Retailer Must Compensate Sony Anti-Piracy Rootkit Victim
Written by enigmax on September 14, 2009In 2005 there was a huge scandal when it was revealed that Sony’s attempts to crack down on music piracy had got out of control. The company included a rootkit (XCP) on many of its music CDs which was installed on the user’s PC without permission. Now a court has ordered compensation to be paid to an XCP victim.
During 2005, Song BMG introduced a new copy protection mechanism on its audio compact discs. The Extended Copy Protection system, better known as XCP, was included on around 50 titles. It was to cause a huge scandal.
Once one of these legitimately purchased music CDs was put into the PC drive of a Sony customer it automatically installed software on Windows computers which changed the way the operating system played files, installing a rootkit on the host PC.
Adding insult to injury it was discovered that Sony had used code created by Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon), violating its GPL license.
Following these frankly unforgivable actions by Sony, the company was forced to recall all affected CDs and was subjected to various lawsuits. One such legal action has just come to an end.
According to Germany’s Heise, a district court has just ruled in a case where an individual claimed that the presence of the Sony rootkit caused him financial losses.
After purchasing an Anastacia CD, the plaintiff played it in his computer but his anti-virus software set off an alert saying the disc was infected with a rootkit. He went on to test the CD on three other computers. As a result, the plaintiff ended up losing valuable data.
Claiming for his losses, the plaintiff demanded 200 euros for 20 hours wasted dealing with the virus alerts and another 100 euros for 10 hours spent restoring lost data. Since the plaintiff was self-employed, he also claimed for loss of profits and in addition claimed 800 euros which he paid to a computer expert to repair his network after the infection. Added to this was 185 euros in legal costs making a total claim of around 1,500 euros.
The judge’s assessment was that the CD sold to the plaintiff was faulty, since he should be able to expect that the CD could play on his system without interfering with it.
The court ordered the retailer of the CD to pay damages of 1,200 euros.
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
Next: Kiosk of Piracy: An Offline Copy of The Pirate Bay
83 Responses
Now if only the court had ordered a few millions of euro in punitive damages, things would go better.
agree with #1
@ #1,
I think now that we have precedent, if more people come forward (hopefully in the millions) they can/will get compensated.
Too bad i have not bought CDs from these rogue bastards for so many years, i would claim damages for the over 100 computers i used to manage in my last job.
Perhaps there will be a market on ebay for these CDs now :) buy them, run them, take sony to court… party :))
you idiots sound like the scheming conniving money grabbing MAFIAA
Infected CD:s, sounds like same as installing random downloaded images and having autorun option enabled.
Disable autorun on wind0zes
http://warez.sivu.be
And of course SomeGuy and ReasonedMind will show up with some sort of faulty logic, a moot defense, and tell us all to “get a life”.
Dude that Sony CD did the SAME thing to me. It totally took over my life and everything. Holy shit I deserve to get 1200 euros as well!
funny how we get away with all we get away with. yet when it comes to little flaws among big name companies like this we hit them as hard as we can.
makes sense to me :)
Sue Sony
that should be a Tshirt
OLD NEWS and they got slappe din CANADA too
Bad thing is that not Sony, as source of the mayhem, was ordered to pay up, but the retailer. IMHO Sony produced the faulty product, so they should pay up (yes, I know about the ludicrous settlement in the US, when Sony came of the hook easy, they should have been slapped with a way bigger fine).
And now the retailer sues Sony, then everybody wins.
If this was in the US, Sony would be sued for millions. Or simply let free because sony loves to handle money under the table .
doubtful the retailer will carry another Sony cd unless the front some of that bill
Only 1,200? Give the poor dude another 0!
Can we get a list of CDs infected? I do have some Sonys…
CD’s Containing XCP Content Protection Technology:
http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html
The Onion said it best: “I’ve been downloading bootleg MP3s for nearly three years and the first CD I buy fucks up my computer?”
