« Carnival of the Vicious, Invading Paleface Bastards #9 | Main | Monday »

December 5, 2005

Notes from Ferdy - The Sony Question

by Ferdinand T Cat

In the scope of a few years, Sony BMG entertainmant has created a fake film reviewer to praise its movies, instituted a spyware-like copy protection scheme for its CDs, and used free gifts to get its songs more radio play time.

Perhaps Sony is correct that their practices are technically within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Still, it is probably a mistake to build a reputation as the industry leader in fraud and corruption. Here's a radical idea: cut out the budget line item for Bribes and Lies, and pour the resultant savings into lower prices on the merchandise. I'm sure a lot more people would be willing to buy the DVD for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo if it were in the bargain bin.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


# At Mon 1:08 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (5) | More Notes from Ferdy

Trackback Pings

» Funny, but disturbing from third world county
This from a reader/correspondent at Chaos Manor: According to the research firm The Gartner Group: "What makes the Sony BMG incident even more unfortunate is that the DRM technology can be defeated easily. Gartner has identified one simple technique: ... [Read More]

Tracked on December 5, 2005 3:35 PM

Comments

The DMCA is simply a way to make criminals of us all for making reasonable use of material we have paid to obtain the right to use.


Posted by: David at December 5, 2005 3:37 PM

BTW, re: "I'm sure a lot more people would be willing to buy the DVD for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo if it were in the bargain bin."

You mean, "Double the number of people who would buy Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo..." to two?


Posted by: David at December 5, 2005 3:43 PM

I'm sure Sony BMG Entertainment can only create so much faux buzz around a picture, because moviegoers, for the most part, will hear it through the grapevine whether or not a movie is worth seeing. If a product is not worth the money, people might buy it in the beginning, but then it's history.

Cully Perlman
President
Degreedate.com

www.degreedate.com


Posted by: Cully at December 5, 2005 3:59 PM

Oh man, I laughed through both Deuce Bigelow movies... though I probably wouldn' buy it. What's funny is that overseas (largely minus western Europe) you can pick up any movie for $1. I watched a bunch of typically awful movies in Iraq just to fill the time. Fart jokes make soldiers laugh... heh.


Posted by: The Fastest Squirrel at December 5, 2005 4:43 PM

I doubt it's in the spirit or letter of the law to install malicious rootkits that enable them to spy on your listening habits and that allows virus makers to infect and damage your computer.

Oh, and is very difficult to actually remove.

And that uses someone else's code without attribution.

Their other DRM enabled CDs partially install before you click OK, that on Macs. At least they are labelled, prior DRM coded CDs had no info on whether or not they contain DRM. Evil, they be.


Posted by: mog [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 6, 2005 11:54 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

Post a comment