Sony’s original cavalier attitude to deliberately attacking its customers with unauthorized software has faded. In the past month Sony found itself under attack from New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who found it unacceptable that affected CDs were still available in shops three weeks after the vulnerability was revealed.
In the middle of the month Thomas Hesse, head of Sony BMG's global digital business said that the company would re-evaluate how it protects its products from piracy.
In the past few days, Sony BMG has agreed to compensate a group of plaintiffs in the New York class action lawsuit over the rootkit.
Has Sony seen the error of its ways and the folly of attacking paying customers, or is it making a strategic withdrawal from this battle, but still plans to win the war to wrest control of hardware from their legitimate owners? Only time will tell.