... for illegally infecting your PC with spyware. At the moment it appears likely to walk away without even a slap on the wrist.

Ed Foster is Unsettled by the Sony Settlement.

He writes "I suppose my expectations for the lawsuits against Sony BMG over its copy-protected CDs are just too high. After all, it's probably too much to hope for that a major international conglomerate would actually suffer any serious consequences just because it irresponsibly inflicted dangerous DRM and an outrageous EULA upon its customers. Perhaps the proposed settlement really is the best that could be expected, but there is something about it that bothers me.

"The rights' that Sony is being such a good sport to say it will not enforce in this instance include its right to take away a paid-for license because a customer is insolvent, the right to say which competitor's devices the audio files can be played on, and the right to have customers indemnify Sony for the harm Sony has caused them."

"Call me a dreamer, but I had hoped one result of this litigation would be that no company has those kinds of 'rights' just because of a few terms in the sneakwrap fine print. "