Sony, the new Big Brother

For the past few weeks, Sony has been bombarded with complaints and recently, lawsuits against their practices of infusing spyware/root kits on their music CDs. On a handful of albums, Sony installed these "root kits" to allegedly protect legitimate users from copying their songs. At least, this is what the company keeps using as an excuse.

Let's travel through the world of logic for one moment and let's try to understand what Sony is saying:

Question: By putting in spyware on music CDs, this punishes people that pirate music.
Logic: NO. People that buy the CDs are the people you want to reward not punish!

Question: So why put spyware on the legit customers?
Logic: Simple. By putting in "undetectable" software, they can track your habits, and your choices; hence, in the end it allows them to have a profile of you. If you get enough consumer profile data, you can make some serious money selling customer habits through research firms and/or have a great marketing advantage.

But fear not, Sony will not get the last laugh. All of this bad press is already leaving a bad taste with computer geeks online, who strikingly have similar characteristics to the demographics that utilize Sony PlayStations. Big woops.

Sony, next time when you make a product, make sure it isn't inherently evil.