All Things News

Boycott Sony!

Straight from Slashdot: “Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony’s run-in with the Mexican police. (Billboard picked up the story as well.) It seems that they raided Sony’s offices and seized 6,397 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. Fernandez had signed a seven-album deal with Sony Music; he completed that commitment and then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed-upon seven albums. Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as an eighth album. Fernandez claims that he fulfilled his contract with Sony, and residual material belongs to him. Hmm. Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me.”

It's the PS3 Grill! Why play shitty video games when you can grill delicious food?!

Straight from the ‘Sony’s a genius’ department, by way of Slashdot: “CNet reports on a bizarre comment from Sony’s Computer Entertainment CEO in response to complaints from developers on how hard it is to develop games for the Playstation 3. ‘We don’t provide the “easy to program for” console that (developers) want, because “easy to program for” means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?’ Given that games heavily drive console sales, and the fact that the PS3 is already 8 million units behind the Xbox 360, I think making a developer’s job harder is the last thing Sony needs.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Sony BMG is no stranger to piracy. As one of the most vocal supporters of the RIAA and IFPI antipiracy efforts, the company has some experience hunting down and punishing consumers who don’t pay for its products. The company is getting some experience on the other side of the table, however, now that it’s being sued for software piracy. PointDev, a French software company that makes Windows administration tools, received a call from a Sony BMG IT employee for support. After Sony BMG supplied a pirated license code for Ideal Migration, one of PointDev’s products, the software maker was able to mandate a seizure of Sony BMG’s assets. The subsequent raid revealed that software was illegally installed on four of Sony BMG’s servers. The Business Software Alliance, however, believes that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG’s computers could be pirated.

These are some pretty serious—not to mention ironic—allegations against a company that’s gone so far as to install malware on consumers’ computers in the name of preventing piracy.

While PointDev is claiming €300,000 (over $475,000) in damages in its suit against Sony BMG, Agustoni Paul-Henry, PointDev’s CEO, says (from a Google translation of a French report) that this is more about principle than money: “We are forced to watch every week if key software pirates are not [sic] on the Internet. We are a small company of six employees. Instead of trying to protect us, we could spend this time to develop ourselves.”

Paul-Henry thinks Sony BMG’s piracy of PointDev’s products is the fault of more than just a single employee (again, translated): “I think piracy is linked to the policy of a company. If the employee has the necessary funding to buy the software he needs, he will. If this is not the case, he will find alternative ways, as the work must be done in one way or another.”

Certainly, one wonders what led to Sony BMG to steal PointDev’s product in the first place. It’s a safe bet that the company can afford to pay for the necessary licenses, which leaves sheer laziness as the most likely culprit. In any event, it’s absolutely inexcusable for a company that has been at the forefront of the antipiracy fight, going so far as to surreptitiously install rootkits on its customers’ PCs.

Straight from Slashdot: “First Sony packed its laptops with Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office trial version, Corel Paint Shop Pro trial version, WinDVD and more. Now it is offering to remove the bloatware. Of course marketing changed the name from ‘removing the crap we stuck you with’ to ‘Fresh Start’ software optimization. And they want you to pay $149.99 to clean up their mess — $49.99 for ‘Fresh Start’ on top of the required $100.00 Vista Business upgrade. You can get about $25.00 of that cost back if you select all available ‘no-software’ options which are only available after selecting the $149.99 ‘upgrade’. Wonder what they would charge to remove Windows completely.”

Update 11:57 GMT by SM: It seems that massive outrage at Sony’s “Fresh Start” program has encouraged them to drop the fee for scrubbing your laptop of bloatware before shipping it your way.”

Are you glad you picked Blu-Ray now?

