Hoping to bundle several lawsuits into a single solution, Sony BMG has agreed to class-action settlement terms
that would give millions of consumers who bought CDs infected with XCP malware a cash award of $7.50 each plus a free
album download from one of a few participating online music services (Sony's hideous Connect service is one of them,
but not, thankfully, the only one). A larger number of consumers who bought MediaMax-infected disc get a free
replacement download. In both cases, consumers must settle for replacing toxic DRM with less toxic DRM.
The
EFF, which was instrumental in forcing Sony to acknowledge the mess and come to terms--and especially in bringing the
MediaMax discs under scrutiny along with the XCP discs--issued a satisfied statement. "We hope that
other record labels will learn from Sony's hard experience and focus more on the carrot of quality music and less on
the stick of copy protection."
1. Listening to Cyndi Lauper or Bette Middler? One could argue that you deserve what you get for those sins.
Posted at 10:58AM on Jan 2nd 2006 by nanio