Sony snaps Grouper shut, gives Crackle a pop

Oh Sony where art thou?

Does anyone remember the days when Sony were genuinely a young persons brand? The "Playstation Generation", etc where the ubiquitous PS2 controller buttons were graffitied around trendy Unis, etc? Me neither.

Sony has made so many mistakes in recent times in PR it's now hard to accept that it was oh so different only a few years ago. The turning point for me seemed to be when they were outed for masterminding a "yoof PSP blog site" - ever since then their efforts always seem to come off as being "try too hard", stuffy corporate suits with little/no clue about the demographic they're targeting insulting our collective intelligence by pretending to be "in" with us.

Oh Sony, you need to re-hire whoever was responsible for the viral Playstation marketing of the past - at least they seemed to have an idea of how to pull our strings without making us feel like puppets.

DRM

Mmm Sony and Digital music, what a appealing combination. I can't wait for the unplayable,DRM riddled, root kit installing video app to be forced onto my pc..... methinks not...

Or, alternatively.........

I could say, "Sounds like a good idea if done right. Good luck Sony and I hope it works out."

Success Stories

Remember all the rave reviews and success stories generated by their PSP video download site? Me neither.

I feel this will mirror that resounding triumph and turn into another advertising site for Sony media - a brand with a truly wholesome reputation amongst those that prefer their PC's trashed by malware.

I own several Sony products and quite like them - but there's no way I would deliberately go to a Sony media website, even if my PC is protected to some degree by appropriate DRM killing / anti-virus software.

Fool me once...

"Crackle is offering up what it described as a "streaming entertainment network" that will see wannabe filmmakers go head-to-head"

Oh, _Streaming._. I thought it said _steaming_. Well, you can imagine what that made me think about filmakers going head-to-head...

Anyhow, it's Sony. It's inherently evil, and it's almost certainly chock-full of malicious software designed to prevent your PC from playing YouTube videos, DVDs, or anything else that Sony didn't get paid to allow you to view.