Sony sues company behind MediaMax over dodgy DRM software

With how hard Sony BMG was hit over using dodgy copy protection on its music CDs, Sony BMG has now decided to sue The Amergence Group, formerly known as SunnComm International, claiming its CD anti-piracy technology was defective and cost the record company millions of dollars as a result of settling consumer complaints and government investigations.  It is seeking to recover US$12 million in damages according to the court papers. 

SunnComm was infamously known for its MediaMax DRM system for Audio CDs, which was used on a variety of CDs from August 2003.  The copy protection was designed to only allow a limited number of copies of a disc to be made, but had some nasty side effects, such as being automatically installed without any user intervention upon loading the disc, but designed to be difficult to remove.

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Sony BMG accuses The Amergence Group of negligence, unfair businesses practises and breaching the terms of its license agreement.  The Amergence Group plans to fight the case, suggesting that the lawsuits placed against Sony BMG were the result of using another copy protection system.  For example, Sony BMG was worse known for its use of its rootkits based copy protection, which is designed to hide itself from the end user, but with a major side effect in that it opened up computers affected with the copy protection to viruses and malware and affected their performance.

Further info can be read in this MSN news report.  Thanks to zachariah and DamnedIfIknow for letting us know about this news. 

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