Starting with "All You Can Eat" music. Sony BMG are working on an online music store. This would of course encompass the dozens of labels under their umbrella, making for a huge, eclectic selection. It'll be a subscription model, which I've always been surprised has never taken off for music the way they do for movies and TV shows. DVD and iPods notwithstanding, the way that 99%+ of even the most plugged-in people watch their TV and movie content is via live or DVR'ed content, using a subscription model. Call it "all you can eat." Instead of buying content one piece at a time, subscriptions allow you to have ALL of it, ALL THE TIME. You can load as much of it on to your computer or iPod as will fit. What's wrong with this? NOTHING. Because you can augment your collection with stuff you buy. Why NOT have both for music, just the way you do for TV and movies? It makes no sense to me. It ESPECIALLY makes no sense to me having worked with a number of subcription services. I really, really love them. The only problem for MOST people is that they don't work with iPods. Anyway, Sony is also considering that you'd be able to own some of the songs as well as "renting" them, so to speak. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out. In further Sony news, they've been BUSTED. They've been among the strongest proponents of DRM, going so far as to install malware on computers to monitor the activity of anyone who pops a Sony BMG disk in their computer. It may sound minor, but it created a gaping security hole in affected computers, that Sony flat out LIED about, then LIED about fixing. When they finally did, the security hole got EVEN LARGER. I'm only touching on how heinous this is. The cool thing is that bloggers were largely responsible for breaking and carrying this story, and bringing Sony to its knees. Of course, the Department of Homeland Security stepping in and weighing criminal action against Sony didn't hurt. Wired's computer security blog whipped up a fantastic summary of this corporate skullduggery, one of the most aggressive anti-consumer efforts ever undertaken. As part of which, their end user license agreement was every bit as heinous. Unlike this nasty security stuff, the EULA applied to everyone who bought one of Sony BMG's disks: - If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
- If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
- You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”
Irony of ironies: they violated the copyright of the original technology holders! That Wired link above has the rest of the story. So they were behaving in a way that was anti-consumer, but also ANTI-CREATOR. Now to the SONY BMG BUSTED part of the festivities: nearly HALF of Sony's IT software is likely pirated warez. It came to light when one of the IT dweebs called for support. He gave them his serial number, which they identified as pirated. The breach was so obvious and so extensive that this tiny SIX PERSON software company called PointDev was able "to madate a seizure of Sony BMG's assets." Can you believe Sony BMG's arrogance? Unfortunately, I can, and I bet you can too. Follow the link above to the Ars Technica article on this nastiness. BTW, please note that I'm talking about Sony BMG the massive record label, which has precisely ZERO connection to the folks at Sony Media Software. Anyway, more fun and games from the major labels. Yuck. | 
