Apology
Topic: Music and Video
They're sorry.

The code they installed, without you knowing it, opens a back door to your computer to hackers, and they're sorry?

Removing it manually may violate your computer manufacturer's warranty, and they're sorry?

Private information about you, your listening habits, and your purchased CD's has to be given to them before you can download the uninstaller, and it's already a potentially compromised system or you wouldn't need the uninstaller, and they "deeply regret any inconvenience?"

They violated the trust of legitimate music listeners and consumers all over the world in an effort to stymie the few of them that obtained the music by copying it, and now they're "committed to making this situation right?"

Someone get a calculator and find out how much the music and video industry has thrown away on legal fees, research, third-party virus-like software that compromises legitimate systems, and out-of-court settlements. Then figure out how much they'd have lost if they'd just left well enough alone, and used conventional means to protect their artists and legitimate customers. I bet figure B is smaller.

They forgot that there's 3 groups of people that need protected. They remembered the first 2: themselves and their recording artists. They forgot the honest consumer; the people that need to have faith in them, the manufacturer. The more people they piss off, the smaller the number of their faithful clientele will be. And that means more people getting the music illegitimately, and fewer paying customers. Which means they'll have to charge more for the music, in order to offset their loss of legitimate business, plus all their other expenses, and still have enough to pay the artists.

But they can only jack up their already outrageous prices so far before people just start dubbing music off the radio again, and being satisfied with that. It's not the best sound, but it's a lot cheaper than spending as much as 25 USD on a single music CD.

I know they have to protect themselves from the pirates. But the little guy that copies a CD for a friend or three isn't the same as the criminal that burns 100,000 copies of the CD and markets it as an original from the manufacturer. That's the guy they want to catch. That's the guy they want to punish. But that's the guy that scoffs at their feeble attempts to stop him, and we're the guys that get punished.

Screw them. I'm buying my music on line through iTunes or similar from now on. The quality is the same, I pay a dollar a song for only the songs I want, I can play it on my computer or MP3 player, I can burn my own mixes to a CD and use them on any CD player I want, and I don't even need to leave the house. Yeah, I still have to give them personal data. But so far as I know, it's still more secure than having a trojan horse hide itself on my hard drive and send personal data to some hacker. Is it still giving them my business? Undoubtedly. But they're not getting it directly, they're not getting as much of it, and they're sure as Hell not getting their virus on my hard drive.

But wait a minute. Have you actually checked their infected titles? They infected CD's that nobody would buy anyway! Bette Midler? Burt Bacharach? Cyndi Lauper... well, okay, maybe... And maybe the late Shel Silverstein. But even that pair of artists aren't exactly drawing crowds to the record stores. Chances aren't very good that you've got this "protection" on your hard drive anyway, unless you popped one of those CD's into it. And that's unlikely, based on the list of titles.

Mind bending time... ask yourself... does the virus copy itself onto the CD you make when you copy the original? If not, then the protection's broken anyway; just copy it one time on one computer, and then copy it ad infinitum on another. If so, then what's the point? Each one is still it's own entity, and you'll be able to copy it, and then copy the copy, and so on. The security is an illusion from square one, and it only makes your computer less secure, while having no effect on their CD security.

Hey... thought... odds are, all their computers have the same software, now that they've been putting it on their CD's. That means their networks are infected. And that means...

Heh. Heheh... Either they've removed the software, and proven how dangerous it really is, or they haven't, and they're still at risk.

I don't think I need to say any more than that.