Record Labels Lead by Example

[Groundhog]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/st...014239,00.html

Record label 'found using pirated software'

RECORD label Sony BMG, one of the most vocal and ferocious opponents of music piracy, has been accused of using unlawfully installed programs on its computers by a small software company.
French company PointDev, which makes applications for Microsoft Windows, claims to have discovered pirated versions of its software installed on Sony BMG computers and is suing the label for €300,000 ($514,910).

PointDev said it was alerted to the illegal software after a Sony BMG employee rang the software company's technical support number for assistance and gave a pirated product key when asked for a customer number, French website 01net reported.

A raid on the French offices of Sony BMG in January revealed that almost half of the software used by the company may be unlawfully installed, according to the report.

The story was first reported in English by file-sharing website ZeroPaid and has since done the rounds on technology blogs, where authors and readers jumped to point out the irony of Sony BMG being sued for piracy.

In 2005, Sony BMG caused a security scare by using a malicious form of digital rights management (DRM) on certain discs sold in the US. Sony suspended this form of DRM shortly after Microsoft defined it as "spyware", or spying software.

Sony BMG is one of the “big four” record labels that fund anti-piracy watchdogs the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Earlier this year, the IFPI was forced to cut costs under pressure from major record labels.

Local watchdog Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) says about 18 per cent of Australia's population are involved in illegally trading songs by email or peer-to-peer file transfers.

A request for comment on the PointDev lawsuit has been sent to Sony BMG Australia.

[st.cronin]

Just another reason not to use tech support.

[Flasch186]

Jon?

[Passacaglia]

Sony doesn't have their own technical people that handle this sort of thing?

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Sony doesn't have their own technical people that handle this sort of thing?

It probably was the Sony tech support people that called the vendor. The exact same thing happened to a friend of mine who worked the support desk at a relatively big company - IT phoned the vendor due to a problem with an app that a particular department used, only to discover that the department had installed it themselves a long time ago and cracked the software. Apparently the serial # was all 0s, and they read that out to the vendor.