Sony, Keep Your Spyware out of My Music!

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I never thought I'd see the day that Sony would be caught acting like a virus writer. Sony, for heaven sakes! They're a major multinational company -- and their paranoia with digital rights management software has a lot of the rest of us feeling pretty paranoid, too, with good reason.

What can you say about a company that uses the tactics of virus writers as part of a digital rights management scheme aimed at Apple iPod users? Or maybe I should qualify that: what can you say that would be printable? Plenty, as it turns out; just do a Google search on the phrase “Sony BMG rootkit” and you’ll get more than a quarter of a million hits. I have a few choice words myself, let me tell you! But first, I should probably give you the background about this brouhaha.

The fecal material first started to hit the rotating blades for Sony BMG on Halloween this year. That’s when Windows programming expert Mark Russinovich reported coming across Sony BMG anti-piracy software on his computer. He had scanned his computer with a tool designed to spot rootkits.

For those who don’t know what a rootkit is (which included me), David Berlind of ZDNet gives an enlightening explanation. “Rootkits generally latch themselves onto the foundation or `roots’ of an operating system in a variety of ways that not only prevent their detection, but also their extraction.” Malicious hackers have started to use rootkits to ensure that the viruses they write are not found and removed by antivirus software.

Russinovich was able to determine that the rootkit came from an anti-copying system created by UK software company First 4 Internet, dubbed Extended Copy Protection (XCP). The system allows users to make only three copies of the protected album, and permits listening to the CD only a computer through a proprietary media player. The CD plays normally on a hi-fi system.

Finding the software was one thing; removing it was another. According to Russinovich, “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.” When he attempted to remove the software himself, Russinovich temporarily crippled his CD player. Remember folks, this is a Windows programming expert! What the hell did Sony think it was doing?

Next: Sony’s and First4Internet’s Responses >>
 

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