BOYCOTT till SONY is NOMORE!

I’m normally not fired up about things, and had sony apologised and backed down I probably wouldn’t be posting here. It just annoys me that sony continues to use XCP, and what I fear is if sony gets away with it more companies will follow and we’ll find more intrusive software in our PC’s.

We’ve got to draw the line somewere.

So yeah IMO you are wrong on this one, the fact is the only way to teach a huge company a lesson is to hit them were it hurts – their hip pocket. When they finally realise what they did was wrong and actually do something about it (apologise, compensate and remove their intrusive DRM) that’s when I’ll stop boycotting them, but until then I’ll continue to turn as many people away from sony as I can. As for the artists – well if sony continues to have little respect for their customers, should look for another label, one that won’t use such underhanded tactics as sony has.

To the person that said to boycott First4Internet – hello have you been paying attention? Sony has another DRM system – SunnComm MediaMax. I think you’d be stupid if you believe that Sony didn’t have a clue what XCP is going to do. Any way someone high up in sony approved the DRM system so it is Sony’s fault and they have to accept the consequences instead of the crap their pulling now

Secondly Sony IS NOT apologising for this debacle, they don’t care if people who legally bought their CD’s are getting screwed around, they only care about their legal position (apologising means they admit wrong doing and more legal action could follow). Sony maybe removing XCP protected CD’s but they’re going to continue screwing people over with their newer DRM’s.

I’m Boycotting Sony, and I’m encouraging everyone I know to do so and pass the word on, If sony is going to piss off customers they’re going to be the ones to suffer.

And a very good “Boycott Sony” blog has taken flight at
http://boycottsony.us/

If anyone has not been a fan of indie, pod-safe music before, there’s no time like the present to discover same. If Sony wants to control the use of their product, there’s no better way for them to do that than by our not listening, or buying. Win-win.

“and best of all… it’s NOT a Sony”
-k-

But when CD writers came out I bought a bunch of CDs that had my favorite songs on them so I could take the one song on the CD I liked (usually) and combine it with the one song I liked from a bunch of other CDs. I ended up with only three CDs packed with songs I liked. The little switching I did could be done safely at a stop light!

That all stopped when I couldn’t grab the track I wanted off of a CD because it was copy protected. I’m sure there was an easy way to get around the copy protection, but I just didn’t feel like expending the effort. So figuring that any CD I bought might be copy protected, I stopped buying CDs and went back to listening to the radio or one of my “favorite” CDs.

I wonder how many other people quit buying CDs for the same reason. Recently I saw a graph in the newspaper showing music CD sales over the last 15 years, and I noticed that sales seemed to spike about the time that CD writers became widely available, and started to decline when they began copy protecting their CDs.

I’m curious just how badly the music industry is shooting itself in the foot with the copy protection and suing its customers. I suspect a lot of people quit buying CDs in disgust over the RIAA’s recent behavior. I know I would have if I hadn’t quit buying them already.

first buy a discman – sony make good ones!
insert audio disc
link discman headfone.line out to pc soundcard line in
play cd
record each track one at a time
re-assemble audion cd on pc
burn to disc – every copy from that burn will be copyright protection free.

Simple, innit?!

The protects you if you copy a legally purchased audio product. You are allowed to make as many copies for your own use as you like – one for the car, one for the living room, one for the bedroom, one for the gym, yadda yadda!

Replying to another comment, Sony does not get to plead ignorance of First4Internet’s software. They knew exactly what it did and how it worked.

I am linking this page on my own boycott page. Anyone else with boycott sony pages let me know and I will see about linking to them. Naturally links to my page are more than welcome

http://www.david-steuber.com/snippets/Boycott_Sony/

[quote]

That “Brown Sugar” CD found on the Amazon link with that review you posted just bugged me as the record LABEL is MCA and this CD was released in Sept. 2002 – the reviewer wrote that in MAY 2003 (link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006JKCG/qid=1131294192/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-1243566-0680626?v=glance&s=music )

As I dug a bit deeper, I found this bit: “In 1995, Seagram Company Ltd. acquired 80% of MCA INC. and the following year the new owners dropped the MCA name; the company became Universal Studios, Inc. and it’s music division, MCA Music Entertainment Group, was renamed Universal Music Group.” (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCA_Records )

And in connecting the dots, First4Internet was founded in 1999 , and their clients include not only Sony but First4Internet’s other clients – include Universal Music Group , Warner Music Group and EMI – using the technology. (link: http://www.whatsthedownload.com/music_news/archive58/index.aspx )

So I guess not only should we be concerned with SONY Labels and all it’s other record labels as posted by Gnomalarta earlier here,
but ANY company and their record labels of various names that has ANY involvement with First4Internet!

[quote]

I think rather than boycott Sony, let’s boycott customers of First4Internet, and let’s make enough noise that customers of First4Internet think twice before buying any more of their DRM (they’ll just go for the next screwball DRM programmer wannabe, but that will help us expose them all quicker as the quack jobs the whole DRM field has become.

The Sony folks were just paying for DRM for their music. Clueless as they are, we all know that above a certain executive level, management just buys “solutions” and don’t care for the details (which in any case is always the wrong decision. That’s why, typically, management = clueless.)

It’s First4Internet that wrote and sold Sony this rootkit as a DRM “solution”. Let’s make noise and let every label know we will not stand for their laughable excuse of a DRM system.

Thanks for the heads up. All my Windows-using friends and family have been warned.

I’ve always ripped my CDs on my Linux server, because the labels’ idiot DRM doesn’t work there in any case. And when I buy from iTunes, I burn the songs to a CD-RW, and rip it to 256Kbps MP3s. That way I protect my purchase with a backup.

“Sony has made it more reasonable for you to download illegal MP3s of their music than buy it, because you don’t put yourself at risk that way.”

Indeed! Or get a $200 US dollar Windows-free PC from Walmart.com or TigerDirect.com, and a $30 US dollar KVM switch. Put Linux on the PC, and rip CDs, DRM or not, without worries. If that’s too technical for ya, get a $500 US dollar Mac Mini and the aforementioned KVM switch. (Or wait to the few weeks right after new Mac models start shipping, and get last year’s best Mac models cheap on eBay.) Windows DRM doesn’t work on Macs.

If don’t want the expense of an extra PC at all, buy the album on iTunes, then make an MP3 backup.

As for Sony Artists, it’s a one-click world:

http://www.sonymusic.com/artists/all.html

Again, not everyone on the list is DRMed, I’d guess. If it were me, I’d give any of ‘em some extra screening.

-k-

I couldn’t boycott Sony because I’m label ignorant (or is that apathetic). What bands are on the Sony Label and how many clicks does it take for me to do that?

http://www.quietvoice.org/index.php/2005/11/04/sonys-badge-of-nonsupport/

Nothing fancy, kinda like me.

-k-