Solveig Singleton of IPCentral and I sort of got into it over the Sony issue a while back. Now, there is new evidence to show that Sony has gotten even farther than previously expected. It has been discovered that Sony disregarded its users requests should they have clicked "no" on the end-user license agreement window and installed their little rootkit anyway. In light of this new discovery, the Attorney General of Texas has added yet another offense to the list of complaints against Sony.

The Texas attorney general said on Wednesday that he added a new claim to a lawsuit charging Sony BMG Music Entertainment with violating the state's laws on deceptive trade practices by hiding "spyware" on its compact discs.

Attorney General Greg Abbott filed the original lawsuit in November, accusing the company of violating state anti-spyware laws by embedding software in its CDs and media player to monitor users' habits.

The new charges brought by Abbott contend that MediaMax software used by Sony BMG to thwart illegal copying of music on CDs violated state laws because it was downloaded even if users rejected a license agreement.

"We keep discovering additional methods Sony used to deceive Texas consumers who thought they were simply buying music," Abbott said in a statement.

From the very beginning I knew that Sony would not play this game by civilized rules with their customers. This case is important for a few reasons, despite what Solveig seems to think, because regardless of the amount of damage Sony enabled, they effectively committed electronic trespassing and they damaged the normal functioning of their customers' operating systems. When their customers rejected the end user license agreement, that should have been the end of it, but Sony violated their wishes and installed software on their computers that had a harmful impact on them. I agree in principle that if their customers agreed to the end user license agreement that Sony should be idemnified from any reasonable harm, but in this case Sony went ahead and did what they did in violation of an explicit instruction by their users to reject the agreement and not install the software/play the CD on their computer. Surely any reasonable person can see why it is a very good thing for Sony's customers that the Texas Attorney General is not sitting on his laurels in light of this development.

I for one am quite willing to reiterate my pledge to not buy a Playstation 3 as a result of this case. Consider me a Nintendo Revolution or XBox 360 owner in the making thanks to Sony's wanton disregard for their customers' property rights. The best protest that anyone can do over this is to go out and buy a XBox 360 or Nintendo Revolution and then, if possible, contact Sony and let them know that because they saw fit to shaft their customers this badly, that they have permanently lost a Playstation owner as a future customer.