To this day Sony's rootkit can be exploited for viruses and Trojans with so much ease... Its disgusting... Serves them right, I mean what the hell were they thinking? DRM is one thing blatant sabotage of a consumers equipment is quite another...

Again if this comes to pass that no other company will ever be so stupid to allow such a practice again all the better.

This is wonderful news. Of course Sony is responsible for the rootkit fiasco but if they can destroy another DRM software company in the process then great, I'm all for it.

"Bite the hand that feeds you."

What a damned hide Sony has, it's not the company that I once knew and respected for its excellent audio and video equipment, marvellous documentation and service.

No one will convince me that Sony didn't exactly know the extent of the root kit it installed on its CDs, of course it did--what were Sony's software and QA engineers doing when they evaluated the prototype code let alone the gold release stuff they put on the CD? Fiddling whilst Tokyo burned I presume?

Are they trying to tell the world that it's not Sony's fault? (Come on, pull the other one, who's kidding who and the band played 'Believe It If You Like'. What utter crap. Fire your PR Company instantly dudes--this story will do you more damage than the original root kit one.)

…Now, after having rightfully lost through a consumer backlash, Sony is trying to recoup monies from those to whom it originally contracted its nasty dirty work. What miserable dishonest low life bas****s they are.

Not that I've time for the Amergence Group, Inc. / SunnComm International either, I hope they go broke. But that's not the point which is this big multinational corporation, the once-much-respected Sony, will now stoop to anything for a few bucks, and an opportunity to clear its name by trying to make its junior partner in crime take the complete wrap. Sony's founder, Masaru Ibuka, must be turning in his grave with horror.

These mongrel carpetbaggers Sony, Amergence Group Inc., and their PR companies and lawyers et al are only making a rod for their own backs; eventually, both consumer legislation and their shareholders will screw them into to ground for behaving so utterly unethically.

If any of you low-life Sony executives, PR people and lawyers ever get to read this, then you'll be pleased to know that this once-loyal and sometime commercial buyer of Sony products will never buy another one. You've lost me as a customer forever.

I hope you're satisfied with your fabulous marketing and business prowess, you must feel really good about it.

I hold the same philosophy. I haven't bought Sony products (and yes that includes it's movies) since the rootkit issue.

Sony will lose more money when they have to pay the legal fees for the company that they paid to make the rootkit.

Someone really ought to sit down and explain to the fools at Sony the concept of 'letting it lie'.

Instead of raking up the whole affair and reminding everyone just how criminal, dishonest and anti-consumer they have been (in the very recent past) they might have considered their (light) fines and compensation a matter of getting off lightly (afterall people have been sent to prison for similar illegal activity).

Way to go Sony guys, another PR coup!

LMFAO.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Pot meet kettle.

FOCROFLMFAO

Forget the creek, there are lawsuits now.

Yea Beta news reports news and does a horrible job of it too :)

Thank god the point of this site is software and not for the news. If it was just a news site this website would have been shut down a long time ago

LOL

Yet you comment on the articles, so you must be reading the news...interesting.

"Yea Beta news reports news and does a horrible job of it too :)"

Wow what an ***. If you don't like it then by all means go somewhere else for your news. I can assure you nobody will miss you here.

Whoa, that's about the most retarded thing I've ever heard.
If you buy a gun and shoot someone with it, you can't go after that and sue the gun manufacturer for the death.
Same here, it was Sony alone who put the rootkits on the CDs, so they're solely responsible for it!

Tell that to the tobacco companies. :-)

EXACTLY!

Guns have good intentions as well as all the publicised bad ones.

Rootkits don't.

But guns don't shoot themselves (most of the time,)
Guns have owners, and those owners share a very powerful responsibility. SOny also has responsibility, it obviously has a QA department and attorneys, so for them to go blaming a third party shows absolutely no class at all for this once great company.

Have you guys ever heard the expression #$%# runs downhill. It's just that and nothing more.

Sony -is- still responsible. You hire multiple consultants to quality control products and services bought from vendors. This isn't a small business - it's SONY!

"Amergence is accused of offering Sony software that did not work as promised"

I'm thinking that the part that didn't work is the part that kept people from finding out about it...

