Good job Sony, this will keep us buying CDs

[Morgan Evanar]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051101-5514.html


DRM can range from a nuisance to downright intrusive. A nuisance would be something along the lines of SunnComm's ill-fated MediaMax CD3 system, which could be thwarted by holding down the Shift key the first time the protected music CD is loaded into your PC's optical drive. Downright intrusive? Early audio CD DRM that kept CDs from playing on your PC under any circumstances. Sony appears to have gone beyond the pale with its latest antipiracy scheme: software that installs a rootkit on your PC.

For the uninitiated, a rootkit is a program or set of programs that allow a usually malicious user to maintain access to a compromised computer by sinking deep hooks into the OS. In the case of Windows, a rootkit will attempt to shield changes to the registry along with files from the user, and more importantly, from antivirus or spyware detection software. In so many words, letting someone install an undetected rootkit on your system is not a good thing.

[Saveeradeevaravaravee]

Wow... You'd think something like that would be illegal. In fact, I'm fairly certain that it would fall under invasion of privacy. I can understand write protection, or something that only affects the data on the CD itself, but installing hacker-friendly software just doesn't sound legally savvy to me. Not to mention, as these are no doubt windows-specific programs - possibly with a mac version as well - I wouldn't even be able to listen to their music on my linux box. Not consumer-friendly at all.

I, for one, won't be buying Sony products for a while. I can definately forsee a huge, country-wide, multi-party lawsuit in the near future for this stuff.

It's a shame, too... Several of my favorite classical musicians are licensed under Sony.

[Khendon Sevon]

I think the big music industry is in shock right now. They are losing money. However, it's not because of piracy. It's because they keep getting one hit wonders that really don't pan out.

That’s one of the reasons for so many remasters being released along with “classic hits”, etc. of material they know will sell. It’s an attempt to counter-balance their losses.

Piracy is a cover. In fact, most reports I’ve read have said CD sales have gone up in the past years (you can now order CDs online, buy individual songs, come on, they’re making money!).

It’s all bs. They just want control over our boxes so they can kick out competitors somehow.

[Morgan Evanar]

^ Pretty much. You can actually rip these CDs with a good ripper like CDex or EAC, but the average joe would just pop the CD in to listen to it. I have most of my music on the computer more for conivence than anything else.

One of the biggest problems that the industry is facing is the CD standard itself. It's incredibly well known and if you mess with it too much, it stops working on a great many players. Right now they hate CDs because they're so very easy to extract data from.

The Recording/Film industry desperately wants total control over content, but they seem to forget it becomes analog at some point.

[Firebird1]

I found this while reading Slashdot.

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/updates.html

Looks like they don't like the heat!

[Saveeradeevaravaravee]

Looks like the voice of the people came through, if only a bit. Now they just need to stop making the crap.

[Morgan Evanar]

Originally posted by Saveeradeevaravaravee
Looks like the voice of the people came through, if only a bit. Now they just need to stop making the crap. And a CD will come with words of truth and dreams and clouds.

[Saveeradeevaravaravee]

By "The Crap," I meant the DRMs, not CDs or the music on them.

[Morgan Evanar]

Oh. CDs are an ok form of media. DRM is horrible and should die a flaming death, though.

[Shawn]

"Sony's uninstall tool worse than the problem"
Sony issued a "patch," a 3MB download that contains a large amount of new software. That patch removes the rootkit, but also installs itself without notice to the user and without user permission. Moreover it cannot be removed either.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051111.gtsony1111/BNStory/Technology/

And:

"First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted"
Virus writers have begun taking advantage of Sony-BMG's use of rootkit technology in DRM software bundled with its music CDs.

Sony-BMG's rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with "$sys$". A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file "$sys$drv.exe" in the Windows system directory.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/10/sony_drm_trojan/

There are currently about half a dozen lawsuits pending against Sony.