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Lessons from Sony - how (not) to manage a PR-disaster

Tue, 2005-11-22 20:55 — ssm

This whole Sony “rootkit” fiasco has gone from plain ole “deny until you’re blue in the face” to what amounts to be the mother of all corporate PR-f#$*-ups (at least for this calendar year). First, Sony tried the customers-are-dumb approach. Then, a solution that was almost as bad as the original problem.

Now, the whole story is following a predictable pattern. Lots of unforgiving media attention, and according to the put-more-lights-on-the-job principle, a bright enough flashlight is going to find even the roaches hiding behind the cupboard - the latest being the jaw-dropping-irony - it turns out that Sony, in its valiant effort to protect content, has actually filched from open-source without due acknowledgement, thereby violating copyright. . Talk about just desserts !

Well, well, well. Interesting that Wired magazine had hinted about things to come about Sony’s ham-fisted approach to Digital Rights Management & digital media in general, almost 3 years ago

Cue the lawyers. They’re probably drooling their way to the bank.


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Wed, 2005-11-23 12:35 — ananthp

Thanks

for the link…have been following it from quite some time but was lazy to google the complete story !


Tue, 2005-11-22 21:34 — ashoe
ashoe's picture

Nahh - the layers won't do scheisse ...

… the media/content folks and **AA have them in their back-pockets.

Have you seen some of the stuff in the new whatever-the-bill-is-that-replaces-DMCA? And they keep adding riders and clauses to popular bills, that are absolutely unrelated to the bill, to push things through the law-making process. More often than not, lately, this has all been more tie-the-consumers’ hands skullduggery.

The few holes that there were for free content replication and re-delivery (the analog hole) migh be plugged soon.

Opposition from movie distributors (including the esteemed, afore-mentioned Sony) has killed exciting potential deals like Netflix-to-TiVo, that I was VERY eagerly awaiting.

And on other fronts - the apparently succesful arm-twisting of music providers (even the abhorrent-but-thankfully-independent iTunes) is on the verge of resulting in even higher profit margins for record companies.

Greed, seriously, knows no bounds. Especially when it is backed by people in power. Ugh.