IP Democracy: Band Offers Unrestricted CDs After Sony DRM Fiasco

According to Dela at afterdawn.com, “[t]he battle between artists and Sony BMG over the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection on audio CDs just got even more interesting.”

The reason, says Dela, is that the band My Morning Jacket, whose album “Z” was copy protected by Sony BMG, is doing their own recall of the CDs and also burning unrestricted copies of the CDs and sending them out to fans.

Dela says “[i]t would appear that their actions are actually clear violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), even though it is a CD with their own work on it.” While noting that other bands, including Foo Fighters, Switchfoot and Dave Mathew’s Band have also spoken out on DRM, Delay says My Morning Jacket appears to be the first to take the step of burning and distributing unrestricted copies of their CDs.

The band’s move was apparently first reported by Rolling Stones’ Brian Hiatt, who also noted that a second copy-protection software used by Sony BMG appears to pose a security risk for consumers:

Sony BMG’s attempts to protect its CDs against piracy continued to be a source of woe for the company in early December: Soon after recalling 5 million discs that contained the intrusive copy-protection software XCP, Sony BMG acknowledged that as many as 5.7 million more CDs posed a security risk for consumers. Those discs contain another form of copy protection, SunComm’s MediaMax (version five), which could allow hackers to break into users’ computers. Among the affected titles were Santana’s All That I Am, My Morning Jacket’s Z, Alicia Keys’ Unplugged and Maroon 5’s live album.

The company released a software patch (available at sonybmg.com/mediamax) intended to fix the problem. “We take the security issues very, very seriously,” says Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG president of global digital business. But Hesse adds that the company has no plans to recall the CDs or offer refunds: “At this point, this is pretty much it.”

Posted by Mitch Shapiro on December 18, 2005 5:35 PM to IP Democracy