Sony BMG uses LAME without proper License

[discoleo]

Open letter to Sony BMG (and its owners, Sony and Bertelsmann), First4Internet, and the LAME community.

Several people pointed out that the DRM software used by Sony BMG and the media is talking about lately seems to contain at least parts of LAME, without complying with our license.
None of the LAME developers currently owns a CD with this rights crippling mechanism from Sony BMG and none of the developers is interested in buying one, so we aren't going to analyze this on our own, but we trust those people out there which analyzed it and found traces of LAME on such CD's.

Right now The LAME maintainers aren't interested in initiating a legal battle with Sony BMG. We live in a social competent world where we don't need to pull the weapons and are able to talk about what needs to be done to correct mistakes, right ? But we expect Sony BMG to take appropriate action and tell the public about those actions.

The LAME maintainers.

The full details are available at http://www.mp3dev.org/. Seems that Sony and BMG are promoting theft themselfs.

Kind regards,

discoleo

[gaekwad2]

Not just lame.

FAAD and mpglib too (and probably more).

But I think it's been mentioned in this thread already.

[zootm]

The funny thing is that they're all LGPL (unless they were using FAAD2), so they theoretically could've met the licence restrictions without too much difficulty...

[gaekwad2]

Not sure about FAAD (couldn't find the reference to it), but apparently they used code from VLC as well (which is GPL).

[xzxzzx]

Originally posted by zootm
The funny thing is that they're all LGPL (unless they were using FAAD2), so they theoretically could've met the licence restrictions without too much difficulty...

Everything about Sony's DRM project has stunk. A poor idea, poor implementation, poor uninstaller, poor security, and poor communication from Sony.

I still can't see why record companies won't embrace new technology - it's not like they can effectively fight it.

[zootm]

The new technology makes the business model they're based upon obsolete in a lot of ways, this is the problem you're seeing. A few of the laws, and cultural attacks, that the record companies have been forcing through and encouraging make the technologies that could be their downfall effectively illegal, for no real good reason.

Death throes of a dinosauric industry, unwilling to adapt, it seems.

[xzxzzx]

Originally posted by zootm
The new technology makes the business model they're based upon obsolete in a lot of ways, this is the problem you're seeing. A few of the laws, and cultural attacks, that the record companies have been forcing through and encouraging make the technologies that could be their downfall effectively illegal, for no real good reason.

Death throes of a dinosauric industry, unwilling to adapt, it seems.

But that's the thing - the business model they're based upon won't survive, and even pushing horrible laws like the DMCA through has barely scraped the surface of these things that are ending their way of doing business.

If they don't adapt, they will die, eventually, even though it will take quite a while, so why not try to adapt? They have no choice, and I wonder why they can't see that.

[zootm]

Originally posted by xzxzzx
If they don't adapt, they will die, eventually, even though it will take quite a while, so why not try to adapt? They have no choice, and I wonder why they can't see that.

I dunno, it just seems like desperation to me. I just worry that they're basically leaving us with a horrendous legacy, a set of stupid, short-sighted laws.

[rockouthippie]

I think we should nuke Sony. It worked the last time we had trouble with the Japanese