Bad Day To Be Sony 812
Not only is Sony no longer selling the RootKit CDs, Arend writes "According to a USAToday article, Sony is to pull their controversial rootkit CDs from store shelves." A nice gesture, but a little late. bos writes "Sony's DRM rootkit has been found by Dan Kaminsky to have infected at least half a million networks, according to an article by Quinn Norton for Wired News. Dan has even put together some pretty pictures of the breadth of the infection." With so many people infected, it's unfortunate that wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes the news that serious security flaws have been found in the software that Sony is distributing to users who want to remove the Sony rootkit. The article says: 'Because of the way the tool is configured ... it allows any Web page that the user subsequently visits to download, install and run any code that it likes.'" Oops. Even Microsoft is getting into the act. ares284 writes "Microsoft said it would remove controversial copy-protection software that CDs from music publisher Sony BMG install on personal computers, deeming it a security risk to PCs running on Windows."
How to boycott? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do those who are active boycotters stick to it? Do you actively pursue telling others, or is it just a "one person, one dollar, one vote" kind of life lead?
I could care less if other people want to support Sony artists or Sony products. All mercantilistic (using government to acquire wealth) corporations are bad, but that doesn't mean that every business is bad. Sony has actually been one of the least mercantilistic corporation I've tracked over the years, but their releasing of items without proper quality control is what kills them time and again.
And I believe that is the problem with this rootkit. Sony didn't test it properly. If they had tested it properly and kept it within its own little world on a customer's PC, I don't think the fallout would have been so excessive. They didn't test the product, they relied on the customers to do so. Luckily for Sony, the customers weren't happy and were vocal about it.
That is the free market at work. People unhappy about a company or a product have much more of a voice with the web being so readily available. The more the Internet allows billions of citizens to align on different issues, the more we'll see that a free market "democracy" is better than a democracy built around the use of force.
Vote with your dollars.
Wow... (Score:2, Interesting)
Get 'em good (Score:4, Interesting)
Where it asks for the Artists name type in some diatribe
Where it asks for the Album Title, type in more diatribe
Where it asks for Store Name, type in yet even more diatribe
Where it asks for email address try something that will cause them trouble such as uce@ftc.gov or some chronic antispammer advocate.
This will hopefully force Sony to make the "patch directly downloadable."
Perhaps the copyright owners could offer to settle: have Sony repay all of the people who have been extorted for money because of filesharing (double for damages), and promise to stop all such activities in the future. That would only run them about $100 million, so it would be quite a deal.
[OT] Re:How to boycott? (Score:2, Interesting)
I subscribe because it allows me to read the articles before they're
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch (Score:4, Interesting)
So the same people who make decisions for the music products are not the same people who make decisions at the playstation divisions .
From what I hear, there is some pretty intense inside fighting going on between the people who make mop3 players, and the music division.
They are still being weasels... (Score:4, Interesting)
What a shame that Scott Adams' "Weasel Awards" [dilbert.com] for 2005 have already been awarded. There's always 2006 I suppose, but this will probably have been long since done and dusted by then... unless it's still churning though legal systems in the US and elsewhere of course.
Silver Lining (Score:3, Interesting)
This Sony incident could help convince consumers and businesses alike that intrusive DRM is a bad idea.
Re:Looks like they crossed the threshold... (Score:5, Interesting)
To me the biggest surprise in this saga is that he hasn't been all over this.
Re:Bad Day for Sony? (Score:1, Interesting)
Isn't there a word ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which makes me wonder what Sony's got coming next.
[OT] Re:How to boycott? mercantilism (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not young (31) and have been writing from a pro-market anarchism persepective for over 8 years.
Roads, bridges and schools can be much better built, maintained and managed by the free market of competition than by the force/coercion market created by government and the cronies of government.
Lincoln's War Between States was fought to create a mercantilistic country out of a free market country (not slavery as many people believe). Since the War, our country has slid into a really bad Warfare-Welfare State, focused on disposing the middle class workers of their income and giving it to the wealthy elite in control of the monopolistic use of force.
