Posted 6:43 PM by Gene

We did not pay the Sony BMG rootkit business much mind, figuring at first it was just a bunch of geeks playing with their toys, but now that it's a PR disaster to the nth magnitude we must ask, who did it? Probably some senior VPs in a lab somewhere who didn't know what the hell they were doing, or more likely some MARKETING honchos who figured they'd get some tech on the cheap from an outfit no one ever heard of before. We doubt that LORD STRINGER or his opposite incompetent at Bertelsmann knew about this until several days ago, nor even anyone at the top of Sony BMG, except in the usual plausibly deniable memos. We are certain, however, this was a direct result of merging and merging, and of limited talents that became more limited with all the merging. Sony is in the consumer electronics biz, and Bertelsmann's in the book biz, and neither company knew how to sell CDs; recordings were a glorified legacy operation they somehow stumbled into for reasons no longer known. Both companies came up with this SHOTGUN WEDDING under the notion that misery loves company. Their record labels were spun off of firms that failed with synergies before. They hoped their cost-shaving and "rationalization" will make for more profits. All it's resulted in is a company with turf fights and losses and a total cluelessness on how to harvest their unparalleled catalogs. Under the circumstances, and given the industry's psychosis over copying, perhaps it was inevitable that the company would rush some cockamamie anti-piracy scheme to market, testing be damned. In this self-inflicted game of tag Sony BMG was IT.

We must also blame the geeks. Given how they've always screamed about the EEEEEVIL record biz and claimed unlimited copying is a RIGHT you'd think they'd have noticed at the very minimum the logos and legal warnings on the tray liners. Even the supergeek who uncovered this technological marvel all but admitted he just blithely popped the disc right into his computer. Moreover most of the titles implicated are the usual junk (although a few lesser '60s jazz reissues got caught), and we must confess to a certain glee over the payback so many of the recorded-SOUND biz' customers are getting from just putting ANYTHING in their HARDWARE. Thus do the howls emanating from Amazon.com sound like the sniveling of CROCODILE TEARS.

We say both sides got the shaft -- and they can only blame themselves.