Ads in commercial software

[Kraellin]

oh my lord. they've just gone nuts, havent they. heh, no more sony cd's. no more blank sony cd's or dvd's.

gary,
this also follows in the wake of a new law the u.s. congress is either proposing or has already enacted. sorry, i'm not sure which here. i heard this on the Attack of the Show recently and since i was only half listening at the time you shld check their show notes to make sure you get it right. the thing was that 'Hollywood' was being given, or going to be given, control over all electronic devices such as dvr's, vcr's and i'm not sure what all, in that they would have the control over internal copy protection mechanisms within that device and could basically do anything they wanted within that device to help them prevent pirating.

like i said, i only was half listening at the time, so i probably have some of this wrong, but it sounded pretty weird to me; another of those Big Brother things we all know and love.

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

From what I've heard (and this was second hand, so can't verify its integrity), they want to be able to charge to grant you priviledges (which you already have for free), so you'd have to pay extra to watch a 2nd TV in another room, or to record programmes for your own consumption using a VCR or DVD recorder. There's a whole lot more to it, and this is just the tip of the iceberg if they're allowed to get away with it.

Christ these guys already make billions, but greed just breeds more greed. Or as the old saying goes "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

All we can do is to show our resistance, by fighting the passing of any such laws, and boycotting the products of companies that try imposing this privacy invading BS on us.

Gary.


Just thought I'd add a couple of Links to Sony Rootkit articles. (a Google Search will find many more).

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...al-rights.html

Follow up article on Sony's Uninstaller.

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...ecloaking.html

Note: Both these articles are highly technical, but are written in a clear and lucid fashion.

Reaction by consumers at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...g=UTF8&s=music