It's understandable that companies are moving (have been moving) to protect their intellectual property, but it also shows how difficult that really is to implement.
If you are the company, you want to disclose as little as possible about your protection measures so as to keep software pirates from cracking your product prematurely (it eventually will happen, it's just a matter of time). The longer it takes the Warez community to bypass your protection scheme--the more you are able to profit from the product.
I don't think Sony's recent debacle is by any means an isolated case. How many phone-home and privacy invasive programs have yet to be discovered? It gets even worse when you throw in the whole complexity of global business coperation and complicity.
The reason this thing is garnering such huge attention has alot to do with WHO and not WHAT. Sony is the most massive consumer electronics manufacturer in the world. You would be hard-pressed to walk into a North American family home and not be able to find some kind of Sony consumer device in their home.
It's not the fact Sony did what they did, it's how they tried to hide it under loyal costumers noses and if that was not enough, arrogantly. All businesses make mistakes but hopefully Sony will take a more transparent course of copy protection in it's future dealings.
If you are the company, you want to disclose as little as possible about your protection measures so as to keep software pirates from cracking your product prematurely (it eventually will happen, it's just a matter of time). The longer it takes the Warez community to bypass your protection scheme--the more you are able to profit from the product.
I don't think Sony's recent debacle is by any means an isolated case. How many phone-home and privacy invasive programs have yet to be discovered? It gets even worse when you throw in the whole complexity of global business coperation and complicity.
The reason this thing is garnering such huge attention has alot to do with WHO and not WHAT. Sony is the most massive consumer electronics manufacturer in the world. You would be hard-pressed to walk into a North American family home and not be able to find some kind of Sony consumer device in their home.
It's not the fact Sony did what they did, it's how they tried to hide it under loyal costumers noses and if that was not enough, arrogantly. All businesses make mistakes but hopefully Sony will take a more transparent course of copy protection in it's future dealings.
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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/newsbriefs/90/390#390