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A class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of California consumers who may have been harmed by anti-piracy software installed by some Sony music CDs. A second, nationwide class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed against Sony in a New York court on Wednesday seeking relief for all U.S. consumers who have purchased any of the 20 music CDs in question.
Experts say the Sony CDs use virus-like techniques to install digital rights management software on computers. Windows users cannot listen to the protected CDs on their computers without first installing the software, which hides itself on the users' system and cannot be uninstalled by conventional removal methods.
The California lawsuit, filed Nov. 1 in Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles by Vernon, Calif., attorney Alan Himmelfarb, asks the court to prevent Sony from selling additional CDs protected by the anti-piracy software, and seeks monetary damages for California consumers who purchased them.
The suit alleges that Sony's software violates at least three California statutes, including the "Consumer Legal Remedies Act" which governs unfair and/or deceptive trade acts and the "Consumer Protection against Computer Spyware Act," which prohibits -- among other things -- software that takes control over the user's computer or misrepresents the user's ability or right to uninstall the program. The suit also alleges that Sony's actions violate the "California Unfair Competition law," which allows public prosecutors and private citizens to file lawsuits to protect businesses and consumers from unfair business practices.
Himmelfarb was on a plane at the time of this writing and could not be reached for comment.
Scott Kamber, an attorney in New York, said he plans on Wednesday to file class-action suits targeting Sony under both New York consumer protection statutes and a federal criminal statute that allows civil actions.
This situation is particularly egregious and surprising from a company that should be familiar with concerns people have with programs crashing their Windows computers, Kamber said. What Sony is saying with this software is that 'Our intellectual property is more deserving of protection than your intellectual property,' and Sony can't be allowed to get away with that.
Sony spokesman John McKay declined to comment on the suits.
I wouldn't be surprised if other lawyers and law firms around the country are also preparing to file similar suits.
Sony's move is the latest effort by the entertainment companies to rely
on controversial 'digital rights management' (DRM) technologies to
reverse a steady drop in sales that the industry attributes in large
part to piracy facilitated by online music and movie file-sharing
networks like Kazaa and Limewire.
Experts who studied the Sony program said it has a built-in file-cloaking feature that could also be used by attackers to hide viruses and other files on a user's computer, and that conventional means of removing the anti-piracy software renders the user's CD-Rom drive inoperable.
In response to public criticism over the invasiveness of the software, Sony last week made available on its Web site a patch that would prevent its software files from hiding on the user's system. But according to further research by a variety of security experts, that patch can lead to a crashed system and data loss
By Brian Krebs | November 8, 2005
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