This is Sad

November 12th, 2005 | Filed under Technology

So if you’ve followed either the national news or even the lands of geedom and nerdery, you’ve no doubtably heard about Sony’s latest screwup.

Feel free to check out the links to get the scoop on what’s happening, but basically Sony has been installing what is called a “rootkit” when you insert copies of certain Sony CDs into your computer. A rootkit basically opens up your computer to an outside attack from malicious coders all in the name of making sure you don’t copy a couple of CDs. While everyone appears to have a comment about this I’m going to let the lovely Stewart Baker make mine for me.

It’s very important to remember that it’s your (Sony’s) intellectual property…it’s not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.”
-Stewart Baker, Department of Homeland Security

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Sony you used to be and still could be a great company but you need to start thinking about the consumer instead of protectly all of the subsidiaries you own. Movies and music are created for people to enjoy, so start worrying about that instead of how many copies of Celine Dion’s new CD I can or can’t make.

Via Slashdot and the Washingtonpost.com.

Update: Here is a great story on Wired summing it all up.