I study at last 40 hours a week the various documents that help me reinforce the views I hold dear to me. Slashdot is a great outlet for finding other people with similar beliefs who just don't know it, as well as getting a great peer review system that helps me find my mistakes. Even those on my "Foe" list give me some amazing insight into mistakes I make in my rants and recommendations.
If you're interested in why government is bad for roads, bridges and schools send me an e-mail.
Re:How to boycott? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about Criminal Charges. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously - if some company hires a hitman to do illegal stuff they get in trouble. Why can Sony hack my network without any repercusions.
Criminal charges against Microsoft too. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a clear DMCA violation.
If DVD John gets in trouble for less, surely whomever at Microsoft decided to do this should suffer the same.
Re:How to boycott? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a Sony cell phone (This was when cell phones were first starting to come out, and were about the size of a brick). It was several hundred dollars. I went through 7 of them before the warranty expired, and I finally replaced it with another brand. I had a laser disc player whose drive motor kept dying. I had a boom box whose tape drive never worked right, even after sending it in for work several times. Then I had a Sony AV receiver, that one day decided not to turn on, unless you picked it up a few inches and dropped it. After that string of bad products, that Sony wouldn't stand behind, it was easy for me to stop buying their crap.
I don't actively try to dissuade people from buying Sony stuff, but if asked my opinion, I will gladly tell people about my experience with them.
Re:Hey Dan (Score:3, Interesting)
I was hoping that Dan had done some remote scanning. When I looked at the rootkit, I noticed that it registered a named pipe, which ought to be remotely reachable, and probably exploitable.
Was the construction of this software illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch (Score:4, Interesting)
That tells me that the only way to increase shareholder value is to break Sony into at least two companies: the entertainment division and the electronics division. Each division will then float on its own merits without impeding the other.
In a nutshell, we can add Sony's own *shareholders* to the list of people that are getting screwed by the management. My prediction? Look for a shareholder suit against the Board of Directors within 3 years to break Sony into two companies.
Where the hell were the anti-malware vendors? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what really disturbs me. Not "What was Sony thinking?" -- businesses can be really stupid. Not "How could they do this?" -- businesses can be really evil. Shit happens. Get over it. Bad security happens, whatever.
However, I did have some trust (not much, but some) for the anti-malware establishment. I'm in infosec; I believe that even in the biggest and stupidest infosec company, there will be people with the hackerish instincts (i.e. lower-than-average sense of self-preservation) to blow the whistle. However, the failure of all the big anti-whatever companies to notice and/or do anything about this, with full year of lead time, demonstrates that they are incompetent at best, unethical at worst.
I don't care, personally; I use a Mac. It's not a security panacea but it's a pretty darn good line of defense. Professionally, however, I feel downright ill.
Kudos to F-Secure and Sysinternals. Where the hell were the rest of them?
Re:How to boycott? (Score:1, Interesting)
Because it has to come at someone else's expense. Government really is a zero-sum game, something that's not true of markets in general.
To bring this wildly-veering thread back on-topic, a great example of mercantilism would be the DMCA. Corporations such as Sony can't compete in a fair market where consumers are informed and capable of actually making full, fair use of the products they purchase... so they lobby the US (and other) governments for laws that extend the limited monopoly of copyright into the effectively-unlimited realm of usage rights.
It's MY computer... and I have rules also (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't mind copy protected software or CD's as long as it don't "plant nasty eggs" in my system, or violate my security by forking "root" access. I will NEVER allow any program to run at that level, except when it's a store bought program and needs root to install. But to hear a CD, and allow that CD to "root" by system is going way too far... SHAME ON SONY... SHAME ON ANY COMPANY THAT SECRETLY ROOTS MY MACHINE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION...
I Think we all should by boycott sony... I live here in the heart of the entertainment industry (LA area), and am "exposed" to a lot of entertainment types from all levels, and even they have totally condemed SONY for their greedy practices.
j
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch (Score:4, Interesting)
Bitter? Why yes I am, thank you for asking.
