Back on 2006-01-02, I outlined my disgust at Sony's rootkit fiasco. Today, I happened to be Googling around for the term astroturfing and chanced upon another (albeit old) story involving Sony's marketing around the PSP during Christmas 2006. Turns out that Sony hired an outfit called Zipatoni to create a fake blog (mirrored here) shilling the PSP amongst your stereotypical, leet-speaking gamers. Ironically, Zipatoni sounds like a character out of a Nintendo DS game... he could be Mario's long-lost brother!

Along with their patronising behaviour towards gamers, it seems that Sony's greed makes them believe that they are above the law when it comes to graffitti. This is the same sort of stupid viral marketing that big corporations with no scruples indulge in these days. This is why I tell everyone I know that I boycott Sony and now I have 2 more reasons to add to that list.

Hope the PSP and PS3 sales sink without a trace.

So, the Sony Root-kit debacle drags on. According to The Toronto Star, Sony is making token gestures to its loyal customers by offering 3 free downloads or a replacement CD with a measly US$7.50 plus 1 download. And that's just for Sony's US customers - Canadians may not even be open to the deal.

Not that I can remember the last Sony BMG label CD I bought - I used to think that the artist is more important than the label, but now I'm going to check every time on the rare occasion that I buy a CD. Oh, and when we bought a new TV this Christmas, I made sure it wasn't going to be a Sony either, so that's another CA$300.00 Sony has guaranteed itself to lose out on. It can sometimes be hard not to sound like a techno-snob, but when something like this happens, it's important to use non-technical language to show how bad a company has been, just so that friends and family can appreciate and participate in the boycott.

The actual purveyors of the original malware was a company called "First 4 Internet", which fits in exactly with one of my theorems: never trust a company that uses the number "4" in place of the word "for" in its domain name. I hope that First4Internet gets slammed with the Computer Mis-use Act over this. It'll be nice to see heads roll, now that big business has gone way too far in its contempt for privacy.

Perma-link to Mark Russinovich's original blog, outlining the root-kit.
Link to related news stories on theregister.co.uk.
Link to a CNET news story, listing other clients of First4Internet: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI.
Link to a BBC news story, referencing the original blog by Mark R.
Link to an interesting article, clearly demonstrating that the ruling Liberal party of Canada is easily bought off by big business, when it comes to [not] protecting the privacy rights of its citizens - Sarmite Bulte MP.
Another link to class-action suit info.
Yet another link referencing boycott of Sony CD's (why not boycott everything made by Sony?) and which links to an on-line petition.