Sony Movies Pulled From Netflix Streams; Because Customers Just Love That Kind Of Thing

from the contract-disputes dept

Apparently, Sony Pictures films have been pulled from Netflix. Netflix claims that it's a temporary issue due to a contract dispute between Sony and Starz (a Netflix partner from which it gets many of its streaming movies). Other reports, however, say that there's no contract dispute, but that Starz just pulled the plug on those films. Either way, this kind of thing is never a good idea, because it's treating consumers as pawns. One of the reasons why Netflix has been so damn successful all these years is its focus on making the customer experience top notch. Removing content like this is never a good idea. These companies have to realize that they're still fighting to convince people that these services are worth paying for and that jerking them around by removing content isn't going to convince the people who were on the fence.

Filed Under: movies
Companies: netflix, sony, starz

Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters

from the ridiculous dept

Nina Paley alerted us to an article from the Boston Globe that's been getting some attention about how many theaters are showing digital projections of regular "2D" movies that look really bad because projectionists don't remove 3D lenses. Basically, lots of theaters are using digital projectors, which were supposed to be a huge boon for the theater industry. It's easier than shipping and loading film. It can often present a crisper picture. In general it provides plenty of benefits. Those same projects can show 3D movies, but if you try to show a 2D movie via the 3D lenses, you can lose a ton of light. In some cases, the films are being projected 85% darker due to this. In other words, it's making the theater experience dreadful.

You might just think the issue is lazy projectionists who don't want to change lenses. While that might play a part... the bigger issue appears to be Sony's insane fear of digital infringement:

So why aren’t theater personnel simply removing the 3-D lenses? The answer is that it takes time, it costs money, and it requires technical know-how above the level of the average multiplex employee. James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert's Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, "and if you don't do it right, the machine will shut down on you.'" The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn't made and "audiences are getting shortchanged.'"

Yes, the projector requires you to get security clearances and internet passwords just to change a lens... or it shuts down on you. Why? Because of the fear of the dreaded "piracy." Of course, all this really does, in the long run, is drive more such "piracy" by making people question why they should go to the theater for a crappy movie-going experience.

* Oh, and yes, it's pretty freaking cool that Roger Ebert's projectionist is named James Bond.

Filed Under: 3d, digital movies, drm, projectors
Companies: sony

An Open Letter To Sony CEO Howard Stringer

from the i'm-surprised-he-didn't-just-tell-us-to-go-play-outside dept

Howard -

While we all can appreciate the difficulties you've been through in the last month, what with your online cash cow being tipped by thousands of overbright fratboys, the simple fact is your responses have been, well, completely terrible.

First off, nothing heals fresh wounds like dismissive handwaving. When you have millions of customers and hundreds of developers locked out of their online connection for over a month, the use of the word "hiccup" isn't exactly going to smooth things over. A term like that is usually deployed to indicate minor speedbumps, like 12 hours of downtime for "unscheduled maintenance" or informing the end users that their Diner's Club cards are no longer being honored.

Following it up with defensive comments about your response time (faster that others!) and claiming the attack was unprecedented (no one has ever been hacked like this before!) isn't really endearing you to the Home crowd. (Yes, that pun was intentional. And terrible.) This sort of irritated tone lacks the contriteness that those of us who have supported Sony for far too long would like to see. I suppose we're supposed to feel grateful for your swift turnaround time, but if you're just going to measure your company versus the lower end of the spectrum, then you're wasting everyone's time. 

I see Sony is offering users/hackees some consolation prizes to help smooth over the month-long lockout + wholesale compromise of their personal information. I'm sure I speak for others when I view these items and wholeheartedly applaud them as being "better than nothing." While a few new games would be nice, I'm not sure I've got the time or the hard drive space to fill with games I never intended to purchase.

(Let me explain: I bought my PS3 back in the good old days when 40GB was considered to be "plenty." After all, it was just a "game machine" and still relied on disc-based delivery for content. I agreed with these unspoken sentiments right up until I purchased Dragon Age: Awakening: All of Everything Ever Bonus Game of the Year Edition. I'd heard nothing but good things about the game and shoved it in the disc-hole anticipating some excellent awakened dragon killing. I spent the next 2+ hours watching all of everything ever download and install, not including some sort of "update" that needed to be applied before I could even get to the exciting downloading/installing screens.)