I worked project support for a great team of engineers who had some amazing ideas way ahead of their time. Can they use PS2 hardware? Write DVD related software? Other video related stuff? Nope. All because of inter-division competition. (I was intentionally vague on the those project descriptions) Then there's the snobby attitude towards software; once a project I worked on was forced to use a very expensive piece of hardware to do something they were already doing in software. Quelle Suprise, Sony couldn't sell the software and eventually the project was canned.
I really can't believe Sony has survived into the 21st century.
I agree! Throw the Sony execs in Jail! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why reserve jail for just script kiddies?
Luckily my tastes in music do not run parallel to the crap Sony pushes these days. I ran the rootkit remover and was pleased to see there was nothing to uninstall. But can I trust it? Hmm....
Re:Isn't there a word ... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a second example, according to Daniel Kahneman if an audience is asked firstly to memorise the last 4 digits of their social security number and then to estimate the number of physicians in New York the correlation between the two numbers is around 0.4--far beyond what would be expected by chance. The simple act of thinking of the first number strongly influences the second, even though there is no logical connection between them.
Basically, people often don't have any absolute framework for judging what is reasonable in a particular situation, so their mind subconsciously focuses or anchors on the first number they see, even if there is no rational basis or relationship between the number presented and the judgment call being asked for.
The most bizarre aspect to this story... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bob Brookmeyer - Bob Brookmeyer & Friends
Horace Silver - Silver?s Blue
Dexter Gordon - Manhattan Symphonie
Ahmed Jamal - The Legendary Okeh and Epic Recordings
Bob Brookmeyer???? Was Sony afraid of the cadre of L33t h4xx0r d00dz pirating their catalog of elderly jazz trombonists?
Re:buy second hand? (Score:2, Interesting)
Either choose that pop-music is really important to you, or choose that it is wrong to support the RIAA. Trying to justify yourself by buying second hand is really just a way to make somebody else get their hands dirty on your behalf.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I'm not saying you are a bad person. If you really do derive a lot of satisfaction from major commercial music, then that's your choice. I'm just saying that it doesn't make a lot of sense to try and convince yourself that you are really doing a good thing, just because you are only acting as an accessory to something which some consider bad.
Re:FBI? NSA? Homeland Security? BullSh*** (Score:4, Interesting)
This guy is NOT a troll. He is far more correct than the GP is.
A little harsh (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that once people started referring to the software as a root kit, it really crossed the line to some degree because even though technically it might have been, it was not exactly malicious in the way other root kits are. Once tech zealots got up in arms about this, news media covered it and adopted the same terminology. Of course all readers of this media are not tech junkies so they require definitions for terminology, and I think that reporters who themselves are not techies cannot do justice to the situation when defining technical things.
Maybe this bit of trickery was deliberate, and well, I bet it was... I mean, not only is using a misleading discourse awesome, but it is also a blast to describe how to exploit systems with this "rootkit" and then even code up a proof of concept worm and let it free! After all, this is 1984 style, which is just wrong, so the end justifies the means, right guys,
Where were Symantec, Microsoft, and McAfee ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Groklaw has a nice essay on this, which reveals that these guys ALREADY KNEW what Sony was doing 8 months ago and turned a blind eye.
In fact the maker of the rootkit (UK company) is on record as saying they consulted with Symantec to make sure that their rootkit would not be classified as a virus.
The moral? The current PC/entertainment/gaming/recording industry is a scratch-my-back oligopoly.
Go for FREE(as in dom) SOFTWARE while you still have a choice.
Re:Criminal charges against Microsoft too. (Score:3, Interesting)
There will be no DMCA challenge of the titans based on this incident, unfortunately.
Re:Criminal charges against Microsoft too. (Score:2, Interesting)
Record Yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or are we simply waiting for their current management to fall on their sword when the post bad-will boycott sales figures arrive?
My hope is that this will force companies to actually tell you what they've been able to hide behind the scenes and lawyers up to now.
Even better (Score:3, Interesting)
- Ban proactive DRM measures on content media. Permit encryption of data but ban executables on media that are supposed to be plain content.
- DRM measures, either hardware or software, on general purpose playback systems (home computers, DVD players etc) may not hinder the playback of non-DRM content.
