as has been reported in a number of places, sony has filed a suit against amergence (formerly sunncomm) because the drm they provided to sony was 'defective'...
contrary to what a number of folks have written, this has nothing to do with rootkits (and not just because 'rootkit' is the most misused term in anti-malware since 'virus')... the reason this has nothing to do with rootkits and the whole sony 'rootkit' debacle is that that debacle involved drm produced by a company called first4internet, not sunncomm...
sony was employing drm technology from 2 separate companies at the same time (xcp from first4internet and mediamax from sunncomm) and sunncomm was able to fly mostly under the radar because most people were so focused on the stealthkit functionality of xcp... of course the added attention to sony cd's probably did raise awareness of the spyware-like qualities of mediamax, but considering that even now most people jump to the conclusion that sony+drm='rootkit' it's clear that sunncomm dodged a big PR bullet when that fiasco was going on...
but all good things come to an end and now they're being sued for reasons that most people are associating with the 'rootkit' debacle... one probably wonders, then, why sony isn't suing firts4internet instead (since first4interent's xcp cost sony a heck of a lot more than sunncomm's mediamax), and i wonder how they're being sued at all since software liability is supposed to be something we need not something we have (if schneier is to be believed)... my best guess is that with existing precedents for spyware prosecution, sony may believe they have a better chance of a judgment in their favour with a sunncomm suit than with a first4internet suit... however, if the claims that sony had final say on the functional specification of the software is true (and given that control is a strong motivator in the decision to deploy drm, it wouldn't surprise me if those claims were true), then sony shares an equal portion of the blame for anything the software did to sony's customers...
but the true lesson in this is for drm providers everywhere: if you're unethical enough to try and provide drm technology, you may one day find your customers (the content industry) trying to bite the hand that feeds them (you)... and when that happens, having customers with deep pockets won't seem like such a blessing anymore...
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