of copyright & ownership...

Just another indication of how powerful the online blogging community can be, blogger Mark Russinovich uncovered an attempt by the Big Boys to ride roughshod over small time consumers.


Image courtesy of Google search

This thing about Sony-BMG and the virus rootkit that they put in their latest music CDs in an attempt to screw consumers protect copyright is turning out to be a major fiasco in PR.

For those not in the know, Sony-BMG is one of the largest publishers of music CDs in the world, with labels such as Arista, Columbia and RCA, and musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Celine Dion, Avril Lavinge & Bruce Springsteen under its umbrella.

And in an moronic attempt to crush online piracy of music (yes, you! stop your torrents please...) Sony has, in addition to the music, put a piece of software known as a "rootkit" or "xcp" on its CDs. Trouble is when you pop that CD into a Windows-based PC (hooray for Macs), the rootkit will be installed without your knowledge when you try to play. What the rootkit does is to prevent your PC from making digital copies of the music.

Fine by me if that's the end of it. BUT...

In addition to the above function, the rootkit also:

1. hides itself and in doing so, will hide viruses too.

2. is not easily uninstalled and you need to be very familiar with the Windows registry system to remove it.

3. contacts Sony without your knowledge if your PC's online, whenever you play the CD, and sends information such as how many times you played the CD, your IP address etc to Sony.

4. crashes your PC when you try to remove it!

For all its efforts, the rootkit has been labelled as a spyware by Microsoft and they (Microsoft, not Sony) will be offering a removal tool for Windows users. Mark has got instructions on how to go about doing it as well but it's pretty technical. The pressure from all round has also forced Sony to stop publishing such CDs for now.

This is 1984 mentality taken to another level.

Didn't I tell you to get a Mac? :-)



Technorati tags: rootkit, xcp, Sony, DRM