Cafe Bucky

Update: Virus Writers Take Advantage Of Sony’s Rootkit … California has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony and a second one may be filed today in New York.

What can I say about the Sony CD Rootkit Fiasco? You know, the one where their copy protection installs a poorly written rootkit that destabilizes Windows machines? Is it right for a content provider to install something sneaky on your machine, just so you can play music? (of course it isn’t!)

Well, there are a couple of things I could say:

• The Class Action Lawsuit being filed against them has a lot more validity than people getting upset about iPod Nano scratches.
• The statement made by a Sony executive: “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”, is one of the most bizarre dodges of responsibility. To quote Steve Gibson: “It’s My Machine!”.

I agree wholeheartedly with my pal & neighbor Leo on this one. Sony’s behavior is appalling. It really makes you wonder what other Big Media are willing to do in order to track every move that consumers make, and what else they are going to try to install on Windows and Mac machines. Once Middle America hears the problem explained to them in clear terms (”what!? I play music, and they weaken the stability on My Machine, and hide any file starting with the name “$sys$”, so that crackers now have an easy way to install their malware? And their rootkit “phones home to Sony” without my permission?!”) Oy.

I’m glad that my main machine is a Mac, so that I see this going on from the sidelines. But the next bone-headed move by some Media dweeb may target OS X as well. It’s time for the rest of industry to learn a lesson from this:

• Don’t assume that users are so dumb that someone, somewhere won’t figure out that you are installing something that will do Real Harm to their system (People who try to uninstall this lose the use of their cd drive …)
• Don’t Big Brother us. The purchase of music or movies does not give you the right to monitor when we play it
• Stop shooting yourself in the foot. Come up to speed on the realities of how the Content Landscape has changed in the last 5 years (hint: talk to Steve Jobs), or fade away into obscurity

I don’t want every post here to mention FlexiPhoto, but until I get the word out, and start some momentum on that site, I’ll get ta mentionin’ …

Ok, 2.5a4 (Jamaica) is out!

Now I can get to scary things, like Halloween and PHP Security.

I’d missed the last couple of years of Halloween on D Street in Petaluma. We get 3000 trick or treaters. No, that’s not a typo. It’s insane! We live next to some people who give out cartons of chocolate milk every year (they run a dairy), and everyone that goes there, comes here. 3000 of them. Ask me about my candy bill sometime.

The other scary thing (boo!) can be PHP security. Fortunately, there’s a new O’Reilly book out: “Essential PHP Security”, by Chris Shiflett. I was on the verge of buying the print edition, and was relieved to see it come up in Safari. I know it will help me whip FlexiPhoto into shape.