Subject: [fwrends] Tainting the CD format

p2p news view / p2pnet: Sony knew they were dead in the water when the

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admonished them on the CD rootkit

scandal -

at a Chamber of Commerce event on combating intellectual-property theft.

According to Briand Krebs of the Washington Post the Department of Homeland

Security's

assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker, made at the event "a remark

clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels":

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- 

it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual

property,

it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people

need to adopt in these days.

The Recording Industry Association of America's CEO Mitch Bainwol was in

attendance and you knew that these words had to run a shiver down his spine.

He

is spending quite a bit of time on the beltway these days pushing several

new bills to give Hollywood control of how consumers use future electronic

products.

But, it is hard to call certain activities illegal when one of your members

spreads what security pundits called malicious code to millions of home

computers.

It just undermines his argument, especially when a senior Bush official

looks him straight in the eye and says he agrees with the pundits.

Bainwol has another big worry. The controversy from the Sony scandal has the

potential to go beyond Sony by tainting the CD format itself in the eyes of

consumers. This could kill the format, though it is not clear yet what

effect, if any, this will have on record sales. The word-of-mouth building

on the

Net looks ominous right now. The industry is now looking to lay low and hope

this passes.

That's why Sony backed down yesterday and declared that they would remove

this particular DRM from all of their products...temporarily. Sony and the

industry

as a whole are in damage control mode. So far they have not done a very good

job as recent comments by senior Sony exec Thomas Hesse only inflamed

animosity

on the blogosphere. Sony is also unapologetic about their tactic, which in

itself is playing very badly in the press.

One thing is for sure, the industry will not give up on installing DRM tools

on their wares. In the end, as more artists continue to use file sharing as

a promotional tool, DRM may just become a costly solution looking for a

problem.

Rich Menta -

MP3NewsWire