Sony's rootkit infringes on software copyrights

Found on Boing Boing on Sunday, 13 November 2005
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Close examination of the rootkit that Sony's audio CDs attack their customers' PCs with has revealed that their malicious software is built on code that infringes on copyright. Indications are that Sony has included the LAME music encoder, which is licensed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which requires that those who use it attribute the original software and publish some of the code they write to use the library. Sony has done none of this.

The evidence against Sony is compelling, and this further reveals the hypocrisy of Sony's actions. Sony claims that it needs to install dangerous, malicious, underhanded software on its customers' computers to protect its copyrights, but in order to write this malware, it has no compunction about infringing on the copyrights of public-spirited software authors who make their works available under free software licenses like the GPL.

It seems to be impossible to avoid news about Sony at the moment. Especially with all those juicy details that are coming out piece after piece. Sony's "do as we say, don't do as we do" way isn't really helping to convince people; why should copyright be important if they break it? Everything that hit the news in the last few weeks isn't helping at all. But I'm quite confident that Sony will top even those news in a few days. Nothing is unimaginable right now.