People following copyright, technology, and digital rights management issues have wondered a lot about Sony lately. Sony has a record label (or so), a motion picture production company, and a large electronics business, so it's a company on both sides of DRM issues. Will it produce the electronics with functionality that people want -- and, I should note, with substantial non-infringing uses -- or will it produce equipment with very limited capabilities designed to keep people from ever copying its media products? Or, perhaps, is that choice something other than binary?
Doc recently linked to this Newsweek article, wondering if Sony would buck the major media houses' overprotective tendencies in order to energize its electronics business. Today, Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing) excerpted and commented on this Wired article by Frank Rose, which discusses in much more detail the direction Sony might go from here. Sony doesn't seem to plan to leave the media business, as one might expect from its CEO's remark that he doesn't want Sony to go back to being only "a box company." Where will Sony's DRM initiatives lead?
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