Text 8430, 79 rader
Skriven 2005-11-26 16:35:26 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
Ärende: Sony's DRM Profile
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From: Mike '/m' <mike@barkto.com>


http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/2005/11/22.html

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You're probably getting tired of hearing about Sony BMG's rootkit DRM, but one
central mystery about it remains to be solved. What was Sony's real motive for
what many consider behavior that is awfully close to a criminal act? To answer
that question I think we're going to need to borrow a page from the criminal
profilers by tracking the company's behavior. Fortunately, we have more than
one crime scene to help us with our profile, because it so happens that Sony
has been employing more than one form of spywarish DRM in recent months.

Even after finally confessing, under considerable duress, that the rootkit was
probably a mistake, Sony officials have stuck to the story that their use of
First4Internet's XCP DRM was intended only to protect their CDs from music
pirates. But that alibi doesn't really wash, since the XCP copy protection only
punishes legitimate customers while doing nothing to stop file sharers. What's
more, this is a pattern of behavior we saw before with Sony when readers were
complaining back in July about another form of DRM it was using on music CDs
from SunnComm, Inc.

What clues can we pick up by comparing the different DRM approaches Sony has
employed on its CDs in recent months? Fortunately, on the subject of SunnComm's
MediaMax DRM, we have the equivalent of a forensic anthropologist who can serve
as an expert witness here. Princeton University computer scientist J. Alex
Halderman is the researcher who SunnComm threatened with charges of violating
the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions a few years ago when he revealed how
their technology could be thwarted by holding down the shift key. The rootkit
brouhaha prompted Halderman to take a look at how the MediaMax DRM is
implemented on recent Sony CDs (all apparently on different titles than the CDs
that have the XCP rootkit), and his published findings are quite intriguing.

While Halderman found no evidence of SunnComm's MediaMax using a rootkit, some
of the things he did discover provide considerable grist for our behavioral
profile of Sony. For one thing, before users can even say yes or no to
accepting the Sony EULA, MediaMax has already installed a dozen files on their
hard drive and started running the copy protection code. The files remain even
if the user rejects the EULA, and the Sony CDs provide no option for
uninstalling the files at a later date.

Most interesting of all though is what Halderman discovered concerning the
spyware attributes of the Sony CDs equipped with MediaMax. As with the XCP
rootkit, MediaMax also "phones home" every time you play a protected CD with a
code identifying what music you're listening to. And in the SunnComm server's
response to these transmissions Halderman also uncovered a very important clue
to what Sony's really up to: a URL including the term "perfectplacement." A
MediaMax developer's webpage describes Perfect Placement to potential clients
like Sony as an e-commerce revenue generation "feature of dynamic on-line and
off-line banner ads. Generate revenue or added value through the placement of
3rd party dynamic, interactive ads that can be changed at any time by the
content owner."

OK, so let's see what we've got here. A company that seems bent on sneaking
files onto unsuspecting users' computers, pretending they've gotten permission
to do so from a vaguely-worded EULA, transmitting a constant stream of usage
information back to their servers, and using that information for
who-knows-what revenue generating opportunities. Does this sound like a
familiar profile to you? Of course, it's the profile of all the spyware/adware
scum that have come very close to destroying the Internet just to make a few
bucks peddling their trash.

But we shouldn't miss the fact that Sony's behavior with both its XCP and
MediaMax implementations matches another pattern we've seen many times before.
It's the serial DRM offender profile that Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit, and
lesser lights in the software industry have exhibited. Their product activation
and other forms of copy protection also aren't really about stopping piracy -
they admit their DRM won't stop the software counterfeiters. It's about giving
the vendors control over your usage of the products you buy, so they can decide
if you're using it in ways they don't like, or that they ought to force you to
upgrade, or that it's time to start selling the information they've collected
about you to the highest bidder....
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 /m

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