“Lack of competition sends Blu-ray player prices upward”

Straight from Engadget: “Late last month, we actually posed the question of buying a Blu-ray player now (being that the format war is over and all), or waiting things out until prices sink and Profile 2.0 players flood the market. Aside from the PlayStation 3 — which is actually priced fairly reasonably if you were in the hunt for a new console anyway — it seems as though HD DVD’s exit has actually caused Blu-ray player prices to creep back upwards. Granted, this is about as far from surprising as it gets — after all, it’s nothing short of supply and demand working its magic. Still, it wasn’t too long ago that we saw Toshiba actively putting pressure on the Blu camp to reduce prices in order to stay competitive, and now that said pressure has vanished, stickers on the whole have headed north. Ah well, it’s not like the consumer didn’t ask for this, um, right?”

Straight from Joystiq: “The rumors were true. Japanese news source NHK (english translation and Reuters validation) is reporting that Toshiba is planning to drop support of HD DVD, striking a final blow to the format and conceding victory to Blu-ray. The Sony-backed high-definition disc has been gaining strides for some time, most notably after Warner Bros switched to Blu-ray exclusively. Toshiba is expected to face hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

The so-called “format wars” seems to be at an end, and now we’re left to ponder about the future, such as how big is the office party Sony is throwing in honor of its victory? More related to video games, might we see a future Blu-ray add-on (and subsequently rumors of a built-in drive) for the Xbox 360?”

Oh look, another proprietary format from Sony that is destined to failure. How many more of these does Sony need before they “get it?” If they didn’t learn anything from Betamax, then how about learning from their other format failures; Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Micro, Atrac, Minidisc, Video8, Digital8, SACD, UMD, UMF, MicroMV, R-DAT, SDDS, HiMD, HiFD, MMCD, etc…

Hopefully we can add Blu-Ray to that list soon.

Straight from Slashdot:  “Stony Stevenson alerts us to news out of CES that Sony has kick-started another standards war, this time over wireless USB. Ars notes that Sony “[never was] one to settle for an open standard when the opportunity to push a proprietary alternative presents itself.” Sony’s TransferJet technology uses low-power UWB at very short distances to transfer data at a nominal 520 Mbps. Almost every other large technology company — including Intel, Microsoft, HP, and Samsung — has embraced the W-USB standard, which promises transfer speeds of 480 Mbps at distances up to 3 meters, vs. TransfeJet’s 3 centimeters.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Customers aren’t the only ones frustrated with the high-definition format wars—Sony CEO Howard Stringer is reaching the end of his rope as well. Blu-ray, which is backed by Sony, was doing well up until recently and winning the war based on merits, Stringer said at an event in New York. That is, up until movie studio Paramount decided to “change sides” and go exclusively HD DVD in August. Things have apparently become more difficult since then, and the high-profile CEO is showing signs of wear.

“It’s a difficult fight,” Stringer was quoted saying by the Associated Press, going so far as to describe the situation as a “stalemate.” He candidly indicated that the war mostly came down to bragging rights over who was winning, and said that the two camps could have collaborated better in the past to develop one format. Stringer even said that he wished he could go back in time to make that possible—is that the smell of regret floating in the air?”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Macrovision, the DRM firm perhaps best known recently for creating security holes in Windows with its SafeDisc DRM, has purchased the intellectual property surrounding the BD+ DRM scheme used by Blu-ray to thwart attempts at copying. For $45 million, Macrovision will get ownership of the Self-Protecting Digital Content (SPDC) technology that forms the basis for BD+ as well as associated patents owned by Cryptography Research.

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD use AACS to thwart copying, but that was cracked last spring. Blu-ray is alone in using an additional layer of security, BD+, to keep users from copying Blu-ray discs. BD+ works via a small virtual machine that is launched each time a disc is inserted. The VM does some code transformation to correct deliberately-corrupted video streams, and checks to see if the disc is playing on a Blu-ray player known to have been hacked. If the player has been compromised in the past, playback can be disabled. When the disc is ejected, the VM disappears from memory, which, in theory, makes it more difficult to hack or reverse engineer.

One small problem: BD+ was hacked earlier this month by SlySoft, makers of AnyDVD. The crack made good the company’s boast that a crack would be available by year end and called into serious question the claims made by Blu-ray’s backers that BD+ was uncrackable.

