• sab
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      1381 year ago

      I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this.

      Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program’s files invisible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed.

      And then they just paid some settlements, recalled some CDs, and continued to operate as if nothing has happened. Bloody hell.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other
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        381 year ago

        I remembered there was a Part II to the story that made it even worse, but did not remember those details. Should have read my own link! Thanks for highlighting that because it truly is the icing on the cake.

      • UKFilmNerd
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        181 year ago

        I remember, way back when, I think it was one of Natalie Imbriglia’s first albums, I stuck it into my PC’s CD-ROM drive and something odd happened.

        I could listen to a digital copy of the album via an included player and files that were in some locked weird format.

        My CD drive couldn’t see the normal CDDA portion of the disc just this little data area with a digital copy.

        Wasn’t impressed.

        • @ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
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          31 year ago

          That schema was popular for a while. That weird format was probably Windows Media Audio (wma).The audio data was still there and was accessible with the right software/firmware combo. But sometimes those disks would auto run and inject malware. This was usually the Sony root kit. Sometimes that malware would disable your system’s ability to access the audio tracks. Because for way too long windows machines would autoplay anything that was plugged into it and EVERYTHING ran as administrator. Most CD drives back then had firmware that could play the CD audio directly from the drive to your speakers, bypassing the OS entirely, so most people would never notice a difference until they tried to rip the tracks themselves.

          Some older games worked this way too, without the malware. The software would be on the data portion and instead of copying big wave file to your PC (because mp3s weren’t really a popular thing yet and drive speeds were slow), they would just play the audio from the audio track portion of the disk. You could sometimes pop those disks into a dumb CD player and listen to the audio directly as long as you skipped the data track at the beginning. You could burn your own disks like this around the same time. I remember making a few mixtapes on CD that stored a CD label/envelope tracklist as a PDF and mp3s of the CD tracks themselves on a data track at the end. Putting the data at the end allowed you to play it in a dumb CD player without having to skip the data track.

    • @foggy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why yes I did boycott Sony nearly 30 years ago.

      The worst part was the response from someone high up at Sony was “most of the people who [had the rootkit installed on their PC against their will] dont know what a rootkit is anyways, so why should I care?”

      Really was the tip of the privacy era iceberg if you ask me.

    • Beto
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      231 year ago

      I worked for a startup that had as main investor a company called InterTrust. Our office was inside their building.

      InterTrust was a patent portfolio that belonged to Sony and Philips. All they did was sue people. One day they were able to sue Apple on some stupid patent, and there was much rejoicing at the office.

      • @Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org
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        71 year ago

        I hate when you need to install different software for whatever camera, music player, whatever that you had. Luckily that is pretty rare that proprietary software is required nowadays.

        • @SIGSEGV@sh.itjust.works
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          21 year ago

          I still miss my mini-disc player! I loved using it to record songs from the radio. I felt like I was truly living in the future, having such vast storage space (like, 50 low-quality songs, lol).

          • be_excellent_to_each_other
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            61 year ago

            I always wanted one, but by the time my disposable income and the price of a player met, they were on their way out. Always seemed like a really cool bit of personal tech to me though.

          • UKFilmNerd
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            21 year ago

            I loved my minidisc player. My first was a Sharp but that was stolen in a robbery. So I replaced it with a Sony NetMD which I loved even more. Due to the new compression, depending on the length of the albums, you could fit 3 or 4 onto one disc. Also it docked with the PC, so labelling and ripping was really easy. I bought a compatible in line remote which had a backlit LCD display which I loved. The chewing gum stick battery lasted ages and if it did run out of power, I could screw on a little compartment that’s held a AA battery and keep me going.

            I loved that little player.

        • @DangerMouse@lemm.ee
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          11 year ago

          I remember Sony forcing everyone to use their proprietary SonicStage software and proprietary ATRAC3 audio file format with their Mini Disc players. Nothing else would work on their products. Thank goodness big industries don’t influence governments worldwide, or we’d be heading into some kind of dystopia DRM-laden in every aspect of our lives. Oh wait…

    • sharpiemarker
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      321 year ago

      *Edit: and of course Universal is one of the plaintiffs. I hate these fuckers so much.

      Yep

    • Th4tGuyII
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. Recordings of the song being available ≠ original recordings of the song being available.

      It’s like if I demolished the Eiffel tower, and then said the Blackpool tower’s still around so you can’t archive any photos of it

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
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      221 year ago

      Just something funny: First time I donated to archive.org my bank blocked my card due to being a “suspicious payment”.
      I had to physically go to the bank because due to security reasons I couldn’t unblock it in internet banking.
      The high security looked like this:
      “Hello. You blocked my card due to suspicious payment.”
      “OK, what’s your name”
      “[name]”
      “I see. Did you make that payment?”
      “Yes.”
      “OK, I’ll send an e-mail to management. It should be unblocked in a few hours. Have a nice day.”
      “Bye.”

      They didn’t want to see my ID card, not even the debit card. Nor sign anything. Just and only hear my name. “Security”.

      • @Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        61 year ago

        I had my insurance company ask me for my phone number for security purposes. It was an old one I had since replaced and forgotten, so they read it out to me and asked me to confirm it.

      • –Phase–
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        1 year ago

        This has happened to me with my own bank sometimes, though thankfully all I have to do is call them, report the blocked payment, and answer the same useless questions that don’t really prove anything security-wise, and that’s it. I’m not sure why they insist on doing this song and dance, but at least I don’t have to drive all the way to one of their locations to get it resolved, lol.

  • Monkey With A Shell
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    441 year ago

    I mean it’d be a terrible shame if Frank Sinatra and Billy Holiday went broke and had to come out of retirement because of the internet archive’s actions, maybe the labels a have a point here…

      • @MasterBuilder
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        101 year ago

        You missed the sarcasm. Sometimes hard to get in text. Both of those artists are long dead.

        However, their heirs could still be getting royalties if the artists were savvy.

        • @OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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          41 year ago

          No, I got the sarcasm, I wanted to note the fact that these music labels are most definitely doing this in their own interest rather than to benefit artists.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    271 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The labels’ lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive’s “Great 78 Project” functions as an “illegal record store” for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday.

    Representatives for the Internet Archive did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.

    The Internet Archive is already facing another federal lawsuit in Manhattan from leading book publishers who said its digital-book lending program launched in the pandemic violates their copyrights.

    A judge ruled for the publishers in March, in a decision that the Archive plans to appeal.

    The labels’ lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings, including Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”.

    The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and “face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.”


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Whiskeyomega
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    1 year ago

    Sony Music responsible for recently threatening to take radio streaming apps to court for streaming radio stations outside the UK under some false pretence.
    They also couldnt give a crap about vinyl quality for their artists and have had entire reissues that were faulty and never repressed. They’re seriously starting to piss me off recently. Going to donate to Archive.

  • @Lazycog@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I feel so hopeless, so pissed, all these news and how these corporations are destroying open web. I really had hope with new generations being more tech savvy and more online would push for openness of web, instead I’ve come to realize that new generations are really into apps and not going beyond that, not interested in deeper look into software and tech - as long as the gadget works and no matter any subscription cost or microtransactions or surveillance.

    I try to be hopeful, but damn it is hard to stay optimistic. I’ve been trying little by little to push friends and family in a nice way into using Firefox, alternatives to big corporate software and so on, but I understand it takes too much effort for someone who is not really interested in these things. But I will be advocate of open web forever myself.

    Edit: okay unfair to expect anything from new generations, and of course there are more tech savvy people than there probably use to be, but had hoped for a huge change in that demographic.