Informer, wtf are you talking about? Sony put a freaking ROOTKIT on their CDs, without telling anyone about it.

Now, that rootkit is being used to exploit people’s machines.

Sony is WAY out of line on this one, and that is evident by how fast it pulled it from the market.

There is no argument for Sony here, it made a terrible, terrible decision. Thank God they pulled it.

I really don’t think that Sony gets it. Since when was piracy an epidemic on the Playstation?

Liam, No I don’t you get it.

Piracy in Asia is well known.  Go to a place called Pantip Square in Bangkok and tell me how many PS2 titles you can from buy there.  Then look at the PC software on the second floor plus the Mac software on the top floor (like 4 titles..yawn).  Sim Lim Square in Singapore at one stage had 3 floors of piracy.

You have no idea.

Shows what I know.

I don’t care either way. I’m a Nintendo fan, so I could care less what Sony does to its fans.

I don’t think thay will. Nintendo wes pretty smart with making the Gamecube discs smaller than standard DVDs. Piracy is non-existant on the ‘Cube because of that, and I’ve heard that a PC’s CD-ROM drive will ruin the discs.

Liam,

“Over a million counterfeit goods found. Employees facing prison sentences.

DID YOU KNOW? - COUNTERFEITERS PAY HEFTY PRICE IN TAIWAN FOR ILLEGAL MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION OF NINTENDO PRODUCTS

May 24, 2004 – Taiwan’s Pan-Chiao District Court has rendered a judgment against Taiwan’s Yudian Company, a major manufacturer and distributor of counterfeit Nintendo Game Boy® video game cartridges. Hwei-chu Chen, one of the principals of Yudian, was sentenced to six years in prison, while six other employees of Yudian received sentences of up to three years in prison.

The prosecution resulted from a raid on Yudian that was conducted by the Taipei County station of the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice (IB) on May 21, 2001. Yudian Company was owned by Chen-chi Kuo and Hwei-chu Chen, and has been suspected of manufacturing and distributing Nintendo counterfeits for years. The IB seized from Yudian more than 1.5 million pieces of counterfeit Nintendo goods, including components used to assemble those counterfeit products. The case was one of the largest counterfeit cases in Taiwan in years and the goods were destined for global distribution.

The huge quantity of counterfeits caused the Pan-Chiao District Attorney to indict all major defendants, including Hwei-chu Chen and seven employees, although the president of Yudian, Mr. Kuo, has fled and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. The Pan-Chiao District Court rendered guilty judgments against all the defendants and issued its sentences after a review of the detained counterfeits that were seized from Yudian.

“Chen-chi Kuo, Hwei-chu Chen and the companies they control have sold millions of Nintendo counterfeits around the world,” said Jean Lin, manager of anti-piracy for Nintendo of America Inc. “This judgment will deter others from manufacturing and distributing Nintendo counterfeits in the future. We applaud the Taiwan governmental and judicial efforts to put an end to this major counterfeiting operation.”

Worldwide piracy is estimated to have cost the United States entertainment software industry more than $3 billion annually. In 2003, Nintendo, together with its publishers and developers, suffered nearly $720 million in lost sales as a result of illegal copying of Nintendo products. “

And,

“GameCube Piracy now Available”

In other console news, Hong Kong has hacked the gamecube into playing pirated games burned onto MINI-DVD or CD-R formats. They have developed a CD/DVD addon and use the Gamecube’s expansion ports to implement it.

DRM was the work of a 3rd party, not Sony.

Some additional information that the OP missed out on :

The DRM technology was written by Sony partner Firt 4 Internet Ltd. of the United Kingdom (http://www.first4internet.co.uk/).

Sony BMG’s copy-protected CDs incorporate First 4 Internet’s XCP2 (extended copy protection) technology. The company is the first major label to offer XCP2-protected CDs to consumers, although Sony BMG already ships some CDs using MediaMax copy protection from SunnComm. The new effort uses different technology, but with the same end result for consumers: a limited ability to copy. By the end of this year, Sony BMG says, most of its CDs sold in the United States will incorporate one of these technologies.

When you insert the CD into your Windows-based computer, the disc launches its own audio player software, which warns you that you’ll be allowed to make only three copies of the disc. You can make those copies from within the Sony BMG audio player, or you can use that software to rip the files to your music library.

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One potential problem for consumers is that the protected CDs prevent PC users from moving songs to Apple IPods. That’s because Apple refuses to license its FairPlay digital rights management technology so that other companies can accommodate it.
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Thanks Apple!