“A federal judge on Monday gave final approval to a settlement in a class action suit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment over anticopying software the company had embedded in some music CDs,” Anne Broache reports for CNET. “The agreement (click for PDF) covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments.”
“The court action picked up last fall when security researchers discovered vulnerabilities posed by two pieces of software, First4Internet’s XCP and SunnComm’s MediaMax, which are automatically installed on a user’s computer upon loading certain Sony BMG music CDs,” Broache reports. “Under the terms of the final settlement, Sony BMG definitively agreed to continue halting manufacture or distribution of CDs containing the two programs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: From the settlement: Settlement Class Members will be able to select promotional codes usable to download the specified album contents from any one of three (3) major download services. SONY BMG will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that one of the three download services offered as an option to Settlement Class Members is the “iTunes” service. The promotional codes will be fully transferable, and will expire no less than 180 days after they are issued.
This seems like an opportune time to end our boycott of Sony products. Now, if Sony would only ship a product that we’d like to buy.
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