(I’m starting a new category “Boner Of The Month”, to list down those wonderfully unique incidents in the tech world that you juuust can’t put into words – without thinking of the word ‘boner’ that is. My first one should’ve been the recent Microsoft Windows update that crashed PCs and opened them up to viruses, a real humdinger, but I couldn’t Google a link to the specific one I wanted because there are just so many and they happen so often! I was also afraid I might not even find one every month, but hey, the timely one below just goes to prove when it comes to committing acts of stupidity on a regular basis, you can never underestimate your fellow man.
By now everyone should have heard about Sony’s infamous Extended copy protection (XCP) technology, that wonderful piece of stealth software that installs itself onto your PC to send information from it without consent.
A lot has been written and said about it, focusing primarily on the lawsuits, Sony BMG’s apology, and even technical opinions, but I’m afraid my initial thoughts are far more intellectual. They go like this: “dang that’s stupid.”.
I wrote about Digital Rights Management in an article before, and I just couldn’t emphasize enough how drastically important it is for people to understand the importance of this technology. Inasmuch as it can get confusing (ie boring), I maintain that anyone who has ever created an original piece of work that can be transferred digitally (songs, written work, graphics, etc.) needs to understand the impact of Digital Rights and the technology that can be employed to control its distribution.
And now there it is, an early attempt to enforce it, and likely not the last one.
Still I would’ve assumed at least a little creativity from Sony BMG. That just has to be one of the most overt, obvious attempts I’ve ever seen. It reeks of a decision from crusty upper management types as I sincerely believe no programmer worth his salt, or at least with the ability to write something like this, would attempt it, knowing as well as anyone who writes code that something like this cannot possibly be overlooked.
Will Sony BMG get away with it? Unfortunately, that’s likely. After the lawsuits are done away with, Sony BMG’s going to do their utmost to make people forget about it, and that’s exactly what will happen. Will it happen again? Likely as well. DRM is such a compelling thing to implement. Imagine, everytime someone rips your music, you’ll know about it! That’s a copyright’s lover’s dream come true, and much money and time will be invested in trying to improve DRM.
But will they get away with it? Now I think, THAT’s unlikely. The rules of software, operating systems, bits and bytes are the same the world over. If you write something that goes into PCs, someone is gonna know about it, and will hopefully raise hell. I’m looking forward to it actually. More fodder for my new Boner of the month category!
(note: Tell me about your own nominees to Boner of the month!)
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