Monday, November 28, 2005

Sony’s XCP Copyright Protection Caused More Damage than Advantage. Fans, Artists Condemn Sony’s “Spyware-Like” Copyright Protection

4:28 pm | Anton Shilov

Sony BMG record label wanted to minimize losses from illegal music copying and sharing by implementing a powerful XCP copyright protection technology that should not allow illegitimate copying of content. But since the copyright protection technology acted like spyware and could injure computers or compromise their security, Sony BMG now faces plummet of sales, which harms the company’s business more than potential piracy. But it seems to be only the beginning for the company, as there are more negative consequences on the way.

Sony now is facing at least three consumer class-action lawsuits, as well as at least one law-enforcement action. On November 21, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott accused the company of violating the state’s laws against computer spyware, reports BusinessWeek.

“Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak-and-dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers. Consumers who purchased a Sony CD thought they were buying music. Instead, they received spyware that can damage a computer, subject it to viruses, and expose the consumer to possible identity crime,” Abbott said in a written statement.

“Shine” album by Trey Anastasio debuted with 15 000 sales its first week, but by week two, when the copyright protection scandal was in full swing, sales had plummeted to 7000. Sony had to pull out some 4.7 million discs with embedded XCP copyright protection technology from the market, which lowered sales by the company as well.

Finally, some of the artists may now leave Sony BMG and find other labels who do not deploy copyright protection technologies which may potentially harm music listeners.

• BusinessWeek Online: Sony’s Escalating “Spyware” Fiasco.

VIA’s K8T900 – "Promising", Web-Sites Say. Media Reviews VIA K8T900 Core-Logic

4:23 pm | Anton Shilov

Several web-sites around the Internet have managed to get the latest K8T900 chipset product from VIA Technologies, the struggling chipset maker, for a review. Except of the fact that the core-logic is at least year late compared to NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI, the media positively considered the new part from the company that used to be the No.1 supplier of chipsets in the world.

“Synthetic testing favored the nForce 4 SLI based test bed, topping the VIA K8T900 set up in both memory and CPU testing with PCMark05.  However, when we started more specific tests, more often than not, the K8T900 held the upper hand over the nForce 4 by the slightest of margins.  These leads were very close and in most cases should be interpreted as a tie.  This shows the K8T900 brings comparable performance to that of the market leading nForce 4,” VIA K8T900 review by HotHardware web-site claims.

“Our quick first look at the K8T900 is promising. VIA’s new chipset largely keeps up with the nForce4 SLI, and it might gain some ground once VIA completes its SATA drivers with NCQ support,” says TechReport web-site.

VIA K8T900 chip supports AMD Athlon 64-series processors with 1GHz HyperTransport bus, PCI Express x16 lane for graphics that can be split between two graphics cards when operating in multi-GPU mode, PCI Express x4 lane for add-in cards, such as network adapters. VIA said that its subsidiary’s S3 Graphics’ Chrome S27 graphics processors would be able to run in tandem on VIA K8T900 core-logic-based mainboards engaging multi-GPU technology called MultiChrome.

• HotHardware: VIA’s K8T900 Chipset.
• TechReport: VIA’s K8T900 Chipset.

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