- Create a labelling scheme, either mandatory or otherwise, for digital content that clearly tells the customer if the product
1) Is encrypted or DRM'd
2) Contains executables
3) Requires registration
4) Requires an Internet connection
5) Requires payment beyond the purchase price
6) Calls home, and what it does
Comments welcome.
Re:How to boycott? Website (Score:3, Interesting)
Digital Restrictions Managment.
Re:buy second hand? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I buy as straight from the artist as I can.
Buy your music from allofmp3.com, then send an envelope with three or four dollars in it to the band. Join the fan club or whatever. Can there be a better way? Look at all of the benefits:
Really, the only downside is the possibility that you're supporting criminals in Russia. But the other alternatives are supporting criminals in LA, or not buying music at all. And the Russian criminals in question seem to be very fair businessmen. I was impressed to see that when they tell you you're paying two cents per MB, they in fact charge you exactly $.02 for every 1,048,576 (2^20) bytes, and they calculate it to the tenth of a penny and don't deduct it until you've successfully completed the download.
Blame it on MSFT (Score:2, Interesting)
How do these "CD"s play in a normal CD player, or do they?
I was pissed off at first when my SysAdmin disabled autorun on my new XP box, but now I am enlightened.
For me, it's a trust issue... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now...with all the DRM crap etc about...why should I buy music from a big retailer such as Sony/BMG? I mean, OTHER than to support the artist(s).
I want my money to support the artist's music I buy...but not like this. I don't want to support Sony or any other recording industry giant's "protective" measures.
This is the digital age...we are all equals here. Meaning, it's relatively easy (at least in recent history) to DUPLICATE those zeros and ones on a CD (or DVD for that matter). Yet Microsoft befuddles the issue with DRM, and Sony causes worldwide loss of faith with a rootkit.
Trust?
I'm not advocating piracy...I'm just saying it's far EASIER (and now...safer) to find and play that MP3 than any of the "legit" *cough cough* alternatives.
I truly would like to see a less corporate model, in which the artist gets paid more fairly, and where artist and fan have a better relationship.
Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, SAR, Intel, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been over ten years since i've been in that business, but i'd be seriously surprised if there were locally mountable devices, or even ports (USB, etc) on TS machines. We had no floppy drives and removable hard drives in our Secret machines, plus they were all tempest hardened, plus in lockable cabinets (those who know, know what i mean). We only had a few areas where we could even work on TS docs, much less create them from scratch. Having a CD drive (even read only) seems like something a security officer would have jumped on as a "duh" very early on in any project. If you needed a CD it would be mounted as a share to a server in the "vault" and you would be granted access to it for the time you needed it. No personal electrical devices were allowed in any way, shape, or form so no radios, CD players, etc.
I suppose if a contractor was lax this could all take place, someone could use the document blender to make margaritas, but in my experience there was no way to just pop in some disk or attach a device. I mean we didn't even have printers! They were locked up in the vault also and you had to sign for the number of pages you printed! This was just a SECRET rated facility (o.k., Secret with SAR, I'll give you that much). So be realistic. I could take CDs in all day long but they were only good as drink coasters.
warp records are doing it the right way (Score:1, Interesting)
Sony also accused of price-fixing in Britain (Score:5, Interesting)
According to The Times, "the practice of charging different prices to Internet retailers and high street stockists -- known as dual pricing -- was started by Sony and has been followed by other manufacturers." Here's the article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1872549
I love it.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Not just Van Zants (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if the backlash will be enough for all artists to do what the Flecktones did:
"Frustrated when he bought a copy-protected Dave Matthews release and couldn't copy it to his Apple iPod, Fleck insisted that Sony not release his new album with such restrictions"
*plink* *plink* my $0.02 (Score:3, Interesting)
Rootkits are designed to avoid detection, and only an idiot would trust a company destributing rootkits to provide them with software to remove the rootkit. For all I know, they just changed the cloaking mechanism, and left the machine vulnerable to attacks, still running the rootkit.
Shouldn't Sony pay the cost of having machines backed up, wiping and formating of the drives, re-install of the OS, re-install of the software, re-configure the software, and reimbursement for the time and productivity lost in the process.
