Texas expands spyware lawsuit against Sony BMG

[lovuian]

Texas expands spyware lawsuit against Sony BMG

01:22 2005-12-22
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott expanded his lawsuit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Wednesday, alleging that a second form of anti-piracy technology used by the label violates the state's spyware and deceptive trade practices laws.

Abbott sued Sony BMG in November, saying the world's second-largest music label surreptitiously included spyware on millions of CDs through technology known as XCP. That technology, included on 52 Sony BMG titles, could leave computers vulnerable to hackers, he said.

The new allegations involve an unrelated CD copy-protection technology known as MediaMax, which was loaded on 27 Sony BMG titles, including Alicia Keys' "Unplugged" and Cassidy's "I'm a Hustla."

"We keep discovering additional methods Sony used to deceive Texas consumers who thought they were simply buying music," Abbott said in a statement.
more...
http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2005/12/22/70287.html

I have to say having me pay Sony who they could give me Spyware is the ultimate sin...

[Dancing_Dave]

1. Interesting story....

Musicians have a hard time hating Sony because their multi-media Vaio computers are really quite reasonably priced....and they did help Rage Against the Machine distribute so many radical audio disks in the '90's.

But if Sony has turned to anti-democratic means of enforcing all possible copyrights, somebody needs to file the suit to put them in their place. It's still hard for me to single them out as being especially evil in this case.

[ixion]

2. intentionally exposing your computer to hackers isn't evil?

I understand your sentiments about Sony, but at the same time they are a technology company. They cannot claim ignorance specifically because of things like the Vaio® line.

Personally, I'm checking my CDs now if they're a Sony product. I don't really want my machine exposed because I chose to play one of their CDs. :grr: