I’ve bought about £3000 of Sony equipment in the last 6 years or so, and undoubtedly have piles of Sony-issued CDs and movies.
I don’t foresee myself spending another penny with them until they repent. DRM is clearly incompatible with general-purpose computing devices. It’s one thing to build a closed product like the iPod with clear boundaries and expectations, quite another to launch a quasi-criminal broadside against your customers’ PCs to install DRM measures.
Hey, how about the Million Blog Challenge: 1,000,000 blogs with their templates re-written so every post starts and ends “*** Don’t buy Sony products until they respect their customers: www.sony-screws-your-pc.com ***”. Maybe that’ll get their attention? Time for a PledgeBank initiative?
Childish lashing out? Not a patch on the damage Sony’s done to their customers and people’s confidence in their computers, electronics and media.
If one wanted to be vicious and infantile, it would read “*** Samsung make great displays, phones, laptops & the new XBox is cool, so why buy Sony? www.sony-screws-your-pc.com ***”.
Meow.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:20 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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This should make you even happier :-(
First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/10/sony_drm_trojan/
A modest boycott of all Sony products might be very effective. Sony's music division is much smaller than the rest of the company and is not doing terribly well. Most of the company is not doing well - apart from Playstation.
One might juice up the internal war between divisions (which really gets the CEO's attention) if other product lines were impacted. The internal pressure might be greater than the external pressure.
So it is the holiday buying season - don't buy *anything* from Sony and influence your friends. Until they move back to cleartext CDs across their line.
Another benefit is industry is considering more DRM on about an content you can imagine. Seeing a negative impact at Sony might send a few messages...
Posted by: at November 11, 2005 01:37 PMI've been a BIG Sony fan. Three VAIOs around me, Sony digi, Sony camcorder, Sony TV/DVD. BUT I would now consider other manufacturers. This was a decision I came to some weeks back for the very first time after being a die hard Sony fan. When my Vaio broke I received the most unimaginable dire support from Vaio link. Then it appears they have lost touch with the market - firstly they said have invented the iPod but Apple beat them to it. Next you would think that they would have came out with the video iPod first, nope Apple beat them again. There is only one thing for sure that I would by Sony without question - LCD displays where they clearly lead.
Posted by: at November 11, 2005 05:23 PMI've been a huge PlayStation fan for years -- but I'm considering not buying a PS3. I think Sony will notice when this starts affecting both music sales and console sales.
The CDs aren't much of an issue for me -- I've only bought directly from artists for about four years, but I'll have to look closely at the few CDs I've received as gifts.
BTW, note that Sony's rootkit may have infringed copyright, and note how this discussion moves quickly to a boycott.
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/69479
I think we're about to see how fast a company can destroy its own reputation.
Posted by: at November 14, 2005 05:16 PMGreat idea! I'm happy to accept suggestions for further content, too. (give it a few hours for DNS to propogate...)
Posted by: at November 15, 2005 06:12 AM