Right now the whole thing is being treated like a childish goof up and a big oops. Sony has installed rootkits, on personal machines and corporate equipment, and they should be paying for the equipment to be restored as deemed necessary by the owner. Simply giving a link to a download that claims to remove the rootkit is entirely insufficient.
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to point out that at Sony's size, the different divisions have little or nothing to do with each other.
Irrelevant.
Not that the people working in the other divisions, who didn't make such stupid decisions, deserve to be punished, but the way to stop companies from doing crap like this is to hit them where it will hurt the top-level decisionmakers: their stock price. To do that, you have to damage their profits, and the best way to do *that* is to decrease their revenues by not buying their stuff. If Sony's stock takes a 20% drop as a result of some decisions by the entertainment division, the C-level execs will take action, and if they don't then the board of directors will, and if *they* don't, the stockholders will. If it gets nasty enough, no one in Sony will ever again dare to do something that has even the remotest possibility of bringing that sort of shitstorm down on their heads.
Not that I believe a lot of "boycott Sony" shouting and posturing on slashdot will really affect their revenues noticeably, much less their stock price. But still, the theory is sound, even if follow-through is insufficiently widespread to make any difference.
Re:How to boycott? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Criminal charges against Microsoft too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Word of mouth ain't trivial (Score:3, Interesting)
You laugh, but I call a recent article on Tom's Hardware into witness. The reason that the graphics card companies (nVidia, ATI) go so intensely after that performance crown is that the people who care deeply about it tend to be influencers -- I think the article claimed something like those graphics card companies can be assured of 20 mainstream target purchases due to the influence of one high-end customer.
Point being, people here care, and deeply, about the stuff Sony has been up to, and in many of these markets, *we* are the influencers.
If your company gets bad press on Slashdot, and you do technology, that's not just bad, that's very very bad, because for every post and every reader, there may well be 20 or more people who are going to stop doing business with you. And if you get repeated bad articles, over and over again, well, golly. This is only worse when there is a choice in the market, and for almost everything Sony makes, somebody else makes something like it.
Re:How to boycott? (Score:2, Interesting)
OK, that's not exactly right. Their plain old consumer line used to be decent, but quality has slipped in the last 10 years. Basically, if your AV receiver has a useless LCD interface or other gimmicky shit that appeals to upwardly mobile young people, you're gonna get reamed. Their lines get progressively better until you hit the Broadcast line of equipment, and finally their Boutique line. But you do pay a premium since these things are produced on a much smaller scale (and with better components)
I'm off the Sony sauce (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PS3? No thanks, Sony; you screwed the pooch (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The natives are restless.. (Score:3, Interesting)
This product violates Amazon.com's policies.
"Items that infringe upon an individual's privacy. Amazon.com holds personal privacy in the highest regard. Therefore, items that infringe upon, or have potential to infringe upon, an individual's privacy are prohibited. Additionally, the sale of marketing lists (bulk e-mail lists, direct-mail marketing lists, etc.) is prohibited."
Sony'd DRM rootkit violates my privacy by "phoning home" to report on my computer's usage. These products should be banned from further sale, imediately!
Why Microsoft will do this (Score:3, Interesting)
HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray
Why else would Microsoft violate copyright law when they're already in Anti-trust hot water? Because it makes them look like friggen Angels when compared to Sony. With people boycotting sony product, and two different data formats pending, HD-DVD, from the company that doesn't put a rootkit on your PC is going to be a much more appealing bet.
That's because one (or maybe more)of them is lying (Score:4, Interesting)
However, for every person on here who legitmately knwos what they are talking about, you have someone who's just making shit up. They want to appear "in the know" and believe they really know how it is, because they heard a story somewhere or something like that. However in the retelling, they pretend like it was them, because of course it makes them seem to be more knowledgable on the topic.
I've had lots of people tell me how things work in regards to secret data, however most of the people doing the telling, I know for a fact have never worked in such a facility. So what they are saying may be based entirely on fiction.
As always, take what you hear on Slashdot with a grain of salt.
