Arstechnia had a Nate Anderson story today about another theoretical rootkit in a piece of commercial software. While that’s not good news, there were an additional two paragraphs at the end of the story about the provisionally approved settlement of Sony/BMG’s class action lawsuit from their XCP rootkit fiasco. Anderson summarized the terms of the settlement as follows:
XCP owners not only can exchange their disc for a clean copy, but they also get a clean MP3 copy of the music on the disc, a cash payment of US$7.50, and one free album download. Users can also forgo the cash in favor of two more album downloads.
There it is in black and white, an album is worth $3.75 US (plus materials). I’ll be generous and round up to $5.00. Remember that next time you see $14.95 or higher on the price tag. I would have loved to hear the arguments between the Sony executives and their lawyers talking about the amount of money in the settlement versus the established value of an Album.
Tags: MP3, Sony/BMG, XCP Rootkit
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[...] I don’t speak German. So when I hear this what I hear is, Ya! Ya! YA! YAAA! Get me a light beer! Everything that I was doing otherwise came to an immediate halt. I had to investigate. It’s really interesting to listen to; I highly recommend it. Though I would add that it’s not worth paying money for. Not even five bucks. [...]