The plot thickens from day to day !
 

After violations of the LGPL were discovered in Sonys code, there is now evidence that the stricter GNU Public License has been violated as well:

http://hack.fi/~muzzy/sony-drm/

Some select tidbits in the "Rants and Whine"-page
http://hack.fi/~muzzy/sony-drm/rant-and-whine.html :

You may remember the thread about that decision here:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=37178

To what extent the whole thing was really done by a "third party" is at least questionable after considering the following facts:

Check out the links, there's more...

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If they (First4Internet) are incorporated, and in addition a public company, then the annual report should be a matter of public record. (At least that is the way it works here in Norway.) It would be interesting to see a list of shareholder, and know how in the world they covered those accumulated losses. I mean, that’s not exactly small change.

The way I read the information you’ve referenced to, there is strong reason to believe that First4Internet might essentially be a camouflaged division of Sony. Now, would that be to spread judicial risk? Or is this just an innocent new venture?

It is very interesting to watch what happens when corporations are no longer able to hide their intentions. In this case, I suppose, it remains an open question whether Sony’s misguided DRM/rootkit strategies were formulated inhouse, and it was merely the tecnhological incompetence that was outsourced. Or whether everything deserves the Sony signature.

Regardless – Sony has unwittingly offered the world of music buyers and computer users a timely lesson, although hardly in the direction they intended.

Sony has thereby done everyone a great public service!


With best regards,
ArcticStones

I suspect we shall find that F4I is a private venture by some Sony directors who saw an opportunity to make a little bit extra, selling the idea to their colleagues at Sony. Unfortunately, they decided to do everything on the cheap (probably because they didn't understand the details of what they were getting into) and have been found out. I expect we shall know if this is all true if the above directors cease to be Sony directors in the near future.

With respect to LGPL infringement, I don't see any legal action arising. I don't think LAME's developers have the money or time to hire lawyers capable of decking those from Sony - and they are the only people who seem to have a cast iron case. I would imagine that Sony would be found guilty of violating the license, but as they have recalled the CDs, it's hard to see any significant damages being awarded.

Of course, Sony has weakened any moral position they take on copyrighting with their actions, and it remains to see what action they take to remedy that. I think that even though the board of Sony haven't understood much until now, they must realise that some concessions on the future of DRM will be necessary.

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Well, I’ll tell you two things that I am going to do:

1.) I will wait until Sony takes serious steps to re-establish its credibility before purchasing any of the company’s products. I may be in for a long wait...

2.) At first opportunity I am also going to re-read Cory Doctorrow’s fascinating lecture to Microsoft. At their invitation he made a very convincing case against DRM ("Digital Restrictions Management").

Sony’s recent actions seem to have greatly strengthened Mr Doctorrow’s arguments!

(His fascinating and highly entertaining lecture may be downloaded as a PDF here. http://www.changethis.com/4.DRM. If you haven’t read it yet – DO!!) :)


– ArcticStones

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There now seems to be evidence that not only the LGPL, but also the GPL were violated. So the public release of the complete source is required which might still hold some surprises.
2
We owe the fact that at least linux-based devices with firewall code in them often comply and publish the source in good part to the action of Harald Welte and his website http://gpl-violations.org/ . It certainly takes some energy to do that, but it's entirely proven to work.

And if those who've already read and liked Cory Doctorows brilliant speech at Microsoft on how stupid exactly DRM is, you might want to read the sequel, ordered by hp:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~collin/test/hpdrm.html

I think that his conclusion, two guys in a garage could come up with a non-DRM business model that would do a major killing is pretty interesting.
Apples move to more or less "own" podcasting by creating the best client for it is one smart step in that direction.
What could follow would be for-pay, but non-DRM content, explicitly promoted as completely portable.

The GPL says that if you are distributing the executable, then you must make the source code available. But having "accidentally" distributed an executable that contains GPL code does not force the revelation of source code. You can just stop distributing the executable.
Some penalties might be incurred due to the unauthorized distribution that has already taken place. But these penalties are merely those available under regular copyright law - i.e. they might have to pay damages etc.

