Saturday, November 12, 2005

Sony breaking copyright laws?

Earlier I complained about Sony Hacking into People's Computers. Today, Groklaw posted an update with two interesting bits. Sony has temporarily halted distribution of the rootkit DRM technology, for one. Also, people have started analyzing the rootkit, and apparently the string "http://www.mp3dev.org/" is in the DRM code. Along with other signature strings, this shows that the LAME mp3 encoder, which is only distributed under the LGPL free software license, is included in the DRM code. Since Sony is distributing this software without complying with the license, it appears that they may be engaging in copyright infringement. Now isn't that what they said they were trying to stop to begin with?


There is one funny quote from the Groklaw article, "the Internet is wiping out cluelessness". I can't think of anything more wrong. PJ works so hard to get it, too.

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