Eliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of the State of New York, is on his way to becoming a bit of a household word these days. With a stellar resume, and a recent background of fighting organized crime (during his tenure with the Manhattan DA's office he was responsible for dismantling the Gambino family's stranglehold on the trucking industry), Mr. Spitzer has now turned his gaze on improprieties in the recording industry.
Currently, he is taking a very dim view of the continued finagling of Sony, who apparently were very lax in the recall of copy-protected CDs containing spyware. Spitzer's office was able to purchase the CDs in New York retail outlets, including Walmart, Best Buy and Sam Goody, days after the alleged recall.
Once again, if you have purchased any of these copy-protected CDs from the Sony catalog, DO NOT PLAY THEM IN YOUR COMPUTER! Return them to the place of purchase for a refund.
The Texas AG is also less than impressed. Something nasty is planned for Sony by his office.
Please read this article for more information and how this outrage might affect you. And this just in, which indicates that Sony knew about this spyware situation as far back as the end of September.
In closing, you might enjoy this little communique from an idiot who accidentally sent it to a high-profile entertainment lawyer, who happily shared it with his entire mailing list. I also hope he scooted it straight to Mr. Spitzer for review!
"Hello --- hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving! This is Richard S, owner of (name of company removed) Company in New York. Nice to meet you, if we haven't met by e-mail or by phone by now! We have a great opportunity that I want to immediately address with you.
We have been approached by a few major labels to suddenly handle their video request campaigns for some top priority artists. Video requests mean making calls to request videos for major video shows like TRL (Total Request Live on MTV) and "106 & Park" (on BET).
This is a TERRIFIC opportunity --- but it means that we suddenly have to EXPAND the size of our request teams in a very short period of time! So we are on a mission to immediately find new and reliable people on our national staff to help us with these campaigns --- and I'm hoping you can be one of those who can jump on board and help!
The video request work is pretty easy and regular. It takes up 20 minutes/day of your time on weekdays and about 10 minutes/day on weekends.Total of 2 hours work a week. You get paid $30.00/week. All it involves is calling up a toll-free number (like 1-800-dialMTV) at your convenience during the day (you just plug in numbers on your phone, no talking to a person) and also going on-line (at your convenience, any time of day/night) and making some on-line requests. For the phones, you can use a land line or cell phone, doesn't matter
SO --- please, as soon as you can, e-mail back with a response --- whether you are interested in helping us with our new video request campaigns. One, you can put another $2000 in your pocket each year without taking up much time at all! Two, you will be helping ----- Company in our goal to break new artists for our most important clients!
If you are interested, just e-mail back to (email address removed to protect Mr. S, though God knows he doesn't deserve it) a YES, you are interested or a NO, you are not interested at this time. If you do respond with a YES, we will immediately get back to you and give you more
details so you have good understanding of what the job entails.
A "YES" doesn't commit you to anything other than interest. Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you ASAP!
Best regards,
Richard S"
Grand Jury anyone?
Nothing less than criminal charges will satisfy me in regards to the Sony rootkit fiasco.
Oh, and because of this, I will never buy a CD ever again. The only advantage CDs had for me was that it was from a trusted source that wouldn't destroy my property. Turns out I was wrong.
Posted by: Christopher Trottier | November 30, 2005 at 04:51 PM