I've been busy and haven't gotten around to posting about the whole Sony-BMG / XCP scandal. I'm sure most of you have already read about this, but Boing Boing has a good roundup here.
Perhaps my favorite quote in the aftermath here was this bit from Stewart Baker, DHS' assistant secretary for policy (via Donna Wentworth @ Copyfight):
"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.
Exactly. This was incredibly irresponsible. DRM (or more specifically TPM) is not what consumers want. As I have said in the past, consumers want music that they can use as they please. They are willing to pay for it, even from sites of questionable legality. It's bad enough when TPM fails (i.e., preventing access to something you own) - it's something else entirely when you start compromising the security of our computers and, as Bruce Schneier suggests, stealing our CPU time.
My dad recently bought the new Trey album, a CD "infected" with XCP. After being initially unable to get it on his MP3 player and then reading the rootkit aftermath, he said: "This is what I get for trying to buy a CD. I should have just downloaded it."
Someone needs to clue the record industry in on something that seems so painfully obvious: Consumers want to do the right thing. Stop giving us reasons not to. Start trusting your customers and maybe we'll start to trust you in return.
