Sony DRM Rootkit Violates Open Source License

December 30th, 2005 Sony finally settles the class action lawsuit filed in California caused by their highly controversial decision to install a rootkit for DRM protection of their music CD’s. If you are a Sony CD customer read the full details below to claim your rights.

June 28th, 2006 Sometime back Sony BMG released DRM rootkit software. At that time Sony insisted that no one should care about the Sony BMG rootkits because most people had no clue what rootkits were.

May 23rd, 2006 Customers who bought Sony CDs with XCP copy control software (rootkit) are set to get refunds as a result of the consolidated class action settlement. Sony was sued in three separate class action lawsuits, which were consolidated into Monday's settlement.

May 12th, 2005 Finding the GNU General Public License (GPL) too restrictive with regard to derived works, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai is working on an alternative license that will allow people to take commercial benefit from work derived from an open-source program. Finally someone has taken the lead to break from the clutches of GPL.

November 11th, 2005 A class action lawsuit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment has been filed in California, and more lawsuits are expected as lawyers enter the Sony Rootkit copy protection software fiasco. Attorney Alan Himmelfarb filed a suit in Los Angeles County Court last week on behalf of Alexander Guevara.

November 22nd, 2005 We bring to you the best of the articles across Taragana Blog Network for the fortnight ending 20th November 2005. It was tougher than we thought as we had a hard-time creating a small list.

June 29th, 2006 Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer for Sun, said the Sun is "months" away from releasing its trademark Java programming language under an open-source license. He said Sun is ruminating over two major issues: how to keep Java compatible and ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's "write once, run anywhere" mantra.

November 16th, 2005 Copy-Protection recently came to limelight as Sony used DRM technology to copy-protect its CD's which makes them vulnerable to viruses and malware. This website allows you to search for music CD in Amazon database which do not have any kind of copy-protection enabled.

July 2nd, 2005 Sun Microsystems is looking at providing its Java Enterprise System (J2EE) customers with a database management solution that will either take advantage of existing open-source database management technologies or developed in-house. I think they should leverage from some high quality open source database management solutions rather than re-inventing the wheel.

May 9th, 2005 Which JVM do you want to use today?

December 28th, 2005 SwingLabs is an Open Source laboratory for exploring new ways to make Swing applications easier to write, with improved performance and greater visual appeal. It is an umbrella project for various Open Source initiatives sponsored by Sun Microsystems and is part of the java.net community.

April 1st, 2006 In a significant (read earth shattering for Java community worldwide) move Sun has announced their decision to open source Java technologies. The JCP will be disbanded in favor of open source bazaar model.

June 30th, 2006 A computer user, Los Angeles resident Brian Johnson, is suing Microsoft Corp. over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, alleging that it violates laws against spyware.

January 3rd, 2006 In the new year lets look back to Apache Harmony, the much publicised effort to create "open source" J2SE announced in early May last year. After eight months there is still nothing to show, no downloads.

August 9th, 2006 The Sony mylo (short for "my life online") is a nifty handheld device that will allow you to access a fun set of features from a WiFi network. With 1GB of memory you can store music and photos, browse the web, or use email and IM (with QWERTY keyboard).