sony

Sony Makes Buying Replacement Parts Expensive and Difficult

Sony Makes Buying Replacement Parts Expensive and Difficult

By consumerist.com 1.6.06

Hilary G. writes:

My friends & I really like the Sony Fontopia headphones. The earbuds are soft & comfortable, and block outside noise well enough that you may listen at a civilized, Pete Townshend-sanctioned volume. They come with 4 removable earbuds, a pair each of small & medium. However, no matter how hard I try to be careful, eventually my headphones will wind up at the bottom of my bag with heavy junk thrown on top of them, or they’ll get caught on my coat collar, or a dog will chew on them, and with these headphones that means the earbud will get pulled off. And once they’re off, man those little suckers are hard to find.

Sony Settles Root Kit Class Action (Part the Second)

By consumerist.com 1.2.06

Business Week has more details on the Sony BMG root kit settlement, with more details on Sony’s future DRM plans. To answer our own perhaps perfunctory question: yes, Sony BMG jolly well do intend to continue installing DRM on your machines, thank you very much.

Sony Settles Rootkit Class Action (Part the First)

By consumerist.com 12.30.05

It appears the Sony rootkit fiasco may be approaching an end. Techdirt is reporting that the company has settled one of many class action lawsuits, offering three free albums’ worth of MP3 downloads or $7.50 plus a single albums’ worth of downloads. As a poster on Techdirt points out:

According to Sony, 2 albums’ worth of music has an actual value of $7.50. That’s $3.75 per album.

Sony Stealth Sucks

Sony Stealth Sucks

By consumerist.com 12.30.05

There’s an excellent entry up over at Scatterbox detailing Sony’s perfidious scum-suckery (ed – penultimate ‘s’ chipperly added because The Consumerist is, at heart, a family publication). First: the spyware and malware they surreptitiously installed on the computers of thousands of people who had actually bothered to buy their CDs; then, vandalizing other people’s property so they could tattoo their rainbow corporate swastika in public places on somebody else’s dime. These guys are sleazy enough that a mere push would send them in a frictionless glide right across the pit full of jagged glass bottles and honey consumers would like to roll them in.

Sony Style Stores Still Selling Rootkit CDs

By consumerist.com 12.23.05

I asked the manager about this and they said they were, and I quote, “still allowed to sell them”.

Morning Deals Round-Up: Instrument Memory Shoe Blood

By consumerist.com 12.19.05

• Sam Ash has a 10%-off ‘Friends and Family’ promotion going on today and tomorrow. In-store only, and you’ll need this coupon.

Today in Media: CDs to Avoid, Songs to Stream, Lyrics to Question

By consumerist.com 12.7.05

• Confused by the whole ‘Sony Rootkit’ debacle and don’t know which CDs might install malicious software that leaves your PC vulnerable to compromise? Sony BMG has a list of the 50 CDs with the MediaMax DRM, making it easy for you to avoid purchase. You’ll just have to get your ‘YoungBloodZ’ fix elsewhere.

Sony’s CD ‘Rootkit’ DRM Continues to Pay Dividends (In Hate)

By consumerist.com 11.14.05

As a fledgling best site ever, The Consumerist has had to do a fair amount of soul searching with regard to Digital Rights Management. It’s clearly a consumer issue—companies restricting your rights to use a product is our bread and butter—but it’s also sort of boring. We’ve decided to err on the side of pedantry. If the big media companies are still penalizing legitimate consumers, we’ll keep pointing out whose products you should avoid.

Sony CDs Break PCs

By consumerist.com 11.1.05

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is, at best, an unnecessary inconvenience. Sometimes we pine for instant gratification and trade away common sense, like when we download music from an online service instead of purchasing a CD. But what if that CD has DRM built-in—DRM that installs the same sort of malicious software used by teenage Russian hackers everywhere (but especially Russia)?

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