Sony Bows To Pressure: Abandons RootKit DRM In Favor Of Mechanical Turk Approach

Sony BMG announced today that they were surrendering to public pressure following the recent furor over the discovery of their use of First4Internet's root kit as a Digital Rights Management scheme.

According to a spokesman, "we have heard the public and we have responded. However, we must protect out interests. We have recently discovered a new methodology to insure our rights are protected. We will take advantage of Amazon's Mechanical Turk and hire DRM live-ins for every consumer who purchases Sony Digital media. These DRM live-ins will be charged with the time consuming, monotonous, and repetitive tasks of insuring that our digital content is used appropriately at all times."

"As an example, we, and other media companies, have been exploring the use of one time play DVDs. We now see this as a reality. DRM live-ins will be able to quickly remove a DVD of a film, once it has played, and quickly shatter it into pieces, preventing license violation. We see this as a win not only for the consumer, but the unemployed, the homeless, the construction industry (who will be called into use renovating and adding extra rooms onto houses), and the world's economy as well."

"As other media companies follow suit, we envision a future where each home and each business location has a DRM live-in, all engaged through Mechanical Turk. Rather than surreptitious software that 'phones home' with a possible violation, we will now have a live human being making that call. If people want to enjoy our content, they can now do it in the company of a companion. While I am sure we will hear complaints that this is the ultimate 'big brother' act, we think a more appropriate analogy would be that of the nosy neighbor."