IP Democracy: EFF Files Class Action Suit Covering Two Sony DRM Technologies

As it suggested it would, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a major class action lawsuit against Sony for its use of harmful and privacy infringing DRM technologies in music CDs. Working with two class action law firms, sure to strike fear around Sony’s headquarters, Green Welling, LLP, and Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman and Robbins, LLP, EFF has filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court asking that the company repair the damage done by not only the First4Internet XCP, the so-called Rootkit technology, but also SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 20 million music CDs.

The MediaMax software installed on over 20 million CDs has different, but similarly troubling problems. It installs files on the users’ computers even if they click “no” on the EULA, and it does not include a way to fully uninstall the program. The software transmits data about users to SunnComm through an Internet connection whenever purchasers listen to CDs, allowing the company to track listening habits — even though the EULA states that the software will not be used to collect personal information and SunnComm’s website says “no information is ever collected about you or your computer.” If users repeatedly requested an uninstaller for the MediaMax software, they were eventually provided one, but they first had to provide more personally identifying information. Worse, security researchers recently determined that SunnComm’s uninstaller creates significant security risks for users, as the XCP uninstaller did.

In a statement, EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl said “Consumers have a right to listen to the music they have purchased in private, without record companies spying on their listening habits with surreptitiously-installed programs.” Sony is facing at least six other class action lawsuits and an action by the Texas Attorney General. How much better it would have been had Sony said it was sorry at the outset, issued some form of rapid consumer reassurance plan and maybe compensated unsuspecting CD owners right away.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 21, 2005 9:12 PM to IP Democracy