Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Welcome to Cyber reasons Malicious Life. In June 2006, 2006, the Wall Street Journalist Technology Critic Walter Musberg conducted an on-stage interview with Sir Howard Stringer, CEO of Sonny, as part of the Journal's All Things Digital Conference in

Carsbad, California.

As someone who heads one of the largest and most influential multimedia companies on the planet, people always tended to listen to what

Stringer had to say. But this time the crowd was even more attentive than usual. Only a few months earlier,

Sony was dealt one of the most painful blows

in the corporation's long history,

and everyone was eagerly waiting

for what Stringer had to say about the incident.

The senior management of B. M.G. or Sony did not know this was going on, said the CEO in response to Mossberg's questions.

We responded very quickly and put out patches.

We didn't say to ourselves as a company, we're going to screw every computer in town.

We made a mistake and Sony paid a terrible price."

A terrible price indeed.

Sony B.M.G was a record company created in 2004 by a merger of Sony's music division and the German

Bertelsmann Music Group, two well-respected companies with a long history in the music business, yet a disastrous decision somewhere along the new

company's chain of command cost it millions of dollars due to a recall of millions of CDs from music shops all over the US as well as in

monetary compensations as part of two separate lawsuit settlements in Texas and New York.

Perhaps more damaging than the financial losses was the PR disaster that badly tarnished Sony's reputation among its customers and signed artists, painting it as a self-centered self-serving

company who cares more about its bottom line than its customers.

Stringers wasn't much of an apology, really, but it was a notable change from the arrogant

tone of Sonny's earlier responses to its accusers.

...