Long story short, I have nowhere to put these new games that I don't really want nor the desire to uninstall anything currently on the drive. Especially Dragon Age: Awakening: AoEEBGotYE, not only would I hate to have to reinstall it, but I have my doubts as to whether I would even be able to re-download my bonus online content, leaving me with a $30 game that I paid $50 for. So there's that.

And as to the free month of Playstation Plus service... is that going to be 30 days continuous or will it just count down incrementally every time you manage to keep your network running for more than a few hours in a row? Clarification is needed because these are two very different things. All that other whatever-it-is, you can keep.

100+ items for my Home? This would be shit-hot news if I was still some sort of materially obsessed tween, but I could scarcely be bothered to dick around with my avatar for more than 15 minutes (shortly after signup?) and I haven't been back since. (In my mind's eye, I see him pacing the space between the immaculately empty living room to the outer edge of the balcony several hundred times, trying to talk himself into jumping.)

The long and short of all this is this (and trust me, it gets longer from this point): These shiny objects and temporary gifts aren't going to do much to win back the trust, and more importantly, the $$$ of your swiftly dwindling fanbase. Much like many of your pissed off customers, I go back a long way with the Playstation.

I started out with the PSone way back in the day when Driver was the killer app that made the sale. (Way, way back, actually. There was no "one" on the console at that point.) You had other exclusives as well, like the Final Fantasy series, of which VIII was used by my wife (at that point, just my girlfriend) to reach out and awaken my inner dork (along with Legend of Dragoon), and many, many other games followed. (Jade Cocoon, Monster Rancher, various Legends of various Things, Driver 2: The Walker... [but not Final Fantasy VII, much to Dark Helmet's dismay, and although he has encouraged me to give it a try, every nostalgic screenshot cuts me right across the eyes with its dangerously jagged polygons.])

I stayed with Sony for the PS2 (and its attendant killer app, GTA III), ignoring the mockery of X-Box fanboys, who derided our low-fi "memory cards" and made rude gestures with their enormous hands. I made the most of our ("our" -- remember how close we used to be?) exclusive titles and repurchased the console no less than five times. (Mainly thanks to the first few generations' alignment issues, which meant that shortly after the warranty expired the console would develop disc reading problems, grinding and blundering away like Grandpa with a malt liquour buzz and his glasses missing. Also, small children may have been involved.)

I even stayed true to the lineage and purchased a PS3 once the arrival of GTA IV made resistance impossible. (I was able to resist the PSP, however. Something about those newly-fashioned UMDs reminded me of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it heyday of the Minidisc.) I sucked it up and took the hit at the cash register despite the fact that Sony's competitors had much friendlier price points. I swallowed hard as other consoles signed exclusive title after exclusive title. I defended its honor using the only weapon I had: the Blu-Ray player. And I laughed vindictively as the HD DVD fell by the wayside. I sat at home and admired my ungainly Blu-Ray player while waiting for worthwhile titles to come out and slowly got used to the fact that if something was PS3-only, it meant that no one else really wanted it.

I'm just one of millions, Howard. You had us all for so long, but between the wholesale harvesting of our data and the forced removal of functionality, I'd be bracing myself for some very low sales numbers when the next generation of consoles roll out. The shiny stuff and free digital trinkets are ok, but a little bit of humility would go a long way.

Sincerely,

Tim Cushing

Filed Under: howard stringer, playstation
Companies: sony

Oh Look, Sony Hacked Again, Site Used For Phishing

from the count-the-hacks dept

Late on Friday, the news came out that Sony had been hacked yet again, and this time the hacked site was being used for phishing. This was totally unrelated to the PlayStation Network hacks, but involved a website for Sony Thailand. Still, given all the trouble Sony has had lately keeping its systems secure, this seems to just add another layer to the stack of questions about Sony's technical competence.

