tuns of music and above all people offering the music to millions, but if I pay for my music, I want to do whatever I want with it. If I buy a car and I want to give it to my girlfriend, nobody is going to sue me because she didn’t buy hers. OK, not the best axample, but still, as long as I am not a heavy distributor of free music, why should I suffer from DRM?
I guess what I can’t tolerate is a double standard or two-faced system. Sony, which in many ways is a remarkable company, can implement a stealth DRM system AND at the same time, go after teenagers and elderly people for illegal file share (being they are part of the RIAA group). Seems immoral to me and actually waters down the significance of the whole illegal file-sharing thing.
I feel sad to SONY,
Back to late 90’s, I was quite a patron to Sony products, my TV, LD palyer, MD walkman, DCam….. too many to name, all from SONY, a ‘Name’ which produces the best electronics to me.
However, I found SONY plagued things up itself gradually, they made things which you don’t understand why you need to buy, they made walkman in their own disk format, they made too many different format memory stick not compatible to use in other electronics like the Toshiba’s, panasonic, Jvc ..etc. They still made their MD disk drive for PC when DVD R/W disk was only a dollar a piece in the shop. Today , they even made a stupid CD programmed to offend their customers. They just destroyed their Brand Name by itself.
I can’t believes such a big company large in this scale would come pathetic into desperate level. No wonder they changed so many CEOs.
I really unaccepts their way to handle critics over the XCP issue, and I will join boycott SONY until they come into something worth me to faith with.
Frankly , it ’s SONY that boycott itself since their managment is directionless. They’re lagging in market shares however didn’t do any
adjustments to help. They still believes customer don’t need to think or to compares to buy their products. The image of SONY is turnning vague among the whole market, and it ’s fatal to whatever business.
The whole world is in a olatile emotional state to SONY, any little things messes up would cost big to SONY.
the boycott of sony BMG music, or better sony BMG drm cds is a good idea. in fact, i am sure people already reject the cds from the moment it came into focus of media. it wouldnt not be very rational to mix up sony and sony bmg, they carry the same name (at least partly) but thats about it regarding todays forms of management, so in fact sony and sony bmg are competitors on certain fields of the market.
Huh-why to bother with a byocott which won’t work out anyway-sue sony on such a way that it will affect it’s share price and will wind up shareholders.
Need not to worry. There will always be a chinese shipment carrying all these titles in unlocked CDs coming to a town near you…
Maybe the artists who’s cd’s contained the VIRUS should be sued as well. I am sure they would have known about it…
It looks like NBC should be our next boycott target. They now want to block Tivo from allowing you to transfer TV shows that you recorded from television (that you didn’t have to pay for in the first place and would also still include the commercials) onto your iPod. Why exclude that one device when I can record shows onto a DVD and play it on my laptop, etc.
If you broadcast your show for all to see for free, then I don’t belive you should place too many limits on how an individual can watch said show… sure you shouldn’t be able to upload to for anyone to see, but if I recorded the show, then I should be able to watch it on any device that is capable of displaying it in the privacy of my home.
For more info visit: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1892489,00.asp
is it Wired News or Wired Magazine? Because they are two distinct entities. See the Wikipedia entry on Wired.
Joon – that’s news to me; they are on the same website.