Sony & EFF come to an understanding
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced a prelim settlement with Sony BMG:
"Sony agreed to stop production of these flawed and ineffective DRM technologies,” noted EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “We hope that other record labels will learn from Sony’s hard experience and focus more on the carrot of quality music and less on the stick of copy protection.”Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined in this preliminary settlement agreement with Sony BMG this week to settle several class action lawsuits filed due to Sony's use of flawed and overreaching computer program in millions of music CDs sold to the public. The proposed terms of settlement have been presented to the court for preliminary approval and will likely be considered in a hearing set for January 6, 2005 in federal court in New York City.
The Beeb has more details about the settlement terms, including that Sony must discard the controversial DRM software and that any future software that the company wants to use must be independently audited.