Texas, EFF Sue Sony Over DRM Disaster

Sony can add the EFF and the State of Texas among those angry at its ill-conceived DRM push.

If you thought things could not get any worse for Sony following revelations that the company installed dangerous malware onto customer PCs as part of its Digital Right Management controls on Audio CDs, then think again.

Now the Texas’ Attorney General has announced the state is suing the company using its newly implemented anti-spyware laws. US consumers had already filed a class action suit against the company.

The XCP technology Sony BMG acquired from UK company First 4 Internet, not only exposed customer’s computers to hackers, it reportedly included pirated code itself. Famous DRM hacker DVD Jon (Lech Johansen) claims the First 4 Internet software includes open source code from several projects and is released under the GNU license. It even includes code that DVD Jon wrote himself wrote for VLC, an open source media player.

Add the Texas suit to one by The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles and the company stands to lose far more money than it would ever have likely lost if owners of the CDs copied them.

The Texas spyware laws have provisions for the State to recover damages of up to $100,000 per violation.

The Californian law which the EFF claims Sony broke prevents the collection of personally identifiable information through deceptive means and lets consumers can sue for damages. The EFF is also complaining that Sony BMG is doing too little to announce the recall of the infected CDs.