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Sony rootkit discovery highlighted the fact that anti-virus  Other Bad Business Practices of Sony
Report Sony Cracking to: The U.S. Department of Justice
Rule: just don't buy a sony cd and put it into your machine and you won't have a problem.


ljaszcza writes "Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony. It seems that the Mexican Police raided Sony's offices and seized over 6000 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. It seems that Fernandez signed a seven album deal with Sony Music then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed upon seven albums, Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as a eight album. Fernandez disagrees claiming that he fulfilled the contract with Sony and residual material is his. Hmm. Using precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case, we have $80,000/song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum was $22,500/song. So, as a commenter points out 6397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51176 infringing, songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straight-forward to me. Any comments on what Sony is likely to face? Other than a slap on the wrist from our RIAA controlled judiciary and Justice dept.? Here is another link: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i418c5bc24c7b68c55ff2356aef63ae05"

jaszcza writes "Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony's run-in with the Mexican police. (Billboard picked up the story as well.) It seems that they raided Sony's offices and seized 6,397 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. Fernandez had signed a seven-album deal with Sony Music; he completed that commitment and then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed-upon seven albums. Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as an eighth album. Fernandez claims that he fulfilled his contract with Sony, and residual material belongs to him. Hmm. Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me."

comments
We all know that Sony will wiggle out of it. Just the same as when the U.S. sued the record-companies for "forming an illegal cartel" and price-fixing CDs from 1990 onward. Although the U.S. could have won that case, the record companies negotiated a deal where they simply returned ~$20 to everyone who asked for a refund. I bet Sony will also weasel a way such that it costs them virtually nothing.

This case is in Mexico, while Jammie Thomas was in USA? Precedent's in USA aren't precedents everywhere (how many times this shit has to be told to americans?) and most of other countries actually have sane amount of compensations in copyright infringement cases, unlike USA.