ROFLMAO ....

If that is the case then, I do think Sony has the right to sue! Hey..if they were told that people were not gonna be able to find out and in the end they did and it cost them $5.75 million, then hell yeah..I mean, it was wrong by Sony but business is business, the company wanted Sony's money no matter what, Sony wanted our money and everything went to hell, so...everybody got screwed ;)

its more like, it didn't allow them to hold on to an outdated business model while treating the consumers like sheep. It's music not crack, companies seem to forget that a lot.

why do they even use copy protection. theres always way to crack those, or you can use optical cable to record album fully digital.

Sony is still responsible given they were the vendor selling to the end consumer. However, it is not difficult to believe that no one at Sony involved with the music side of the business really knew what they were buying, or anything specific at all about rootkits. And if so, Sony might have a case. However...

...one lesson Sony hopefully learned from this is a concept I bet has already been mentioned more than a few times in Sony's corporate strategy sessions--convergence.

As music and computers meld/converge, so must some of Sony's departments and operations. In the future, I'm betting (hoping?) Sony will use its vast corporate resources to have someone in their computer division look more closely at anything computer-related in their music division.

Far as I am concerned Sony is still responsible. No doubt Sony has some form of quality assurance. It'll be interesting what the results of this lawsuit will be.

"issues resulting from technologies that were unrelated to its MediaMax technology"

LOL Does this mean blame Microsoft?

Hey, I can't blame sony for this. IF Sony really was unaware of the rootkit used in the software, I'd be pissed if I were them.

Shouldn't Sony be well aware of the protection they were using on their CDs? I mean if I hired a company to provide anti-piracy techniques to protect my product I would make damned sure I knew exactly how it worked. If Sony neglected to fully investigate the product they were purchasing then shame on them. Now they are pawning their own mistake off onto SunnComm. Truly sad.

Let us not forget the statement, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" by Thomas Hesse (President of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business).

Sony screwed up. They should just step up and accept their mistake.

"Let us not forget the statement, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" by Thomas Hesse (President of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business)."

Hmm, forgot about that. Yep, you have a valid point there.

And how true that statement is.

Some idiots think that Rootkits are Spyware, a Virus or even has to malicious..

None of these are true.

"Shouldn't Sony be well aware of the protection they were using on their CDs?"

In an ideal world, yes.

However, imagine you're a very, very large company like Sony:

You contract in people left, right and centre for all sorts of things. Hundreds, if not thousands of different things a year are brought in from contractors.

One forgot to mention they'd built in a rootkit.

It would be nice if everything could be checked, but sometimes it just isn't feasible and the odd one slips through.

this is what we would call a "big oversight" though.

*laughs*

Most folks don't know what radon is, and it has many benign uses. It still shouldn't be pumped into people's homes behind their backs.

When a fix was issued to cloak it, no that would not be an issue. Nope, not at all.

When uninstalling it caused peoples pcs to no longer work or disabled their cd drives, no thats not an issue at all.

When there was a class action lawsuit against them and they pulled the cds off the shelf,nope no issue.

To make such an asinine statement you would have to be getting paid or something because seriousily, you are in denial.

It was a little oversight that caused a big problem.

It wasn't a big oversight.

What you fail to mention is that the rootkit opened a communication channel on the PC. This opened the door for other malicios people to exploit the malicious door that was opened. Lets fill your house with fancy electronics and brag to people and then leave a couple of windows open for a theif to enter, same thing here. Rootkits are bad since they are made to not be detected and grant access to your PC by the creator. What part of that is not wrong I ask? Was it a virus NO malicious a major yes. I bet if some other company did you would be all over them.

I don't see how a contractor creates something without it being included into some for of spec sheet. If rootkit was included in the software it is because Sony wrote it into their contract.

Hmmm ... Now, that would explain why my sofa glows in the dark ...

I said radon, not enriched uranium, though I suppose the point remains...

*laughs*

Sony does it? No biggie.

If Microsoft were to do it? All Hell would break loose.

Funny how I recall you being vehemently against WGA, but so very forgiving of the rootkit.

