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Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

> 9-0 against the record labels.

Love to see it. I'm still mad about the Sony rootkit[0] and the people sued for absurd amounts over downloading a few MP3s back in the 00's.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

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Ironically Sony wanted those artists online for streaming, and in those days the only way labels had to transport the music to distribution services was sending the CDs. So the CDs landed on my desk because they'd been rejected by the data ingestion teams. I had some more[0] stern words with a very apologetic man from Sony that day.

[0] they were constantly sending CDs that were fucked-up in totally new ways every time

I still haven't bought a Sony labelled product since... though I may or may not have consumed Sony content. They've definitely lost more than they gained.

> They've definitely lost more than they gained.

That's a pretty good sized ego you got yourself there. The number of people that cared about the rootkit in the general populace was insignificant to Sony. Only tech nerds like us even knew about the rootkit or how insane it was to use. Unless you were a huge flagship purchaser of Sony's latest/greatest each year, they don't even notice you when you buy a TV or any other item.

People barely remember the studio getting hacked and releasing a film

> Lost more than they gained (from me, implied).

Maybe, just maybe assume the best in people instead of jumping to the worst interpretations you can.

Not sure how interpreted what I said as anything other than the implied you. No matter how much money you did or no longer do spend with Sony is not anything they'd notice. The caveat being you were a flagship purchaser from them which I doubt was the case.

You assumed it was a point of ego, even said as much.

I don't have to buy shit from Sony if I don't want to, and you can't make me.

They definitely lost more on potential hardware sales the past few decades than I would have spent on content... even if it's not enough for them to notice.

They faced multiple lawsuits and had to do product recalls, so clearly they lost something. What exactly did they gain? IIRC you could avoid it by just turning off autoplay in Windows (which any sane person already did, or you could hold shift I think), and they were otherwise valid audio CDs (otherwise they wouldn't work in players), so it did exactly nothing to stop the CDs from being ripped and shared. And back then everyone knew about p2p so it really only took one person ripping it for it to spread. So even ignoring the lawsuits, even one person boycotting them probably makes it a net loss. Actually the development costs probably made it a loss.

I too have never bought anything from Sony since then. Or any DRM at all, in fact.

I still boycott Sony over this. Made me a PC gamer, too.

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