Thinkcorps

Just got the new Supercar CD, Answer, and I’m very excited. I love this band and I’ve bought all their albums and some singles (since they’re all Japanese CDs, that’s saying something, I think).

So, I open it, and I notice, thankfully, that there’s LabelGate protection on it. LabelGate is assinine protection in which you get keys from a center Sony server, good for one transfer of the digital files (no idea what format) to your PC. Subsequent transfers are like $2/song, and (maybe) available only to people in Japan.

Why would I care? Well, I just had to reinstall XP, so all my old OS tweaks weren’t in place yet. Suffice it to say, Sony spent a lot of money to protect all their CDs, a system I compromised by turning of CD Autoplay.

Everyone should turn off Autoplay. Autoplay is now like messenger (the unused service that hackers use to put popups on your screen)—it is a loophole, used to trick unsuspecting users. I don’t differentiate between the two. They are both insidious.

And BTW —Sony, you suck. A long time ago at Wired, our sage Kevin Kelly asked, “who’s the next Microsoft?” I answered, “Sony.” You had the brand, the expertise, the intelligence. And you’ve blown the whole deal. Your HD music player resoundingly sucks. Your music store sucks. Why? Because you accept that your customers should be treated like thieves and criminals. Man, was I wrong about you guys.

I think it’s funny that your tiny seasian suppliers are now poised to eat your bento box. Korea’s gonna whip your ass (and I bet that hurts), because they are willing to innovate—fast—and create cool new products that customers might actually want.