Friday, November 18, 2005
Sony's DRM woes expand to include copyright infringement
Posted by Jeremy Charette in "NEWS" @ 10:45 AM
"It seems that the XCP software from UK company First4Internet that Sony had been using to prevent unauthorised copying of its music CDs, until it agreed to recall some 4.7 million discs, contains code 'infringing the copyright of several open source projects', Johansen notes in his blog. This includes code that he himself wrote for VLC, a free cross-platform media player. The code was uncovered by Finnish software developer Matti Nikki, who also discovered other copyright violations. 'Multiple software components on the CD have references to the LAME open source MP3 code,' he wrote in an email. His findings have been substantiated by others. 'We can confirm that at least five functions in the XCP software are identical to functions in LAME,' Thomas Dullien from Sabre Security, a company that specialises in the analysis of complex software, told Reuters. Although open source software can be freely used, it must be credited as such. No mention of it was made in the XCP code."
Just when you thought the hole couldn't get any deeper... :lol:
Just when you thought the hole couldn't get any deeper... :lol:
