mdlbear | Sony reacts, a little (Reply)

In the face of well-deserved adverse publicity over its DRM rootkit, Sony is offering a patch that reveals the hidden files. Of course, you still break your CD drivers if you try to remove it. Here's a reasonably well-balanced article (from the Washington Post).

In response to criticisms that intruders could take such advantage, First4Internet Ltd. -- the British company that developed the software -- will make available on its Web site a software patch that should remove its ability to hide files, chief executive Mathew Gilliat-Smith said.

Russinovich called the offer of a patch "backpedaling and damage control in the face of a public-relations nightmare" and emphasized that users who try to remove the files manually after applying the fix will still ruin their CD-Rom drives.

...

But according to Mikko Hypponen, director of research for Finnish antivirus company F-Secure Corp., users who want to remove the program may not do so directly, but must fill out a form on Sony's Web site, download additional software, wait for a phone call from a technical support specialist, and then download and install yet another program that removes the files.

I'd like to think that what we're seeing is the beginning of a popular revolt against the {music, movie} industry, that would end up with real reforms in the copyright and patent laws. But I don't believe it. Politicians listen to corporations with the money to hire lobbyists; common sense has nothing to do with it. But I do think that we're going to see a two-tiered system, with a small walled ghetto of high volume, high profit, corporate-published works, and a much larger web of freely-traded pro-am and amateur works under licences like the GPL and Creative Commons.