Listen up, Sony!

In the comments to an earlier post, Ben Edelman makes a very smart suggestion:

I share your assessment that “Sony still has a long way to go.” In addition to the problems you raise, there’s also the question of whether and how Sony will provide meaningful notice to affected users. In http://www.benedelman.com/news/112105-1.html I show something of a novel approach — using Sony’s own “call-home” feature to send users a special banner ad describing the situation and users’ rights. Turns out Sony can do this with only a few lines of XML code placed on their web server. And I already ran a demo — using a HOSTS file to make one of my PCs look like Sony’s web server — to confirm that the banner system works as required.

Go look at Ben’s page. This is one of the best solutions anyone has yet come up with for the conundrum of how to recall a defective product that most users don’t even realize they have.