On top of all the other bullshit and lies from Sony over the past 2 weeks regarding their DRM rootkit (see my previous posts here and a good timeline summary from BoingBoing), it now appears that Sony themselves have violated a copyright. It looks like some of the software sony used is ripped off from the Lame mp3 encoder. Lame is an open source software project published under the GPL, which allows anyone to use it for free, but you have to acknowledge it and return any modifications back to the community for further use under the same license. Well it appears that Sony or one its DRM suppliers used the open-source Lame code and neither acknowledged nor gave back the modifications. For a company that makes so much noise about protecting their intellectual property, they don’t seem to have any qualms about stealing others work.

Sony in general is very consumer unfriendly. Ever since they release the playstation portable last spring they have constantly been releasing firmware updates for the thing. While they have added a couple of new functions most of the updates have done nothing more than disable the hacks that people have done to allow them to create and play their own games on the device. There are people out there creating there own games or emulators to play older games. Sony doesn’t like this because they don’t get a cut like they do when people buy new games from the store. So they play cat and mouse, but each time they do this it is defeated again within a couple of weeks.

I will no longer purchase any Sony products of any kind, including hardware, software, music, anything! I urge anyone reading this to also boycott sony. Clearly this company does not deserve to be in business any more.

Update: Boing-boing is keeping a running log of events in the Sony rootkit drm debacle here

Earlier this week it was revealed that Sony music has been installing a particularly nasty type of DRM on some of their audio cds. There is a technology called rootkits which gets into the lowest level of your computer operating system. At that level programs actually modified operating system instructions and redirect them. In this way for example if you list the files in a folder a rootkit can intercept the call and return a falsified result. By doing this files can be cloaked from view. This stuff was originally developed by hackers as a way of invading computer systems without being detected. Rootkits can be discovered with some specialized software like RootkitRevealer. A lot spyware and viruses use rootkit technology to prevent being detected and removed. A really good explanation of rootkits can be found by listening to to Episode 9 of the Security Now podcast. Security expert Steve Gibson explains rootkits in a very clear concise way. This is definitely worth a listen, as is the whole series if you use a computer with an internet connection.

Mark Russinovich is the guy who wrote RootKitRevealer and he was recently testing the latest revision on his own computer. In the process of testing, he discovered a rootkit on his computer. Of course as a security expert who knows how to protect himself, he was quite surprised at this. He wrote a very detailed description here. What he found is that a music cd he recently purchased had installed this rootkit as part of its digital restrictions management (copy protection) scheme. It now turns out that the software that Sony sureptitiously installed on his and countless other computers around the world was actually very dangerous and put a lot of people’s computers at risk. The sony drm was so poorly written that it cannot be removed without damaging the operating system. Virus and spyware writers can take advantage of this spyware to cloak their own malware now. Sony and other music companies use this drm technology allegedly to protect there music holdings from being shared on p2p networks and sold by pirates on street corners. The problem is anyone with any technical savy can get around this protection by simply disabling autorun on a windows computer to keep it from installing anything. Also copying the cd on a linux or mac computer will also bypass the drm. All the cds that have ever been issued with drm are readily available on file sharing networks.

The disgraceful part of this is that the only people who will be hurt by DRM are people who actually go out and pay money to the record companies to buy their music. So if you are foolish enough to be “honest” you will put your computer at risk of being hacked or damaged so that you have to reinstall your os and software. If you are sharing music you will be fine. Is this a good or ethical practise? Is it good to punish your honest customers while being totally ineffective at trying to protect your revenue stream? If you are going to buy a cd check the package for indications of copy protection or enhanced features. If there are any such markings put the cd down and walk away.

I don’t buy any music from labels that members of the RIAA anymore. This both because of the drm they use and the lawsuits that they have filed against, their customers. Boycott Sony Music and all members of the RIAA. Buy music from independant musicians through their websites or companies like EMusic, MagnaTune, Mp3Tunes and other music sellers that actually give a substantial amount of the money back to the musicians rather than overfed record executives like Edgar Bronfman and Howard Stringer. There are a bunch of links over on the sidebar, to new musicians I have found recently. There are also links to sites like the Association of Music Podcasters and the Podsafe Music Network. From there you can find links to lots of music podcasts where you can discover new music that is worth listening to and supporting.

BOYCOTT SONY!!!

Slashdot had a piece today pointing to a NY times article about whether the new 5th gen iPod
may have been a mistake. The basic premise is one that many in the press have repeated in recent days that the video capability of the new ipod is in adequate. Frankly I think the whole discusion of the ipod’s video feature is pointless. Prior to this past Wednesday when he announced an ipod that could play video, when asked about it Steve Jobs always said it was a bad idea. He said that the experience of watching video on such a small screen would not be enjoyable. He was right. I also don’t think that very many people will be willing to pay $2 an episode to watch tv re-runs and music videos (actually who would want to pay any price to watch music videos?). In the first few weeks some curious people will surely buy them just to check it out. However, I think that sales will quickly wane. Watching video is a distintcly different experience from listening to audio. You actually have to WATCH the screen. When you are watching video, you generally can’t do anything else. I listen to my ipod in the car when I am commuting to work, when I am sitting at my desk writing code, walking at lunch, reading blogs, cleaning the kitchen after dinner, working in the garden, you get the picture. There have been a variety of digital video players on the market for well over a year. None of them have sold very well. The only portable device that plays video that has sold in any significant numbers is the playstation portable, and that is mainly because it is a great game machine. There have also been portable tvs around for well over a decade, none of which has been particularly succesful, certainly nothing that has done as well as the ipod.

