Sony BMG initially rejected the uproar over XCP as technobabble.
In retrospect, this was possibly an ill advised tactic. The EFF has filed suit against SONY based on a California law which bans collecting personally identifiable information through deceptive means, allowing consumers to sue for damages.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG demanding that the record label repairs the damage done by anti piracy technology that it bundled on millions of its audio CDs.
The suit targets not only the XCP technology which for the past weeks has been at the centre the Sony controversy, but also the SunnComm MediaMax software that Sony has included on more than 20 million CDs. Another 2 million CDs were shipped with the XCP technology.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the State Attorney General has filed suit based on the new Texas Spyware statute.
The Texas spyware law allows the state to recover damages of up to $100,000 in damages for each violation. Abbott said there were thousands of violations, and that any money would go to the state.
However, getting to the discouraging part and proving that the herd of cash cows will continue to blindly, deafly and most of all dumbly walk behind the leader right on into the slaughterhouse:
. . . despite three weeks of stinging criticism and calls for boycotts, consumers appear to be buying and using Sony CDs just as they always have.
According to data from market tracker Nielsen SoundScan, the discs carrying Sony's copy protection software suffered little, if any, decline in sales compared with other medium-selling titles at similar points in their release cycles--at least up to the point of Sony's recall last week.
Well, perhaps only those consumers who actually use their computers to play music are the ones who are understandably alarmed and refusing to do business with SONY?
Err, no, apparently not.
Another measure of albums' popularity is provided by Gracenote, whose CDDB--Compact Disc Database--service counts how many times people put CDs in their computers using a media player such as iTunes, Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. These programs automatically look up the album name and song titles.
A representative for Gracenote said the company's data shows no appreciable difference in trends--and specifically no obvious drop-off in listening--between Van Zant and similar-selling albums that don't carry the rootkit. The same goes for several other recalled Sony titles, it noted.
Apparently, as soon as we get done playing The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again" we can cue up The Kinks - "Give The Sheeple What They Want".
Sheesh.
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