With the crack, users of AnyDVD make copies of the movies for fair use purposes. Mandatory Managed Copy is part of the Blu-ray spec, but has yet to be implemented, meaning that there’s no way for Blu-ray disc owners to legally copy the discs.”

Straight from Joystiq: “It seems like having thorough, consumer-focused customer support is a huge deal in this iteration of the console war, which is why we were surprised to hear the woes of Ive, a Sony fanboy and owner of a broken PS3. According to Ive’s story, he sent in his faulty system to be repaired, only to be told that his warranty had been voided by the massive amounts of dust that had accumulated within the casing.

Here’s our favorite part of the story: When asked what part of the warranty says that a dusty system cannot be replaced, his helpful customer service representative told him that dust collection could either be considered customer abuse, or an act of God. We’d like to think that if the Lord did destroy Ive’s PS3, he would do so with a plague of locusts, or perhaps a well-placed bolt of lightning. Dust collection just lacks that celestial panache, you know?”

Straight from Ars Technica: “One advantage that backers of Blu-ray have touted in the format battle with HD DVD is its extra helping of “unbreakable” DRM called BD+. It’s not unbreakable after all. SlySoft, makers of AnyDVD, have released a new beta of their AnyDVD HD disc ripping application that it claims can successfully crack and rip Blu-ray discs protected by BD+. That didn’t take long. Just last week the company said that a crack was imminent, with full support for decrypting discs with BD+ protection coming by the end of the year.

According to a SlySoft employee’s post in the company forums, the AnyDVD 6.1.9.6 beta has full support for playback of Blu-ray discs with BD+. “All available BD+ titles can be copied with AnyDVD ripper, or can be watched on HTPC without HDCP using PowerDVD 3104 and AnyDVD,” reads Tom’s post.”

Straight from Joystiq: “Kiss your loved ones, hug your friends, because if this keeps up we’ve reached the end of days — the Xbox 360 outsold the PlayStation 3 last week in Japan. We’ll break down all the numbers in our weekly Japanese hardware sales post later today. For now (while we pack our towels), the Xbox 360 sold 17,673 fueled by (raise an eyebrow) Namco Bandai’s Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, which debuted at the #2 spot behind Super Mario Galaxy.

The PS3 sold 17,434 units compared to Xbox 360’s 17,673, a slight 200 unit separation. But to just give an idea how dramatic the increase in sales was, the previous week Xbox 360 only sold 3,718 units, increasing its sales almost five fold. Repent while you still can.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “SlySoft, the Antigua-based company behind AndDVD HD, has claimed that it knows how to defeat the additional BD+ encryption available on Blu-ray devices and that BD+ movies will be cracked by the end of the year.

In a press release, the company appears to relish its outlaw status in Hollywood. “I should really think about hiring a bodyguard now, since this product won’t please everybody,” said James Wong, the company’s head developer. He’s certainly right about that.

AACS, the “advanced” copy protection system deployed on both high-def disc formats, proved itself to be something less than hacker proof when it was cracked in a couple of months. Back in April, hackers announced a set of “non-revocable cracks” and then promptly cracked AACS again a day after it was “fixed.”

BD+ is a second layer of encryption that can be slapped on top of AACS. It wasn’t used with initial Blu-ray releases because, well, it wasn’t actually done. The specs and licensing arrangements weren’t worked out until June of this year, and it wasn’t long after that BD+ went to work annoying legal users.

The technology allows special code to run in a virtual machine that is created on Blu-ray devices. This code runs continuously in the background while a disc is playing and examines the player environment for traces of tampering or copying. The code is disc-specific and is deleted from memory once a disc is ejected.

Despite its complexity, BD+ may soon join AACS on the “PWN3D!” list. SlySoft has a good track record when it comes to handling AACS, and the company’s newest release of AnyDVD HD includes a bypass for the recent upgrade to the media key block (MKBv4) that is used to protect new HD DVD and Blu-ray films.”