WGA didn't do anything but disable non-critical updates and generate a pop-up now and then. The rootkit forced OS re-installs just to be able to rip a frigging CD.

Pretty big oversight too anyone not blinded by fanaticism.

It created a big PROBLEM.
I said this.

I'm talking about the events leading up to its release, not what it's doing (did) now.

WGA is intentional; it was designed to do what it does (i.e. *NOT* an oversight, it was meant to be like that).
Rootkits (probably) weren't intentional on Sony's part. The CDs were meant to stop copying, not to **** up peoples PCs.

It was a small oversight that lead to a big problem.

The copy protection was outsourced to another company; WGA is a Microsoft homebrew.

What more do you need to persuade you that the two really aren't even vaguely similar situations.

And if you remember rightly I also lambasted Sony over this in 2005 because at the time I didn't know they'd outsourced this to another company.

I'd very much like to see whichever company is responsible for the rootkit punished.

I agree, Sony aren't completely off the hook, everyone pays for their mistakes no matter how small or large, however I feel they are also entitled to some recompense from the company that screwed them.

Sound fair?

Dude, I normally don't reply to your comments but COME ON. I have to side with PC_Tool on this one.

IT DOESN'T MATTER if rootkits weren't the intention of Sony to stop copy protection. The fact of the matter is either they didn't ask how it worked, which is just plain stupid, or they did know and are trying to play a game of CYA with this lawsuit.

If you outsource something to another company, and you are going to bundle it with one of your products, shouldn't you know what the hell it is doing to do the thing you contracted the company to do? If you don't think you need to know, you are asking for this kind of problem.

Who gives a rats arse if it were home brew or not. You can't bash Microsoft for insecurity when patches are released then because surely their goal isn't to "**** up peoples PCs" as you so put it, but to provide a usable product.

Sony isn't entitled to jack because it is their own QA fault they didn't know what the hell the outsourced company was doing. Get over yourself, and Sony.

The reason why sony is responsible because first they said it wasn't a big deal, second they did not give much public knowledge about it and how to get it fixed, second their initial fix cloaked the rootkit so it "appeared" to have been removed.

This reminds me of Apple with the ipod issue where they were using Window machines (talk about irony) for the ipod which apparently shipped with a virus and instead of Apple saying "oops we made a mistake" it was turned around to "If MS had a more secure OS this would not have happened

"It created a big PROBLEM."

Only if you had a illegal version of Windows. Otherwise not so much. I didn't anyway.

Rootkits (probably) weren't intentional on Sony's part.

Ignorance is no excuse. Not for an individual, not for a small company, not for a large company.

Oh and I forgot to mention you have to be kidding.

"Let us not forget the statement, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" by Thomas Hesse (President of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business)."

- Yeah, if anyone ever needed proof of what a gang of revolting condescending ba*tards there are running Sony then look no further.

"It created a big PROBLEM."

Not for me. Unless you are trying to pirate a copy it doesn't hurt anything.

Wow. You guys don't even try to hide the fact that your full of s***. You never cease to amaze me lol.

*sigh* Not the WGA.

Well done for ignoring the rest of my argument.

Didn't quite read to the (one from) last paragraph?

I did actually say the exact same thing.

*sigh* Not the WGA.

Only person with a sensible response, thank you.

I completely agree with you. I really do.

There's just an addendum to my response to the issue that as it wasn't entirely Sony's fault, they do and should deserve *some* recompense.

"Sony isn't entitled to jack because it is their own QA fault they didn't know what the hell the outsourced company was doing."

Yes and no.

It's entitled to some recompense as it wasn't entirely their fault.
I'm not saying get the whole lot back, as yes indeed they were responsible too.

*Checks watch* Oh, sorry, thought it was 2005 there for a moment.

I almost laughed, and then I realized it was Paul Skinner trying to be funny.

It is 2007 and Sony just filed a lawsuit against the company. They did not file it in 2005, and you are reading a news site there chief.

BetaNews reports NEWS. This in fact, would be considered news.

Oh no according to the Sony shills Betanews doesn't post "news." Evidently anything that does not shed a positive light on Sony can no longer be classified as "news."