Sony trashes your computer

[TransformX]

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far.

[schmosef]

Wow, interesting.

Something needs to be done about this!

[Fluff]

It will only get worse. Wait till the protection is built into the drives.

Plus what is the age demographic of people that buy cd's? Most of the people who buy the cd's don't care (16-25) i'm guessing.

Most of the people who complain probably don't buy than many anyway.

As long as it works with the ipod most people wouldn't give a monkeys. If they can be played by windows media player / winamp / iTunes. Just ignore the 1% who care.

[Tjalfe]

can this not be disabled by not letting the CD autorun? i.e. hold down shift while the CD is inserted

[schmosef]

I don't appreciate the underhanded way that Sony is going about this.

If the EULA for the player software didn't mention any of this then there's room for a class action law suit against them I think.

Someone's got to stand up for consumer rights.

I haven't bought a CD in a long long time. I have bought DRM music from iTunes and Napster. I shudder to think what garbage they might have placed on my PC.

That blog entry served as a good tutorial for troubleshooting more advanced malware infestations. Thanks for the read.

[KvHagedorn]

Something needs to be done about this!

Someone's got to stand up for consumer rights.

I wonder who that would be..

[Dilitante1]

sic Nader on them 8D

[Nowhere]

Hmmm...two months ago I've put Sony protected CD into my computer...however right at the start it displayed "something needs to be installed in order to play this CD, OK to continue?". I cancelled and ripped the CD with EAC instead... (but only one of my drives, burner, was able to do that)
Gotta check if I'm safe using methods described in the blog...

[Dr Mordrid]

Screw 'em all.

Since most all of my tunes are turned into MP3's I'll take the quality losses at the front end. Basically; I'll record from a CD player through the audio card for encoding encode.

Pffftttt......

Dr. Mordrid

[Helevitia]

btw, the company that created the software has now released a removal tool for it.

http://updates.xcp-aurora.com/

[Wombat]

btw, the company that created the software has now released a removal tool for it.

http://updates.xcp-aurora.com/

No it doesn't. It just unhides it. So then you *know* you're rooted.

[Wombat]

The best part is that immediately after Sony says that it's not a security problem, and just an "academic" problem, people have begun releasing cheat programs and other software that uses Sony's rootkit to hide.

[schmosef]

Has Sony made a statement on the issue? Link?

[schmosef]

Just had a thought...

Does this mean that I won't be able to play my purchased Sony CDs on my Sony PS2?

[Fluff]

Whoever made this technology should spend more of their time 'rooting' something else.