There is also the issue of the copy protection. No big media company will allow their stuff to be sold without some stupid drm scheme. So that means that videos you buy from itunes cannot be burned to dvds (although you can back up the files to dvd for archiving, you just can’t play them on any dvd player). The only place you can watch them is on the computer or ipod. Who the hell wants to pay for video you can’t watch on your tv? This will I think be the deal breaker.

Over time there have been three commercially succesful classes of portable media devices that have sold in huge numbers. The first was the Sony walkman tape player ( and the countless clones). The second was the portable cd player. In both of these cases, the generic clones generally sold quite well because there wasn’t much to distinguish any of the players. Because of the limited capacity, the user interface was not very critical and they were all pretty much the same. The case styling varied a bit but functionally, they were indistinguishable. Then came the mp3 player. They did OK when the first Rio players came out but it wasn’t until the ipod that really high capacity players started to sell in huge numbers.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the 5G ipod will be a failure. Not by a long shot. I think it will sell like gangbusters. It just won’t be because of video. Video is really a non-issue. Video will be one of those features like all the other “extra features” (think fm tuners, voice recording, etc) that most of the other competing players have but that hardly anyone uses. The ipod will sell for the same reason it has always sold. It is just the best digital audio player. The scroll wheel gives it the best control interface of any audio device. For high capacity players you need a interface that lets you easily scroll through long lists of audio files. The scroll wheel works because you can scroll through the list with your thumb without lifting. With the linear touch pads of devices like the creative and iriver players, you have to lift your thumb repeatedly to go through a long list. It just doesn’t work as well. The new version of the ipod has all the virtues of the previous generations (except for the faster firewire interface, now usb only) in an even thinner, better looking package. By making such a big deal about the video stuff, complainers are just whining about something that ultimately I feel will be irrelevant.

Om Malik has a good post about how most of the digital music download services are doomed to fail. I wrote about this yesterday and Om’s post just reinforces what I wrote.

Mobile music on phones via cellular companies is going to be the most overrated business move. Why? Mobile operators are not known for their ease of use, and even today (barring voice) new phones are inherently complex. Have you tried to look up calendar or contact information on a Motorola? Imagine downloading music, and listening to it on a phone.

The services that I think will suceed in the long run (besides iTunes) are the likes of emusic.com
that offer music from independant musicians (DEATH TO THE RIAA!!) completely free of any drm. The service is easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and lets users listen to the music anywhere they want thanks to the lack of drm.

I have been reading lots of items in recent months about how analysts and cell phone providers are convinced that mobile phones and the providers music download services will defeat the iPod. I believe that they are all completely wrong for a number or reasons. Number one is the greed of the music industry and the cell phone companies. Right now iTunes and other music download services charge $.99 a song. I personally think that this is already to high given that the product is already crippled by DRM and lower sound quality than a physical CD (I won’t even get into the fact that most of the stuff pushed by the major labels is complete crap, that is for another time). Considering that the distribution costs are vastly smaller for downloading than phycical distribution, the labels have absolutely no justification pushing for higher prices which apparently exactly what they are pushing apple to do. The phone companies are even worse, they apparently want to charge as much as $3 a song. I don’t even get why people would pay that much for a 30 second clip to use a ringtone, who in there right mind would pay that much for songs that you have to download over the slow cellular network (probably using up your minutes at the same time).

Now, how this all affects mobile is that there will be a huge tide of MP3 players from a number of different vendors coming into the market, in the form of music-enabled phones. So what’s going to happen when you’ve got all these different phones being billed by carriers as iPod killers or replacements and people come to find out their music won’t play on them, or they can only listen to music that’s been bought from one specific store or service? They’re going to get pissed off, that’s what’s going to happen. They won’t buy music that’s tied to a specific device or has onerous limitations on what they can do with it — which will probably rule out any carrier’s download store from being a success. Regardless of how the record labels see things, people want to own their music, and owning music means being able to do with it what you like, and play it on whatever device you want. This means that vendors that focus on syncing, rather than playing along with carriers’ dowload shop dreams, will be the winners. Few operators understand this, though, and their stranglehold on the retail channel means it’s going to be hard for manufacturers to succeed.

Worse still than this is the drm restrictions that want to put on the music. The phone companies don’t want us to listen to music that we already bought, they want us to buy it all over again. Apple and Motorola have been working on a mobile version of itunes to use on moto phones for over a year. Apparently it has been ready to go for quite some time. The problem is the phone companies wont sell it. The phone has apparently been configured so that users can take music they have already bought from itunes, and load it onto their phones just like they do on an ipod. This is unacceptable to the phone companies because they only want people to buy music from them. of course they don’t want you to transfer the songs so if you lose, break or upgrade your phone, you have to start all over again. So you get to pay a lot more for a lot less functionality. Of course their are other issues like the poor battery life of a fun that is playing music, the lousy user interface, etc. Well I don’t think people are that dumb. People want there phones to be good phones, and there music players to be good music players. Most importantly they don’t want to get ripped off by their phone company.

Record and phone companies have shown no signs yet of common sense when it comes to business pratices, so I am confident that the mobile music business will be a miserable failure.