I’m just wondering if Sony really thought no one would ever notice this. LOLZ @ Sony
This is absolutely disgusting. The retailer is not Sony. Sony should be the one paying damages, not any retailer.
funny….Anastacia isn’t in the list from post #15
Interesting. Does anyone know if one of these corporately-infected CD’s come packaged with a TOS that covers the rootkit either directly or indirectly?
The retailer is the one who must pay the fine because he’s the one who sold the CD.
The retailer now has the right to turn round to Sony and say, “Judge has said this CD has caused damage to my customer and I’ve had to pay him 1200 Euro. You owe me 1200 Euro and my costs of X,000 Euro.”
@7, if 1200eu means hitting them as hard as we can… then we’re pretty pathetic as a whole!
The guys above just stated a reasonable price they would have demanded as damages… and I can only join them!
BTW, with WHAT exactly do we get away with, anyway? OH THE ATROCITIES!
And I though that one can inflict damages to big corps. only when distributing stuff on large scale… how about that guy that had eBooks for personal usage on a private ftp?… or the mother that distributed a few songs out of the 1000s that she had? And got ordered to pay how many millions USD? Sony and Co. (eg. CRAPIAA) didn’t mind asking for damages even for the songs she hasn’t uploaded!
Why shouldn’t we?… even I could ask for damages just knowing that I used Ubuntu on my car PC to play that infested disk! Never mind that it didn’t work, the CD is still infested!
Not putting up with their overall cr@p thrown on the market gives me the right to pick and try out as I please… and the future will back up this method of purchasing… THERE’S NO ALTERNATIVE!
@4 (h33t),
Copyright extensions, exploitation of the artists etc all comes down to one thing: the money.
As the old saying goes “follow the money”.
The point is to hit companies like Sony (and the music industry on the whole) as hard as possible where it hurts most, the money, if you can do so legally…well, thats just the cherry on top of the cake.
Whatever hurts the music industry is a win for people on the whole and balances the scale just a wee little bit.
It is a shame the retailer had to pay the fee but if a lot of retailers have to do the same, they will effectively stop selling sony stuff which cuts off sony’s distribution model – a HUGE win for us.
As someone has pointed out above, too bad its 1200 and not an amount with another 0 tacked to the end of that figure.
I’m surprised our two favorite trolls have not come out saying something like “with all the illegal ‘thefts’ running rampant on the interwebs companies like sony had no choice but to take matters into their own hands” or some other baloney to that effect. Or maybe we just have to wait a bit for them to report to corporate work before they comment – after all the internet police are coming!
@ 4
22 is right
and may i plz add
stfu henry.
@4
and on a further note henry, dont even mention money in here, with all the god damned pop ups, pop unders and interstitial adds for penis enlargments and gay times on your site h33t.com, im surprised anyone can even get to the torrents…and the way you charge your victims a fee each month to not have to deal with the adds, you gotta be pulling in around 5 grand a month.
so stfu about money, cause your one of the biggest ho’s there is. aint that the pot calling the kettle black. lmao rofl…you never cease to amaze me with your abject stupidity…..and your assinine comments.
its nice to see reasonable numbers in this case unlike MAFIAA numbers
The CD was faulty?
WTF Sony tried to hack and compromise his system+network, should have been way worse judgement!
Hackers gets years in JAIL, i want to see that Sony rootkit creator JAILED..!
I returned mine, It was either “TRey Anastasio, self titled” or “Plasma”
Can’t remember, but I took it back to the retailer and got a full refund.
Wish i had of actually used it on my pc so I could sue their ass.
and they wonder why we pirate? Think about it, only LEGITIMATE paying customers were affected, anyone who downloaded it illegally was blissfully rootkit free.
That’s bogus.
@ 4
I would be carefull who you called money grabbing
*points out h33ts packed ad-filled frontpage*
totaly agree with 22.
It is a shame the retailer had to pay the fee, but the retailer should turn round to Sony and sue them twice the prize for wasting their trust to their costumer and their time in court. 1200eu is not something very effective to companies like Sony who sued and earned hell lot of money from people.
Sunny @
http://www.torrentkit.com
In many countries deliberately infecting people’s computers with malware is a crime, Sony should have been prosecuted accordingly.
