Overly Cautious, Sony Creates Public Relations Crisis
by
Alex Russel
Career School Directory Columnist
It's become the public relations scourge for music companies and threatens the well-being of all media companies: How do you balance your corporate anti-piracy campaign with satisfying customers? Not very easily, as Sony has come to realize.
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You could say that Metallica was the first music entity to feel the backlash against an anti-piracy campaign. In 2000, at the height of the Napster craze, Metallica band members came out aggressively against computer users downloading their music for free from the Internet. The message was heard loud and clear and Metallica ended up losing a huge chunk of its fan base.
Software Public Relations Crisis
Recently, Sony has similarly erred on the side of anti-piracy by hastily developing and using software that is supposed to carefully limit how much a music buyer can reproduce the content of a store bought CD.
Last November the music giant was forced to announce that it was recalling recent releases of popular artists like Amerie, Neil Diamond, Trey Anastasio, Celine Dion, Natasha Bedingfield, Switchfoot, Ricky Martin, Van Zant, and others because they feature content-protection software that doesn't work.
Public Relations Career Challenge
Worse, it turns out that the software is actually spy-ware and that an outside hacker can easily tap into the software system and monitor consumer behavior; Sony has inadvertently given hackers the ultimate spying tool.
Indeed. According to Billboard Magazine, Microsoft and a number of computer security firms -- including Computer Associates, F-Secure and Symantec -- have designated XCP as malicious software, charging that it monitors consumer behavior, is difficult to uninstall, and creates vulnerability to viruses. At least one virus that attacks computers installed with XCP software is already in circulation.
Even the Department of Homeland Security has spoken out against the proliferation of this type of spy-ware software.
Public Relations Jobs
Sony has created a major public relations snafu for itself. Technology fans are acutely sensitive to online privacy issues. The Japanese owned conglomerate is getting killed in blogs and chatrooms all over the world. Sony public relations executives are hard at work. The recall of the CDs in question is expected to cost $6.5 million alone.
Corporate disasters often form the ground public relations careers tread on. Public relations jobs mostly deal with the everyday issues of protecting a brand or image, but every once in a while a worker in this field will be confronted by real public relations crisis management.
Source
About the Author
Alex Russel is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Since graduating from Syracuse University he has worked at many different media companies in fields as diverse as film, TV, advertising, and journalism. He holds a dual bachelor's degree in English and History.
Posted on March 13, 2006 at 10:27 AM
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