Many Sony DVDs are badly broken. Take Freedomland. Not the best movie, I don't know what I was thinking. Fortunately, part way through my player refused to play the movie further. I was wondering if it was developing good taste, but no, examining the disk on the computer revealed: 9 bad sector areas, corrupt menu and track metadata, a bunch of invalid VOBUs scattered around. The Sony website brags that this deliberate brokeness is a feature. So I returned it as defective, which it is. This is not the first time I've had to do this. The ones I can remember are all Sony disks. Surprise.

The other day there was a /. story -- forget exactly which one -- which led to a roundtable where a Sony executive was complaining that Apple's DRM wasn't a standard, wasn't something everyone (read: Sony) could access. Sony, wanting standards. DVD structure is a standard, WTF?? Hypocrisy is best served in your face, I guess.

In the future I may "purchase" Sony DVDs just to return them as defective, to try to exert what pressure I can on the merchant, almost certainly futile as I'm sure Sony executives roast marshmellows over burning bricks of g-notes regardless of consumer sentiment.

If Sony is an example I'm not holding my breath that we will be able to avoid years and years of DRM foolishness... a digital dark age.