This is simply the Sony Business model (Score:3, Interesting)
Publicly Acknowledge the Wrong and Fire the Exec (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they fired the executive who approved this idiocy?
Sony will need to do this if they ever want my business, my family's business, or my employer's business again. And this includes EVERYTHING SONY.
Why should a corporation who does this to their customers, have customers?
Re:Phone Sony about the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it is an old story, but he seems to be advocating what Sony has done. I only stumbled upon the article because I googled "Orin Hatch contact" to send a letter to him like I sent to the DOJ, but now I won't bother. As sick as I feel for voting for him in the first place, I a) will not make that mistake again and b) will tell everyone who will listen (especially those in Utah) how I feel about it.
Below is my letter to the DOJ. I urge others to write letters to whomever they feel would be appropriate. I hope this gets modded up enough for people to notice it and learn about Mr Hatch and his evil ideology.
JazzLad
(PS - Sorry I'm not logged in!)
**** Letter to DOJ follows ****
Dear Sir or Ma'am,
Thank you for taking the time to read my email. I know you are busy, so I will keep it brief. I am not a lawyer, politician, or any other important person, I am just a common ordinary American with a concern. I am concerned about the recent actions of Sony BMG. I do not feel that any corporation, regardless of their size, should be allowed to install 'back door' programs on my computer. I also believe that persons or corporations that do so should be sufficiently punished so as to deter them from attempting the practice in the future. I am not after any money, I am merely maintaining my privacy. Further, this particular case frightens me to the extent that terrorists can use the back door (http://antivirus.about.com/od/virusdescriptions/
Please help a powerless citizen send a message. Please use your power to keep my computer safe. I am but one person, but my situation is shared by millions of fellow Americans.
I sincerely thank you for your time.
[signed with my name, address and phone number]
DMCA anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Phone Sony about the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Here are a few ideas:
1. Spread the word: tell friends, post in your blog, etc.
2. Boycott Sony products: no PS3, no PSP.
3. Legal retribution: file criminal charges, lawsuits, etc.
4. Warn customers and vendors: rate Amazon products, notify the BBB, etc.
5. Warn the artists: tell them they are losing your purchase and why
6. Notify Sony: call, write, and email to complain
I've written up more details at http://henage.net/dan/security/sony-rootkit.html [henage.net]
Re:Phone Sony about the problem (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Looks like they crossed the threshold... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spitzer's usual tactic is to threaten corporations with civil or criminal suits, then agree to drop/reduce charges if the corporation will pay large fines/reparations, admit some form of wrongdoing, and/or make some significant public contribution. Guilty or not, most corporations will settle out of court rather than suffer the bad publicity, spend millions on lawyers in court, and possibly be found guilty anyway by a jury that has to weigh enormously complex law vs a big Evil Corporation.
It's very telling that when Spitzer does get someone in court, he usually loses. He is much less interested in correctly prosecuting the law than in generating PR for himself.
If Spitzer were truly interested in making corporations pay, he would refuse to settle the big cases, drag companies into court, and really make them pay (and establish good legal precedent so other corporations would shape up).
apply black hat laws to sony? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:[OT] Re:How to boycott? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe just a slower form of death. Capitalism seems good to us in the western world but spreads poverty and hopelessness to the third world countries that get exploited because if it. In the long run I believe it is unsustainable. It's like an organism feeding off of it's own body, eventually the entire body will die. I wish I had an alternative system to offer but due to the greed and selfishness of most humans I don't think any system has a snowballs chance in hell of working.
Or just fix it yourself (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously, the DRM is so bad that Switchfoot, one of their own bands, posted instructions on a Sony music forum on how to use CDEX to circumvent it.
Somehow, that post disappeared.
Somehow, the Google cache of that post disappeared.
Somehow, a CNN article citing that post disappeared!
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
The only way to remedy this heavy handed behavior is criminal prosecution. Sony is getting sued for distributing this software and they can't even try to mitigate the damage to their image? A company that clueless won't respond to anything more subtle.
Re:FBI? NSA? Homeland Security? BullSh*** (Score:3, Interesting)