Karma In Action : Sony Accused Of Using Pirated Software

[Lord of the Abyss]

I couldn't find this posted . . .

Link

RECORD label Sony BMG, one of the most vocal and ferocious opponents of music piracy, has been accused of using unlawfully installed programs on its computers by a small software company.
French company PointDev, which makes applications for Microsoft Windows, claims to have discovered pirated versions of its software installed on Sony BMG computers and is suing the label for €300,000 ($514,910).

PointDev said it was alerted to the illegal software after a Sony BMG employee rang the software company's technical support number for assistance and gave a pirated product key when asked for a customer number, French website 01net reported.

A raid on the French offices of Sony BMG in January revealed that almost half of the software used by the company may be unlawfully installed, according to the report.

The story was first reported in English by file-sharing website ZeroPaid and has since done the rounds on technology blogs, where authors and readers jumped to point out the irony of Sony BMG being sued for piracy

The record label has become infamous among the online community for its zealous pursuit of people accused of illegally sharing music. It has brought or threatened up to 26,000 lawsuits against individuals, according to media and marketing website MediaPost.

In 2005, Sony BMG caused a security scare by using a malicious form of digital rights management (DRM) on certain discs sold in the US. Sony suspended this form of DRM shortly after Microsoft defined it as "spyware", or spying software.

Sony BMG is one of the “big four” record labels that fund anti-piracy watchdogs the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Earlier this year, the IFPI was forced to cut costs under pressure from major record labels.

Local watchdog Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) says about 18 per cent of Australia's population are involved in illegally trading songs by email or peer-to-peer file transfers.

A request for comment on the PointDev lawsuit has been sent to Sony BMG Australia.

I guess piracy is only wrong for other people, eh ?

[Zixinus]

The delicious irony.

[KlavoHunter]

Delicious irony. I must eat it. *Gorges himself*

[Warsie]

Delicious irony. I must eat it. *Gorges himself*

such delicious cak...err, irony

I mean, HALF.

"Sony BMG is one of the “big four” record labels that fund anti-piracy watchdogs the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). "

will they end up fighting each other. Hope for it.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Copyright law is for the little people, indeed. I suspect this happens more often than people are willing to own up to, though.

[bilateralrope]

Didn't they steal some of the code for their rootkit ?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Didn't they steal some of the code for their rootkit ?

As I recall, yes.

[Warsie]

Didn't they steal some of the code for their rootkit ?

IIRC, all the older computer whiz people did that (70s-80s)

[General Zod]

Didn't they steal some of the code for their rootkit ?

IIRC, all the older computer whiz people did that (70s-80s)

What the fuck are you talking about? Sony's rootkit bullshit is only a few years old.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Zod, "back in the day", before microsoft was fully dominate, (yeah I know time of legends never happened) everyone was barrowing code from everyone else. DOS and C(++) were essentially open, and it wasn't until the late 80's early 90's that things closed up.

[General Zod]

Zod, "back in the day", before microsoft was fully dominate, (yeah I know time of legends never happened) everyone was barrowing code from everyone else. DOS and C(++) were essentially open, and it wasn't until the late 80's early 90's that things closed up.

I know this. I simply don't get how it's relevant to the thread.

[Plekhanov]

If the Sony office that was raided is remotely like that of any large company I ever worked for the pirated software must have been approved by several layers of management, and Sony can't simply pass the buck to the users of the software as they wouldn't have the permissions to install anything regardless of whether it was legit or not.

[Davis 51]

Sony has already earned my eternal hatred from shutting down Lik Sang.

Fuck them. Fuck them long and hard. I seriously hope they get hurt badly from this.

The irony is just too damn delicious.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well I thought that since microsoft, sony, apple etc. have been using corperate "Barrowing" of code and hardware for decades (including the infamous rumble function) there is no reason why we should be suprised....

[Lord MJ]

How much of this is Sony's fault and how much of this is the fault of employees?

I used to work for a tech outsourcing/consulting firm and there were a lot of problems with people installing unlicensed software. I'm not sure if it was pirated software or not, but it was always due to the employees. (After all they are mostly a bunch of developers with full admin rights, so they can put anything on their computers.) Other problems included putting software bought for personal use on company machines, and company licensed software being installed on personal machines.

Company usually paid some kind of fine around $100,000 or so a year as a result.

[Durandal]

Companies aren't required to comply with those ridiculous BSA audits, you know. You can just tell them to go fuck themselves. I worked for a small video editing business in high school, and my boss got a call from the BSA. They asked stuff like "Do you have licenses for all your software?" and "Do you realize that you could be fined up to <whatever> amount for using unlicensed software?" and such. He said "Yes" to both.

Then the guy said "Okay, well we'll need to set up a time so we can audit your business and make sure you're not using pirated software." To that, he said, "No".

