To get the full story, and find out what the big company is planning for the future, I interviewed Richard M. Nicson, Sony BMG Music Entertainment's Vice President In Charge of Controlling What Our Paying Customers Can Listen To.

Lincoln Spector: Many people feel that Sony's recent experience is an example of out-of-control copy protection. Do you agree?
Richard M. Nicson: Of course not. Copy protection is vital to our civilization.

LS: Why?
RMN: The quality of today's art depends on it. Without copy protection, Britney Spears would make no more money for her handlers than any singer with ten times her talent. And where would the Rolling Stones be without copy protection?

LS: Selling out stadiums on an American tour?
RMN: Look, we at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, and sympathize with them. But we also realize that many of these people are misguided, and the rest are criminals. Many of them even believe, for instance, that when they buy a Sony CD, it belongs to them. Of course the CD still belongs to Sony, as does whatever equipment they play it on.
 

LS: But nevertheless, you're removing the controversial CDs from the channel, and replacing them with unprotected CDs.
RMN: We made a very serious mistake with our recent experiments; we got caught. That's why every consumer who bought one of our protected discs can exchange it for an unprotected one accompanied by a summons to appear in court for their violation of copyright law.

LS: Why do you assume that your customers are all violating the law?
RMN: Why else would they want an unprotected disc?

LS: Concerns that a protected one would install an impossible-to-remove rootkit program into their hard drive, providing a possible backdoor for hackers to enter their system.
RMN: We at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, and sympathize with them. But what's the point of putting easy-to-remove software on their PCs? Besides, no one but Sony BMG has the key to that backdoor; it's inconceivable that hackers could take advantage of it.

LS: But they have.
RMN: This was not so much a result of the rootkit itself, we believe, as a result of its becoming public knowledge. If a few malcontents hadn't discovered our little gift and announced it to everyone, those hackers would have never discovered it. And if they hand, the security companies wouldn't have found out, and we still wouldn't have a problem.

LS: So you're saying the problem was not the rootkit, but its becoming public knowledge?
RMN: We at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, which is why we've posted detailed instructions on our Web site for removing the rootkit software with a dentist's drill and a jackhammer.

LS: So, is this the end of copy protection for Sony music?
RMN: Absolutely not. In the spring of 2006, we will start releasing CDs that, when inserted into a PC, will install an impossible-to-remove program.

LS: Another rootkit?
RMN: No. This time we're using a root canal kit. You can't remove this one with a dentist's drill.

LS: Is this supposed to be an improvement?
RMN: We at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, and sympathize with them. The biggest problems with our last protection schemes were security issues and negative buzz generated by blogs, forum postings, and email. In addition to controlling how often you can play our music, the new kit will cut off customers' Internet access, eliminating both of these problems.

LS: Did you just say that it will control how often we can play our music.
RMN: Did I? Sorry. That isn't what I meant. We at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, and sympathize with their desire to have unlimited listening access to their own music. So we only be limiting how often they can listen to music owned by Sony BMG. What they do with music that they compose and record themselves is their own business...unless, of course, they compose and record it on Sony equipment. But that's another department and I don't know how Sony Electronics will handle that.

LS: How often will a customer be allowed to listen to a Sony CD?
RMN: I can't go into details about that part of our plan. We at Sony BMG understand our customers concerns, and know that they would never buy anything from us if they knew what we were doing.

LS: Which brings up an interesting question. Do you worry that such strong-arm tactics will alienate customers?
RMN: Not in the long run. Sony BMG got the brunt of the criticism because we did it first. But before long, all of our competitors will have similar plans in place. People will just have to get used to assorted uncontrollable and permanent alterations happening every time they insert a new CD into their computer. Pretty soon, every computer in the world will have a Sony rootkit, a Warners rootkit, a Capital rootkit, and so on. Actually, they'll have more than one each, since new, improved versions will go on top of, rather than replacing, the old ones. We don't know yet how these various impossible-to-remove copy-protection schemes will work with each other, but that's not really our problem.

LS: One more question: What does the BMG in Sony BMG stand for?
RMN: Big Money Grubbers. Why?

© Copyright 2005 by Lincoln Spector