I remember something about those rootkits causing problems. Some of my coworkers listened to music on the company machines and nobody caught on for a long time that there was any problem. A couple of people were put on probation over it IIRC, because it was later found that a virus hid itself using Sony’s rootkit and tapped confidential customer information.
Don’t know how much the tech support cost the company, but they took three days to clean about 200 computers. Out of 1500 or so machines.
I imagine the bill was several thousand, at least.
Sony was simply trying to defend its assets and was a little misguided, just because they are a multi-billion dollar company doesn’t mean they cant make mistakes too..
When will all you people realize that a little virus is a small sacrifice needed to ensure future profits. I for one have no problem installing root kits on my machine as I know I am helping Sony reach its full potential in market share.
@19
The retailer can collect the damages from his supplier and so on until it hits Sony. There’s a EU guideline set up to prevent consumers having to sue companies in e.g. China. He could have sued Sony directly, but for such a small amount, it’s impractical.
That’s what you get for using winblows.
@Reasoned Mind
haha get a life, besides except for helping Sony with the rootkit it makes your system vulnerable and you will get more viruses, rootkits and trojans, with possible bank account hacking, identity theft and more..
@36… Lol, Windows 7 just happens to be pretty damn amazing, especially looking at the Vista failure.
Macs suck, simply because of the pricing, however building your own Hackintosh fixes that and so those are pretty awesome…
Linux, apart from the bad multi monitor support, and through a few searches, no Windows 7 taskbar clone, would easily win the top spot for me. Importunately those things I have now become dependent on XD
As for this, when I read the amounts I was really surprised, Sony easily deserve to pay a huge amount more to every individual affected – especially the bloke whose code they ’stole’ as they often put it…
Aww well at least we can be happy with their current financial failure anyway =]
@34, riiight, so you either work for one of these retarded companies or you are also retarded.
You would happily install your rootkits?, alright then i’m sure if you asked Sony nicely they would be all too happy to supply you with one, even if they manage to over price it as with everything.
@34 Sep 14, 2009 at 19:58 by Reasoned Mind
OMG… i lol’d sooo bad, Reasoned Mind, typically your trolling could be considered the other side of the argument but that’s just retarded.
It’s so clearly illegal what Sony did, anyone would be pissed as hell if they got virus let alone by a massive world wide coperation.
First you say it’s a mistake and next you say it’s totally justified, make up your trolling mind.
@34
Daft comments there, and thus I think (hope) not by the real “Reasoned Mind”.
@34 (Reasoned Nazi),
You are an imbecile, and a fascist.
1,200? What a joke. To Sony thats like giving change to a beggar on the street.
@ ReasonedMind:
hahaha that was too funny! Hey, if you want some viruses I got some very nice websites to tell you! hahahaha oh my goodness.
That was priceless. Come on, you can troll better than that! hahaha my goodness, I’m still laughing.
” 6 Sep 14, 2009 at 16:38 by anon
And of course SomeGuy and ReasonedMind will show up with some sort of faulty logic, a moot defense, and tell us all to “get a life”.”
We were all expecting that, but we were expecting a better trolling from ReasonedMind! hahaha what he said was so retarded that I’m still laughing now! He must have smoked some pot lmao this time he did not “reason” at all!
Hey SomeGuy it’s your turn now! Come on, come on here and entertain us with some retarded comment you too!
Damn, this fool got 1200 euro for being a complete retard???!!!
Ok yea, I know its Sony and down with them and all, but still the actions of this guy was totally moronic. I mean, calling a tech about a virus warning??? Still even it did give you problems…um ever hear of BACKING UP your hardrive?
Well, figures. He’s self employed which means he was too much a loser to make it through any higher education school. A total loser.
Guys, I’m fairly certain that wasn’t the real Reasoned Mind. Even he wouldn’t say something like that.