Filed Under: hack, phishing, thailand
Companies: sony

Well, That Was Fast: Sony's New PSN System? Hacked!

from the hiccup dept

So, it took a few weeks for Sony to get everything in order after its er... hiccup in exposing the details of everyone on the PlayStation Network. And, now it appears that the Japanese government's worries that Sony hadn't really fixed the problem or made its system secure appear to be coming true. There are reports this morning that the new password reset system has been exploited, such that you could change anyone's password if you have their email and date of birth. You know where you could have gotten that info? From the original hacked data. Right. *Hic*

Filed Under: hack, psn
Companies: sony

Sony CEO Howard Stringer: Month-long Hackathon Merely A 'Hiccup'

from the sony-shouldn't-be-left-in-charge-of-your-metaphors-much-less-your-personal-i dept

As we've all seen over the last thirty days or so, Sony has handled their month-long data breach/pwnage with all the grace and humility that one expects from an out-of-touch megacorporation. Between dismissing the breach as "harmless" and fingering the ever-popular "Anonymous" for all the trouble, Sony has managed to stay at least one step behind their attackers the whole way. To add insult to injurious class action lawsuit, it emerged from the 30-day hackout bruised, bleeding and completely unable to go back online in its own country.

CEO Howard Stringer apparently has come to the conclusion that there's still plenty of room for more foot in Sony's mouth, dismissing the longest outage by any console maker as merely a "hiccup in the road to a network future."

Now, I don't want to presume to speak for everybody, but generally when I have the hiccups (inside or outside of the road), it tends to leave the nearest 77 million people unaffected. Sure, I may get some random advice (drink a glass of water/hold your breath/salt your passwords), but otherwise life goes on and I'm the only one bothered by it. Plus, these hiccup attacks never run more than 10-12 days at the most and only rarely do I lay the blame at the feet of unrelated hacking entities.

Thank you, Howard, for clearing that up. I'll be sure to dismiss any unknown charges to my credit cards as mere "hiccups in the road to financial instability" and when my linked email account becomes a spam-spewing zombie, I'll just hold my breath until it all goes away.

Filed Under: hack, hiccup, howard stringer, psn
Companies: sony

PlayStation Network Coming Back Online Post Hack... But Not In Japan

from the not-safe-for-home dept

There have been a bunch of stories about how Sony is finally bringing its PlayStation Network back online (though, the funniest headline I've seen is the BBC's which claims that Sony is "relaunching" the PSN, as if it's a marketing thing...). However, it appears that the gradual comeback is not coming to Japan just yet, as the government is not yet comfortable that Sony can really protect its users:

"We met with Sony on May 6 and 13, and basically we want two things from them," Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told Dow Jones Newswires.

He listed two areas where it requires further explanation before approval will be given following the incidents regarding its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment videogame services.

"The first is preventative measures. As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference," he said, adding that he could not provide details on the outstanding issues for security reasons.

The second was in how Sony hoped to regain consumer confidence over personal data such as credit card information.

"There were similar cases in the past that were caused by other firms, and we are asking Sony whether their measures are good enough when compared to countermeasures taken in the past," he said.

Filed Under: hack, japan, ps3, psn
Companies: sony

Sony Blames Anonymous For Latest Hack...

from the easiest-framing-ever dept

Apparently Sony has decided to pick on an easy target for its latest data breach: Anonymous. Sony is claiming it found a file named "Anonymous" on the server, with the non-group's phrase "We are Legion" in the file:

"The attacks were coordinated against Sony for exercising its rights in a civil action in the United States District Court in San Francisco against a hacker," Sony chairman Kazuo Hirai said in the letter.

"What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes."

Of course, those two sentences don't seem to match. Anonymous isn't known (at all) for trying to steal credit card information for criminal purposes. Its entire purpose is more along the lines of vigilante protests. Also, Anonymous may be the easiest "group" in the world to frame. Because it's not a group and anyone and everyone can be a part of it, you just put a file named "Anonymous" somewhere along with the phrase "We are Legion" and clueless dupes assume it was "the" Anonymous rather than a bunch of organized crime hackers searching for credit card details. It very well could have been an Anonymous operation, but it seems like Sony should have a bit more proof before making such a definitive statement on the matter.

Filed Under: anonymous, breach, data
Companies: sony