Remember that one time when music CDs from Sony MBG installed a rootkit on your PC that continuously sent whatever MP3s you had on your PC back to them?

Remember that time when NSA director James Clapper reassured us they're not the baddies.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

"No, sir."

Remember when Amazon deleted books from customers' Kindles (eBook reader), and the book they decided to remotely burn was .. 1984 from Orwell.

I was alive for that but had forgotten about it…wild.

Yep and they were fined a paltry 6 million dollars or so. For actively distributing and infecting users with malware. This on annual sales exceeding $3B.

That case sure put Mark Russinovich on everyone’s radars, at least.

Good times.

First time hearing of this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

As the saying goes, this is what radicalized me. If any one of us did anything close to this we would be treated like Aaron Swartz and given a 35+ year prison sentence.

But in the Sony case the DOJ didn't even threaten criminal charges.

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