Sony BMG sues anti-piracy company

R.A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Mon Jul 16 18:06:30 PDT 2007


<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/6897202.stm>

The BBC

Business Contents:  Economy Companies

Friday, 13 July 2007, 10:45 GMT 11:45 UK

Sony BMG sues anti-piracy company


Record company Sony BMG is suing a firm that designed controversial
anti-piracy software used on CDs sold by the label.

Sony BMG filed papers in a New York state court seeking $12m in damages
from the Arizona-based Amergence Group.

It says Amergence's Mediamax software landed it with a $5.75m (#2.83m) bill
for compensation after users reported problems with their computers.

Amergence disputes the claims and blames another company's software for the
problems.

Amergence, formerly known as SunnComm, developed the Mediamax anti-piracy
program, which was used on 32 Sony CDs released in the US and Canada.

In December 2005, Sony BMG issued a statement highlighting problems with
the Mediamax software and urging users to install a patch that closed a
security loophole which it said MediaMax opened on PCs.

At the same time, other consumers took action over Sony CDs that were being
protected with another anti-piracy technology known as XCP.

Sony eventually recalled all the CDs that used XCP and offered to swap
customers' existing discs for ones that did not use the software.

A statement from Amergence said the problems had resulted from "Sony's
undertested release of a competitor's technology" and "BMG's 'final
authority' input in determining the functional specifications of the
Mediamax copy protection".

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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