[Darth Wong]

Companies aren't required to comply with those ridiculous BSA audits, you know. You can just tell them to go fuck themselves. I worked for a small video editing business in high school, and my boss got a call from the BSA. They asked stuff like "Do you have licenses for all your software?" and "Do you realize that you could be fined up to <whatever> amount for using unlicensed software?" and such. He said "Yes" to both.

Then the guy said "Okay, well we'll need to set up a time so we can audit your business and make sure you're not using pirated software." To that, he said, "No".

I never let people like that get far enough into their spiel that I answer any questions. If I get a phone call at work, it falls into 6 categories:

1) A customer
2) A supplier
3) My wife or any other member of my family
4) My son's school
5) The government
6) Everyone else

As soon as I determine that a caller falls into category #6, I try to get rid of him. I don't even need to know more.

I find it amazing that anyone could get a phone call from someone who has no legal authority over them and does anything other than trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible. There are so many salesmen cold-callers out there that you just get used to dumping them as soon as you can tell they don't fall into categories #1-5.

[Big Orange]

Sony has already earned my eternal hatred from shutting down Lik Sang.

I've not forgiven them for cancelling the upcoming DVD boxset of Dark Skies because they were too miserly to pay the music royalties (despite being a big music firm themselves), but then again I heard Sony has a consistent track record of neglecting to release television shows after one or two DVD boxsets or butchering television shows on DVD because of copyright. Of course old TV shows on DVD is a relatively niche market, but Sony are still pissing off hundreds of thousands consumers by failing miserably to consistently provide product none the less.

Sony needlessly hurting and alienating consumers over copyright for years but now caught hypocritically stealing software from another company is another piece of firewood for the great big firestorm Sony has inflicted on itself in the last four years.

[Davis 51]

Sony has already earned my eternal hatred from shutting down Lik Sang.

I've not forgiven them for cancelling the upcoming DVD boxset of Dark Skies because they were too miserly to pay the music royalties (despite being a big music firm themselves), but then again I heard Sony has a consistent track record of neglecting to release television shows after one or two DVD boxsets or butchering television shows on DVD because of copyright. Of course old TV shows on DVD is a relatively niche market, but Sony are still pissing off hundreds of thousands consumers by failing miserably to consistently provide product none the less.

Sony needlessly hurting and alienating consumers over copyright for years but now caught hypocritically stealing software from another company is another piece of firewood for the great big firestorm Sony has inflicted on itself in the last four years.

They also botched the US release of Advent Children. That movie was on the top of the selling charts for a year during pre-orders, and stayed up there for a month after it was released. That was from incredible hype. While the film itself is one of my faves, they completely butchered the dubs AND subs. In the dub, many of the voices were good, but the lips didn't sync at all, and that kinda ruined it for me. Why the hell did it take two years to do that? As for the sub, they fucked that up as well. I had friends who spoke Japanese watch it with me. They couldn't go fifteen minutes without pointing out something they got wrong.

The hypocrisy of them getting caught is what really shows. This is the same company that justified putting DRMs on all their music by saying "most customers don't know what a DRM is."

[Big Orange]

They also botched the US release of Advent Children. That movie was on the top of the selling charts for a year during pre-orders, and stayed up there for a month after it was released. That was from incredible hype. While the film itself is one of my faves, they completely butchered the dubs AND subs. In the dub, many of the voices were good, but the lips didn't sync at all, and that kinda ruined it for me. Why the hell did it take two years to do that? As for the sub, they fucked that up as well. I had friends who spoke Japanese watch it with me. They couldn't go fifteen minutes without pointing out something they got wrong.

Sony religiously supports very unbalanced music copyright laws and are too nickle n' dime in pre-production (bean count the possible money made by guessed future DVD sale figures), then they paint themselves into a corner, so they're unable to provide adequate DVD products - Dark Skies was not published at all despite the promises, Advent Children DVD was compromised by poor translation after years of delays, and the DVD of 1408 arbitarily had a different ending to the theatrical version. With such shitty service from Sony media piracy seems more reliable in comparison since Sony is failing to cater to the consumers out of a mixture of mismanagement and spite.

Sony discontinued many television shows from DVD because they claimed they weren't making enough money (also likely putting nasty Spyware into the DVDs of TV shows that were released), but then they squander billions in universally laughed at commercial boondoggles such as the PS3 (overpriced and having the same games as the 360), PSP (a overengineered brick), and Blue-Ray (true it did beat the HD-DVD, but that is likely akin to being the tallest dwarf).

The hypocrisy of them getting caught is what really shows. This is the same company that justified putting DRMs on all their music by saying "most customers don't know what a DRM is."

Sony as a corporation mainly being ongoing fail in recent years could be attributed to the lack of proper communication and coherency between the departments, which could point at the diminished product quality and making a total pigs breakfast out of copyright (ie Sony BMG is very jealously guarding the exclusive rights to ]music tracks, so even the other Sony departments are unable to properly secure them for other media uses like DVDs or video games).