Texas's Attorney General has announced that he will expand his existing lawsuit against Sony to include damages for CDs infected with Sunncomm's MediaMax spyware. Previously, the Texas AG had announced that he was seeking up to $100,000 per CD sold in Texas with the XCP "rootkit" anti-copying technology, under the state's anti-spyware bill. However, the MediaMax software is much more prevalent than XCP, and is used by companies other than Sony, which means that the damages will be much, much larger — as is the number of companies involved.
The Attorney General alleges the company's "MediaMax" technology for copy protection violates the state's spyware and deceptive trade practices laws in that consumers who use these CDs are offered a license agreement, but even if consumers reject that agreement, files are secretly installed on their computers that pose additional security risks to those systems.
Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)
