Sony has agreed to settle the rootkit class action lawsuit, according to this, from CNET News.com.

The Washington Post Security Fix Blog has further information.

From the Post article:

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, New York lawyer Scott Kamber, said the two parties signed a settlement which is awaiting preliminary approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Again, from the WaPo:

According to the terms of the settlement, Sony would be required to stop making CDs outfitted with the flawed “XCP” and MediaMax digital rights management software..

Additionally, depending on whether the offending CDs contained XCP or MediaMax DRM, and depending on the versions of each DRM method, customers can receive as much as $7.50 per offending CD, as well as up to 3 free music downloads. Sony, of course, is not required to admit any to wrongdoing.

Keep in mind that all of the above is still awaiting court approval. If the agreement is approved, we can count a small victory for the good guys. But we still must be aware, as customers from whose pockets the money is ultimately extracted, that we still must be vigilant. As Tim Jarrett puts it in his post at The Sony Boycott Blog:

I’m concerned that there will be no real changes. After all, XCP and MediaMax are hardly the only DRM technologies on the market.

And I’d add to that, that Sony is hardly the only major record label in the world.

Here at tbbs-land, we’ll strike the “No Gifts for Sony” badge in the right sidebar on 1/1/2006. We’ll fly the “Boycott Sony” banner a little longer, at least until after the court rules on the settlement. Then it might morph into a more generic “Beware DRM” motif. We’ll see how it goes.

-k-

h/t: Tim, at the Sony Boycott Blog. His coverage was timely, accurate, and non-ranting.

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