Duck and cover...

Ahh, what they used to say after a nuclear strike. To protect yourself, you should duck and cover.

My guess is Sony is doing that right now, hoping the shit-storm just flies over. Oh, but it isn't.

At last count, at least SIX class action lawsuits were filed against Sony over the rootkit. They include the states of New York, California, and Texas as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The District Attorney of Texas is alone calling for a penalty of $100,000 per infection. Even if only 100 installations were found to exist in the state of Texas, that alone amounts to a $10 million penalty. And, judging by this map of detected infections, that is a low number.

But, lets turn to what Sony is doing. They at first denied any wrongdoing, of course. This is standard procedure for such a megacorp. Of course, the problem didn't go away, so they stopped production of the infected CDs. Great, but there were still some 20 million CDs in circulation. Only after enough complaints and two class-action lawsuits later did Sony offer to remove all infected CDs from store shelves and offer a replacement with a non-infected CD. Glad to see them save face when faced with legal consequences.

Ahh, Sony. In their infinite greed they had set back DRM by several years. Instead of the initial plan of slowly letting us get used to DRM before we were totally restricted, they turned up the water too hot and the frog jumped out before it boiled to death. They have thrown a better part of the music industry in total disarray, as people are now being scared off from buying CDs for the holiday season. People are boycotting Sony, and I'm surely going to be one of them. Even though Sony BMG isn't entirely affiliated with Sony Electronics, the link in the name alone is enough for me.

People are aware now. They know what the music industry is doing to their rights. They will soon learn of all their wonderful practices as EMI forces Apple to enter a variable pricing scheme sometime next year. People will figure it out, and then they'll be done.

The age of the media cartels will soon be over. All thanks to Sony and a rootkit.

Edit:
Almost forgot some of the better parts. Sony uses another type of DRM from a company called SunComm. This stuff isn't QUITE as bad, but it's still horrible in one simple fact. When you insert the CD it will ask you to install the "Enhanced content" (read: DRM and thier required media player). However, if you click no to not accept thier terms, it still installs the DRM! You couldn't make this shit up...