4 ms·

Seeing it's running Android and having the name Sony I'd strongly recommended that you not buy one if you intend to play pirate tracks! These days I wouldn't t

Seeing it's running Android and having the name Sony I'd strongly recommended that you not buy one if you intend to play pirate tracks! These days I wouldn't trust Sony as far as I could chuck the Walkman.

capableweb 4y ago
Well, maybe do some better research than just reacting to the name before judging stuff? It seems to play things like mp3, wav, aiff, flac and more formats perfectly fine, so hook the thing up to a computer, it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device and you chuck your illegally/legally acquired files over and it'll play it. Can't find anything else that says it has built in DRM, so why would you assume so?
- hilbert42 4y ago
  It's hard to explain to anyone who never experienced Sony in the days when Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita—Sony's founders—ran the company. Those were the hardware days before the company freaked out and went into entertainment, films and other intellectual property ventures to the extent of putting root kit viruses on people's computers. In those days Sony was an excellent company and had excellent customer service, its equipment was leading edge/state of the art. I still have lots of equipment from that era that still works. I was so enamored with the original Walkman that one afternoon when in Akihabara I bought four different versions of the device. I have a Sony 100W HiFi that's now 49 years old and its as good as the day it was purchased; I've two ICF-2010 radio receivers bought nearly 40 years ago and they're still used every day—even after all that time their volume potentiometers still havn't gone scratchy. Anyone who owns a ICF-2010 is unlikely to sell it as it's iconic and best of class. Moreover, its service manual is a sight to behold, it ought to be held up by the Rights to Repair advocates as the quintessential way companies should handle service. That company called Sony once run by engineers with engineering excellence as their aim no longer exists! What we now have is miserly spiteful interloper company that has the audacity to still trade under the name of 'Sony'. There's no point me adding more, you either understand what I'm on about or you don't. For the record, I've never been infected with the Sony root kit virus, nor have I pirated any of its IP (I've almost no interest in movies). What I'm on about is that a Trojan horse took over the company and it's never been the same since.
tobyhinloopen 4y ago
That’s a rather bold claim without explanation
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  Not the OP, but I think they've got plenty of precedent to fuel their caution. I'm surprised that not everyone doesn't immediately remember, when someone says "Sony", the time they silently installed a rootkit onto the PC of anyone playing one of their music CDs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
  - capableweb 4y ago
    So the fear is that when you connect the Walkman to your computer it'll do something similar, installing a "copy protection rootkit" in order to prevent you from transferring non-DRMed files to it? Seems farfetched to me I guess, especially if there is zero evidence of it happening. But happy to be proven otherwise. Not sure what that has to do with Android either, the "rootkit scandal" you linked is about CDs.
    - CWuestefeld 4y ago
      No. The fear is that Sony will do something that they think is in their own best interest, while completely ignoring the interests of their customers. It doesn't have to be a rootkit specifically, it just needs to follow their pattern of lack of interest in their own customers.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        So what, realistically, could they do here, if they had lack of interest for their own customers? Disable USB Mass Storage transfer functionality? Disabling being able to play non-DRMed files?
      - hilbert42 4y ago
        See my later comments.

capableweb 4y ago

Well, maybe do some better research than just reacting to the name before judging stuff? It seems to play things like mp3, wav, aiff, flac and more formats perfectly fine, so hook the thing up to a computer, it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device and you chuck your illegally/legally acquired files over and it'll play it. Can't find anything else that says it has built in DRM, so why would you assume so?

hilbert42 4y ago
It's hard to explain to anyone who never experienced Sony in the days when Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita—Sony's founders—ran the company. Those were the hardware days before the company freaked out and went into entertainment, films and other intellectual property ventures to the extent of putting root kit viruses on people's computers. In those days Sony was an excellent company and had excellent customer service, its equipment was leading edge/state of the art. I still have lots of equipment from that era that still works. I was so enamored with the original Walkman that one afternoon when in Akihabara I bought four different versions of the device. I have a Sony 100W HiFi that's now 49 years old and its as good as the day it was purchased; I've two ICF-2010 radio receivers bought nearly 40 years ago and they're still used every day—even after all that time their volume potentiometers still havn't gone scratchy. Anyone who owns a ICF-2010 is unlikely to sell it as it's iconic and best of class. Moreover, its service manual is a sight to behold, it ought to be held up by the Rights to Repair advocates as the quintessential way companies should handle service. That company called Sony once run by engineers with engineering excellence as their aim no longer exists! What we now have is miserly spiteful interloper company that has the audacity to still trade under the name of 'Sony'. There's no point me adding more, you either understand what I'm on about or you don't. For the record, I've never been infected with the Sony root kit virus, nor have I pirated any of its IP (I've almost no interest in movies). What I'm on about is that a Trojan horse took over the company and it's never been the same since.

tobyhinloopen 4y ago

That’s a rather bold claim without explanation

CWuestefeld 4y ago
Not the OP, but I think they've got plenty of precedent to fuel their caution. I'm surprised that not everyone doesn't immediately remember, when someone says "Sony", the time they silently installed a rootkit onto the PC of anyone playing one of their music CDs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
- capableweb 4y ago
  So the fear is that when you connect the Walkman to your computer it'll do something similar, installing a "copy protection rootkit" in order to prevent you from transferring non-DRMed files to it? Seems farfetched to me I guess, especially if there is zero evidence of it happening. But happy to be proven otherwise. Not sure what that has to do with Android either, the "rootkit scandal" you linked is about CDs.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    No. The fear is that Sony will do something that they think is in their own best interest, while completely ignoring the interests of their customers. It doesn't have to be a rootkit specifically, it just needs to follow their pattern of lack of interest in their own customers.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      So what, realistically, could they do here, if they had lack of interest for their own customers? Disable USB Mass Storage transfer functionality? Disabling being able to play non-DRMed files?
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      See my later comments.