Sony’s anti-piracy measures

Oh yes, Sony’s anti-piracy measures really make me want to go out and buy legitimate copies of music CD’s.  I don’t think so guys!

They’ve basically been caught red-handed using a very under hand and devious anti-piracy system on their music CD’s.  A recent article on Mark Russinovich’s blog site Sysinternals, describes how the copy protection software uses a cloaking technique more commonly found in malicious software to hide itself from the operating system.  This software must be installed before you can listen to the CD, so all in all it’s a pretty nasty trick and you can’t help ask why they decided to go down this route.

Further more, there is no way to automatically uninstall the software and any attempts to manually remove it may actually cripple the PC!  The cloaking technique it uses also makes it invisible to most anti-virus and spyware scanning programs.  Nice one Sony, that's a good way to win hearts and minds.

With music piracy rife on the Internet these days, you would think that the big record companies would be doing more to win the spending public over. Maybe reasonably priced music and bands that were promoted for their music, rather than their revenue potential would be a step in the right direction.

Sony has tried to defend the software. Apparently consumers can contact them for a patch to reveal the hidden files and there is also a link to whereby you can download software to remove the files.  So what does this mean for the average consumer buying music CD’s?  Well it means you might be getting more than you bargained for and I for one will not be rushing out to purchase their music CD’s!

Sony need to think again and take issue very seriously.  If you must, fight piracy by all means, but don't do it in a devious manner because the public like to see the cards on the table.

All credit to Mark Russinovich on this one though for doing some seriously amazing work and bringing this to light.  If you want more technical information on this issue then I’d seriously recommend that you visit the Sysinternals web site and read the article first hand.

Sysinternals - Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far