To say it another way, you only need to make the source code available if you don't want to be guilty of copyright violation in distributing the executable.

...and Sony only cares about copyright if it's their own ?

I fail to get your point, could you please elaborate ?

The whole thing is not an accident, it went on for a long time with a clear intent from Sony and due to the astonishing silence of AV-software editors until some russian guy spoke up and hell broke lose.

If he hadn't, this would still be going on, Sony 0wning the boxes of all their CD-customers, happily phoning home, giving malware shelter from detection, slowing down the machine...

So there certainly are a lot of Bad Things Sony did far worse than the GPL-violation, but I see no reason whatsoever that could make Sony win the case if the copyright-owners of that GPL-code decided to sue them.

Hence the reason I put "accidentally" in quotes.
My point was in response to your statement that Sony would have to reveal the source code. I pointed out that there is no such compulsion in the GPL - indeed since the GPL is just a distribution license, such a compulsion would not make sense in law.
If Sony distributed GPL-code then they are guilty of copyright violation (since they didn't have permission to distribute this code without supplying the source), but the penalties for that will be determined in a court the same as any other copyright violation. I.e. the GPL does not (and cannot) specify penalties for a copyright violation.

I'm not disagreeing. The only thing I disagreed with was that the revelation of the source code would be necessarily part of the penalties imposed by the court - such is unlikely.

Hidden Feature in Sony DRM Uses Open Source Code to Add Apple DRM
 

Yet another astonishing turn in one of the most long-lasting weird stories I've ever followed:

"Hidden Feature in Sony DRM Uses Open Source Code to Add Apple DRM"

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=940

Sony included code capable of +encoding+ FairPlay-"protected" music for use on an iPod. The code is not used as of today, but strikes as a somewhat mysterious move within the bigger picture of this scandal.

This code was lifted from a project by "DVD-Jon" under GPL initially intended to allow Linux-users to use the ITMS.

They have also a pretty smart analysis why that happened:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=941

The Princeton researchers Felten and Halderman just published a paper that gives a complete overview over the whole story entitled:

"Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode"

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/pub/sonydrm-ext.pdf

Having quickly skimmed the whole thing, I wonder:

Wouldn't it be the most sensible solution to completely outlaw any and all DRM, period ?
We have had ample occasion to see that

• it does nothing against piracy,

• can be a security and privacy risk and

• hurts competition.

Advantages only exist in the world-domination phantasies of the content-industry and the DRM-vendors, those who get hurt are the consumers.

Doing away with it for all actors in the market at the same time will allow real competition on the merit of the contents to take place rather than dividing the world into people who can listen to ITMS-artists and those who'll be with the plays-for-sure crowd and endless hassles of right now questionable legality to move music from some DRM-jail onto a free player.

How to check if you have the Sony Rootkit
 

This is a transcripts from the Podcast "Security Now" hosted by Steve Gipson and Leo Laporte.

Quote;
Steve: Oh, yeah. And one last thing. What it does is it hides anything that begins with $sys$ dot dot dot, I mean, you know, anything that begins with $sys$ gets hidden by this tool, even things that are not its. So, for example, to test this, Mark renamed notepad.exe to $sys$notepad.exe. It promptly disappeared.
The url for this is http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-012.htm

By holding down the shift key when inserting the CD it will not load the rootkit into your computer.
Tip thanks to Steve Gipson.
www.grc.com

iTunes – new restrictions on music you’ve paid for!
 

Voldenuit, I’ve overlooked this link until just now. I was rather astonished to read the following:

DRM always gives rightsholders the ability to unilaterally renegotiate the terms of the deal to take away rights you acquired when you got your device and media.