@46: That’s not the point. Sony shouldn’t have put a rootkit on the discs anyway. That rootkit also opened up vulnerabilities in the system that other viruses could exploit.
so they sell a virused cd and pay 1.2thousand euros…
someone passes a music to another person over the internet so they can hear if the band is good or not and gets sued by 2 million euros … -_-x
you copy one song you can end up paying $10,000 or more but you hack somebody’s pc then i guess you end up only paying a couple of thousand, looks like hacking will be a better and lucrative job for me lmfao
there is no issue between h33t and 1337x and please do not permit any MAFIAA shill pretending to be someone to create a problem
thanks dudes
I never bought a Sony product since they released the rootkit – and I never intend to.. There are some things these companies do that means i will refuse to buy their products ever again – this is one example, another is Creative Labs fiasco deliberately crippling their drivers!
@46
ROFL…
The guy does seem like an idiot. I mean, he ran the CD on THREE other computers after the first one warned him that it was a rootkit? LMFAO….
@ 34 Reasoned neo|riaa
“Sony was simply trying to defend its assets and was a little misguided,”
A little misguided?! Hahaha dude, put down that crackpipe … seriously, your last remaining neuron is aching for some degree of logic. How in the fisted f*cking Christ was that “a little misguided?” You, sir, are a COMPLETE moron. Period.
“just because they are a multi-billion dollar company doesn’t mean they cant make mistakes too..”
What “mistake,” cretin? It was bloody deliberate … this was no error, so don’t dodge the issue … uunless you’re trying to tell us that $ony is as clueless as you. Surely, a pious entity such as the almighty $ony can’t possibly make a mistake…
“When will all you people realize that a little virus is a small sacrifice needed to ensure future profits.”
Yeah, for the next million years I suppose… And when will you, IMBECILE, realize that $ony HAD NO RIGHT TO PULL THIS STUNT? “A small sacrifice” @ the expense of PAYING CUSTOMERS is perfectly fine, right Reasoned $hill? Screw the customers as long as $ony continues to squeeze every drop of blood. And you STILL wonder why people “pirate” … truly amazing!
“I for one have no problem installing root kits on my machine as I know I am helping Sony reach its full potential in market share.”
Naturally, since you’re probably on their payroll … in your eyes, $ony can do no wrong. Just between us … what are they paying you for infesting TF with their propaganda? I hope they’re offering a decent profit-sharing plan … Lord knows, your daily efforts are worth every peso… <3
well well well, isn’t this all special.
Nice to see that the rootkit someone else designed and SONY stole was used for some kinda of financial gain.
You dumbshits, 34 is not Reasoned Mind. That is a fu(K1ng troll.
@34
wow…how can you justify messing up other peoples computers for your own gain.
Either #34 isn’t the real Reasoned Mind, or I’ve grossly over-estimated his intelligence.
@34 (Reasoned Mind):
Stop impersonating Reasoned Mind, he’d never say something that inane.
As to the 1200 euros, that seems reasonable to cover all the resulting damages.
I’d have gone a little further and claimed $40 and hour (so about 3000 euros), but that’s alright as well.
@ #3
1. buy rootkitted CDs
2. sue Sony for $$$$ or €€€€
3. profit
finally got rid of the ??? part
LOL!!!1one Thats defiantly FTW.
That’s him, lads … consider his other “arguments.”
@59 (profitguy):
That’s actually breaking the law…well, I mean, corruption.
kinda cheap but its a reverse of the copyright whore shakedown tactic of demanding magical sums of money for alledged losses.
a smaller claim from a consumer/victim would get the judge on his side more than a six-zeroes behind a number would do.
they can’t win for losin, sorry sons a bitches
its called dont buy or install somethin that u have no idea what the hell it is
“E.N.T.E.R.T.A.N.E.C.O.M” Yourself With Torrents – The Fastest, Easiest Torrent Search Engine – search 16 of the best torrent sites from one location.
A Swedish judge would have jailed the plaintiff and given the Sony executives a blow-job.
He bought an Anastasia CD – he deserved worse.
Want music without infestation?
Join the hundreds of millions of us…
“Piracy” (aka sharing) is the answer.
Hulky says,
…Sony came of the hook easy, they should have been
slapped with a way bigger fine…
No, they should have been convicted of felony computer fraud and abuse.
