"We have to walk the line at Sony between the needs and technology of the customer and the rights of the artist, which we feel fairly strongly about," he said referring to Sony's dual role as a major consumer electronics and a major music and movie publisher.Makes perfect sense—you only own 50% of the record label, and it's called "Sony BMG;" how could anyone think Sony was responsible? Perhaps the only way this has been unfair to Sony is that Bertelsmann hasn't taken the same kind of public bollocking that Sir Howard's company has.
Stringer also said he was worried about the negative impact the controversy could have had on Sony as a whole because of Sony BMG's actions. Sony BMG is a joint venture with Bertelsmann.
"Every headline was about Sony, as if Sony Electronics was behind all of this and we took quite a beating but it was a Sony BMG copyright protection tradition and this was a bad situation. We obviously retreated from that position."
"Sony as a company took a bit of a beating for it, which was somewhat unfair," he said.
Still, this was an underwhelming, mealy-mouthed performance by Sony's CEO. He didn't appear to understand the gravity of the situation: a subsidiary unit of his company effectively vandalized its customers property, opening people and companies to serious security risks. Stringer's focus on the "perception" element of the problem is troubling when you consider that he's the effective head of a major PC maker. Instead of an abject apology, we get more Big Content party line about "protecting the rights of the artist" (about as convincing as hearing the fox discuss how he's protecting the rights of the hens in the henhouse). I expect Sony will continue to trip over its own feet in the name of synergy between the content and technology sides of the house.
