Canadian Sony Rootkit Settlement Stirs Controversy

An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law professor Michael Geist is reporting that Sony BMG Canada has quietly kept a key legal document secret as part of its class action settlement over last year's rootkit case. The document, which is not on the Sony settlement site but has now been posted on Geist's site (pdf), contains a series of bogus arguments about why Canadians are receiving far less than U.S. consumers."

P2P time

[phorm]

So far as I can tell, with the CD-copying levy etc and various other factors, there have been no cases of somebody being sued for downloading music in Canada. That being said, perhaps that's the best way to get a song distributed by sony without getting the malware?

I don't see why this is interesting...

[cleverhandle]

For those that haven't RTFDocument, it basically says two things:

1) Sony BMG Canada will not accept any binding injuction based on legal proceedings from a different country with a different set of laws, but...

2) Practically speaking, the actions of Sony BMG Canada will be the same as those of Sony BMG US (for technical/logistical reasons). That is, Sony BMG Canada will unofficially follow the terms of the injunction.

What more do you expect? I'm no fan of lawyers, but certainly no company is going let a precedent be set that their operations in one country will be bound by the legal system of a different country. The document is just saying to Canadian consumers "Look, we can't legally submit to this injunction, but we'll be playing by its rules anyway."

The whole Sony rootkit affair reeks, but this just looks like standard legal procedure - CYA of a fairly inoffensive variety.

Re:Exibit C *NOT* Missing from Sony settlement sit

[djmurdoch]

That should be "no longer missing". It was missing when the EFF and Geist articles were originally posted. Right now, you can still see the version without it in the Google cache if you search for "Consolidated Amended Statement of Claim in Quebec" [72.14.205.104]. Google says they picked it up on Sept 3.

Re:I'm a Canadian and I went shopping...

[nxtw]

looking at price and product quality, the premium of the Sony brand is usually not worth it.

My 32" LCD TV was $900 ($1300 MSRP) and has recently sold as low as $800. It includes an ATSC/QAM HD tuner.

A lower end 32" Sony LCD TV without HD tuner would cost $1330 ($1600 MSRP); then, they have at least two additional 32" models available that cost even more.

Re:I'm a Canadian and I went shopping...

[photomonkey]

...And sadly, it doesn't matter. Many CCD and CMOS chips (sensors used in digital cameras) are manufactured by Sony, regardless of whether it's a Panasonic or a Nikon. I can't speak directly to computing components, but I'll bet Sony has a death-grip on many of the home theater components (by which I mean the pieces-parts inside the TV, cable box, DVD player, etc.).

Re:Proud to be a fart

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It's worse than you say: Bushco is claiming that these aren't military prisoners - POWs - but then trying to put them through a tribunal. In addition, it looks like we aren't terribly selective about who goes there. From what I've heard, a lot of people in gitmo are normal guys that were unlucky enough to be on the wrong street. Also, Padilla is a citizen - why is he being held in Gitmo? He has a right to a trial, he was arrested in Chicago, who has the right to keep him in Cuba for 4 years?

Re:Thanks for the root Sony

[dryeo]

I don't think there is much chance that OpenWatcom will die out as Scitech depends on it for their graphic drivers.
Scitech has a pretty good business supplying video drivers for older OSes. At that I don't know if you remember back in the DOS days when you often needed a VESA driver to play games Display Doctor was considered the best. See http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/product_downlo ad.html [scitechsoft.com] for some of their products.
Watcom at one time was considered the best compiler for gaming due to its speed and being cross platform. All the old DOS games that used dos4gw were compiled with Watcom with DOOM being perhaps the most famous. DOOM ran pretty good on a 33Mhz 386.
Also here on OS/2 the GCC porter is now using wlink to link OMF object files and soon the debugger and profiler will also be working
Anyways it shouldn't be too hard to have your program compiling with Watcom and GCC. I use several libraries that have been compiled by their porter with Open Watcom eg Cairo and SDL and with one or two header ifdefs they compile fine under GCC as well. And I routinely link Watcom and GCC with the biggest program being Mozilla apps.
Anyways be good if you can leave the wmakefiles working and just add the gmakefiles or go with the auto tools