2:59

So the CBC Radio 3 blog reminded me that Sony BMG has settled the copy protection (er, rootkit) class action lawsuit with an Ontario court. With such a high volume of bad news from the Sony camp these days this story’s been somewhat lost in the negative white noise. As a person who works in both IT and music this is really something I should have stayed on top of, but even I forgot about it.

I did recall owning one of these pariah CDs, and sure enough the Dead 60s self-titled debut sat collecting dust on my shelf, sporting a big fat XCP brand of shame. I don’t think the XCP software ever actually effected me; of course it couldn’t touch my Mac and even though I have a PC setup as an iTunes stereo I learned long ago not to autorun CDs. This record, by the way, is charged with the additional crime of tempting us with a neo-Specials revival only to completely chicken out and go Brit pop instead of 2-Tone. Regardless, the idea of $8.40 of sweet Sony gold plus an unmolested copy of the record seems appealing.

Funny enough, part of the compensation package they’re offering includes both an MP3 copy of the record and an extra album download. The MP3 download seems sort of superfluous since they’re sending me a new copy in meatspace. I’m quite able to rip my own MP3s, but I’m interested to see if they’ve taken the boneheaded move of inflicting some sort of DRM on these as well. The extra download is from a fairly odd list of albums. I’m not sure if this is Sony’s full output for the past while or if it’s just culled from the effected records, but it took me a while to choose something from “Exhibit B” that looked the least bit interesting. I defaulted to some Thelonious Monk collection, I think.

I’m not even sure what the album downloads are for, in terms of the lawsuit. Perhaps they’re just there to make the compensation package seem a little more substantial, but all things considered I could have easily gone for another $8.40. I wouldn’t complain, since we’d at least be somewhere near the before-tax price of a new CD in stores (almost).

UPS picked up the tainted Dead 60s record today. I await the spoils of my swift and powerful legal action. I’ll be surprised if I see this before, oh let’s say, next March.