For example, many updates to iTunes contain new restrictions on the music you (have already) purchase(d). In the past 18 months, iTunes has instituted the following new restrictions:

•• Music can no longer be streamed to your computers wherever they are -- now they can only be streamed to computers on your LAN (no more listening to your home music server while you're at the office)
•• Music can no longer be streamed to any number of people on your LAN -- now you can only stream music to a maximum of five people per 24 hours. If your friends tune in for ten seconds of music and then tune away, that eats up one of your 24-hour slots.
•• Playlists can no longer be burned 10 times -- now they can only be burned seven times.
•• The iTunes API will no longer respond to all the apps you download to increase iTunes' functionality -- now iTunes contains a blacklist of apps whose API calls are silently discarded, as punishment for adding functionality that Apple doesn't care for.

You buy a song on day one and can do ten things with it. A few weeks later, you can only do nine things with it. Then eight. Then seven.

(Quoted here with kind permission of Cory Doctorow)


Question: Is it legal for a seller to change the terms of the sale after you’ve purchased their product?!


With best regards,
ArcticStones

I forgot to post here about some interesting points made in this article on The Register several weeks ago. Original article is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01...ll_widespread/

A researcher checked DNS servers around the world to see if the Sony Rootkit was still hitting Sony's servers. Some of his conclusions are a little suspect, but not where piracy was concerned.

In other words, real pirates (not 12 year old kids) went and mass-copied the CDs in exact detail (i.e so the DRM was still active) and sent them all over the world.

Good evidence if anyone asks "Yes, but do you have any evidence that DRMs don't prevent piracy."

It probably shouldn't be, but municipalities do it to home owners all the time.

Bramley, is it possible that Sony sold the rest of its stock surreptitiously, to "unconventional dealers", in order to cut its losses? Just asking...

A fair point that I don't know the answer to. I'd say no because that would surely have got Sony into more trouble.

It seems like the norwegians have a pretty strong conviction that a deal is a deal and changing the terms unilaterally is not an honorable way to do business:

http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2006/1138119849.71

I couldn't agree more.

Is anybody aware of a broader initiative to outlaw DRM as it has proven only harmful so far ?

Stealing from the public domain
 

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Thanks for bringing to my attention the Norwegian link, and for pointing out that steps are being attempted to remedy the situation – at least here in Norway.

I must say that I was suprised to read that Apple was doing. :( Because I was actually under the impression that Apple was finding a good middle ground!

Perhaps the best example Doctorow gives of DRM simply not working is the following:

"Big Champagne, a company that monitors P2P networks, says that iTunes-only tracks (e.g. assets that are only released within DRM wrappers) typically appear on P2P networks less than three minutes after they are released to the iTunes Music Store."

(my emphasis)

What is also of great concern, however, is how the entertainment industry has gotten away with implementing a policy that encroaches on copyright. Essentially, for years they have been "stealing" from the public domain on behalf of their shareholders!

Zone/region control has nothing to do with copyright. Nor does limitations on remote viewing, re-sale, lending, etc. How does this apply to me? Simple! When I was in California last year, I purchased some movies on DVDs, and like movies purchased in Norway, watch them on my 17" PowerBook.
Reason: Other than my Mac we didn’t have a DVD player, and I had better things to spend my money on.
Well, to my great frustration and suprise I couldn’t do that! Why not? Because Apple has imposed a "limit" as to how many times you can switch back and forth between zones.

To me this represents a perfect example of an ureasonable limitation on equipment and DVDs that I have purchased legitimately. I mean, all I want to do is watch my movies -- there is not a single pirated copy amongst them.

So, can a moderator, or anyone else, give me a single legitimate reason for Apple’s limitation? :mad: Or one that has to do with copyright? If not, why should I simply not hack my way around it, i.e. permanently disabling the zone control on my PowerBook? Would you be willing to share the recipe for doing so?


With best regards,
ArcticStones

I think the DVD region stuff is part of the license agreement that Apple has to adhere to in order to be able to use the DVD specification. I.e. it's not really Apple who is restricting you - it is the DVD technology owners.