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Sony BMG: DRM saga continues
Music giant says end is in sight after yet another week of security holes in its CD copy-protection technology and unsuccessful patches.
Another week, another hellish fallout for music giant Sony BMG Entertainment's use of copy-protection technology on its CDs.
Having endured a PR and legal nightmare for much of November over its use of spyware-like XCP software on about 50 of its titles, Sony BMG began this week by issuing a patch to resolve security holes in MediaMax software from Sunncomm on CDs like Alicia Keys' Unplugged and Santana's All That I Am.
But Princeton University researcher Ed Felten quickly found that the patch only made things worse and said as much on his blog, calling on Sony BMG to recall those CDs as it had those in the XCP case.
Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony and Bertelsmann, issued another patch yesterday that closed the hole in the patch.
The label told BBC News today that it was "reevaluating" its current copy-protection methods, which include using software that limits the number of copies a user can make of a CD by installing hidden software on that computer.
Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business, told BBC News that said all the bad publicity the company received over its use of the XCP and MediaMax technology had made it rethink its approach to stopping people from making illegal copies of CDs. The company also faces several lawsuits in the XCP case.
"The key point to remember is that copyright infringement is a huge issue for the recording industry as a whole and that's where we came from originally," he said. "But this whole story has led us to look at the approach we have to take going forward."
Hesse said it was too early to say where Sony was in the evaluation process or what might result from it, but he said the company was taking the reexamination very seriously, BBC News reported.
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