Straight from Technology Guardian: “Operating loss at its game unit, which offers loss-making PlayStation 3 game gear, is estimated to exceed 100 billion yen ($876 million) for the current business year, compared with its original projection of 50 billion yen, a Sony spokeswoman said.”

Digg Comments

Straight from Slashdot: “In an article that will probably tick off a lot of PS3 owners, Will Wright calls the PS3 and 360 ‘incremental improvement(s)’. ‘The Wii feels like a major jump – not that the graphics are more powerful, but that it hits a completely different demographic. In some sense I see the Wii as the most significant thing that’s happened, at least on the console side, in quite a while … I still, for the most part, prefer playing games on the computer – to me the mouse is the best input device ever. Every generation it’s like ‘the PC’s dead! The PC’s dead!’. But it carries on growing when consoles are flat for five years. At the moment I can get better graphics on my PC than I can on the PS3.’”

Straight from Gizmodo: “No surprises here, really. Profits for Nintendo’s first fiscal half were ¥132.42 billion ($1.16 billion) on sales of ¥694.80 billion ($6.09 billion), destroying the same half last year’s profit of ¥54.35 billion on ¥298.82 billion in sales. Nintendo’s feeling pretty good, obviously, raising forecasted sales of the Wii this fiscal year by one million to 17.5 million consoles, with the DS’s sales target bumped 8 percent to 28 million units. Software-wise, it’s expecting 165 million DS titles and 97 million Wii games to roll for the year, up 8 and 35 percent, respectively. Consequently, they’re expecting to rake in ¥275 billion ($2.4 billion) in profits for the year on sales of ¥1.55 trillion ($13.59 billion). Bottom line: shitloads of systems, shitloads of games, shitloads of money.”

Straight from Joystiq: “Though that PS3 price may still require a little more wallet thickness that you feel comfortable with, it’s apparently been low enough to heavily impact Sony’s games division pocketbook. The company has just reported that in the second fiscal quarter of the year, operating losses in the division rose to $841 million, more than double the $381 million in losses for the same period last year.

Sony said losses came from selling PS3s lower than production costs and “the increase in PS3-related inventory write-downs,” which means that the value of the PS3 has dropped, perhaps due to recent price cuts. On the upside, the company as a whole pulled in $787 million, compared to a $182 million loss last year, so it doesn’t seem that Maw and Paw Sony will have to dip into their coffee can full of nickels just yet.”

Straight from Engadget: “While we’re not going to complain about the launch of the cheaper 40GB PS3, we are still kind of miffed that it isn’t backwards-compatible with our huge library of PS2 games — especially since newer PS3s retain compatibility through software emulation and not specialized hardware like earlier models. Not to worry though, because Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack “Daniels” Tretton is here to dazzle you with mathematics: according to Jackie, the consumer actually benefits from Sony’s move to cut emulation, because now you have the opportunity to buy both a $399 PS3 and a $129 PS2, for a grand total of $528, which is — wait for it — less than the original 60GB PS3’s price of $600! Of course, what Mr. T here is forgetting is that most people would prefer a single, $399 PS3 with backwards compatibility (and rumble, for good measure), but really, once you get spinning that fast it’s awfully hard to stop.”

Straight from Joystiq: “In his writeup of yesterday’s NPD numbers, reporter for The San Jose Mercury News (and man of a thousand sources) Dean Takahashi wrote, “One piece of news that came out this week was that Sony pleaded with third-party developers not to abandon its struggling platform. That change in attitude is a marked difference compared to the arrogance of past years.”

Though Sony hasn’t always fessed up to that perceived arrogance, we’ve all noticed a marked change in tone coming out of Sony following Jack Tretton’s E3 keynote speech. With only one PS3 game (barely) cracking the NPD’s top 10 software chart last month, convincing developers to build games for a complicated console that some even call “a waste of everyone’s time” is no easy task. If Takahashi’s info is accurate, it sounds like Sony’s looking to preempt any developer exodus, hoping this season’s delays aren’t next year’s cancellations.”