Sony executives should be doing jail time — at 10 years per offense,
since (according to Kaspersky) Federal Interest computers were involved.
1200$ for deliberately and malevolently damaging consumer PC’s under the guise of fighting piracy, really just trying to get a stronger hold over the consumers in unscrupulous ways.
That on 50 CD titles which could have sold in the 100’s of millions (and already sold a crapload before discovery).
Compare that to a soccer mom sharing some music with no intent to make a profit and no criminal intent getting fined a couple million US$.
Justice has become a commodity for the rich to expensive for the common man.
@ 71
Right on target.
Wait, the retailer has to compensate the victim? Why not the record label for putting Rootkit on a damn music CD?
what’s with using the word retarded? so very very wrong.
I really don’t get why the retailer got sued rather than Sony.
“This is absolutely disgusting. The retailer is not Sony. Sony should be the one paying damages, not any retailer.”
I disagree I think retailers should also be held accountable for selling the cd’s. The retailers have more clout then individuals, because they order hundreds if not thousands at a time. You think a company the size of Sony cares about individuals, not on your life.
Oh buy the way if the retailers get sued by individuals they either threaten to boycott Sony merchandise which is what we all should be doing, or the retailers sue Sony themselves. Heres a short list of why you should think twice on Sony.
1: November 20, 2007 EU fines Sony for tape price-fixing scandal
2: In what amounts to a slap on the wrist, Japan’s Free Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered Sony to stop the practice of pressuring Wholesalers and retailers to sell it’s PS2 at specific prices, a practice known in the US as “price fixing.”
3: Posted on Mar-13-06 Sony BMG, Universal Music, Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and EMIA class action lawsuit has been filed against major music labels for allegedly attempting to keep the online music market from emerging and allegedly conspiring to fix and maintain music prices.
4: Published October 31, 2006 DOJ Investigating Sony for RAM Price-fixing
5: November 21, 2005 Sony accused of leading price-fix cartel to stop cheap deals on web.
6: 31 Jan 05 Two Chinese DVD manufacturers (Wuxi Multimedia and Orient Power Digital
Technology) have filed a class-action lawsuit against Philips and Sony. Also LG
and Pioneer are possibly sued. The Chinese companies claim that the
electronics giants have been involved in price fixing, conspiracy to monopolize
and have violated at least five other anti-trust laws. The
lawsuit was filed in a court in California.
7: November 16, 1993 Giant Sony Electronics Corp. recently told retailers in the Washington area that they should not list prices on Sony television sets in a local consumer publication, according to several local retailers. Sony says its actions were legal, but some retailers say the powerful company has threatened to cut off deliveries of its products if they list low prices in Checkbook Bargains. That, they say, amounts to price fixing. “It’s price fixing, 100 percent price fixing,” said Tony Patane, who owns two ApplianceLand Etc. stores locally and was among the retailers Sony representatives talked to.
8: July 31, 2007 Sony faces another PS3 lawsuit:
This is just a few that were easy to Google but enough that I can’t support them with my wallet.
yeah punitive.
20 mil EU ffs. make’em feel something if you plan on pinching them pigssssss
visit the forums at http://forums.theghostbay.org/
and long live thepiratebay
@46 Sep 14, 2009 at 21:53 by huh
100 euros for 10 hours spent restoring lost data
Sounds like he did back up his data but it took 10 hours to load it back in.
@46 Sep 14, 2009 at 21:53 by huh
100 euros for 10 hours spent restoring lost data
Sounds like he did back up his data but it took 10 hours to load it back in.
Sony’s to blame, the execs are the ones who “decided” to put it on. It’s not a mistake, they wanted to protect their assets, and being the cheap-ass idiots that they are (look at Sony ISB Utility(o rly?) for Vaios, mm hmm?) got a almost-unheard of company to design their copy protection, leaving a freaking gaping hole in the software which Mark Russinovich found, and publicized on his blog. Slashdot saw the goods, and the s*** hit the fan.
Sony should have been sued for more.
Just my 2c.
lmfao @ the clowns replying to reasoned mind. Download and install “Sarcasm Patch 1.03″ pls.
7 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.