Do you want Sony to own your computer?

If I was going to take a guess, I'd say you probably don't. Apart from the obvious invasion of your privacy, and the compromise of your hardware, which looks indistinguishable from 'illegal tampering with a computer system', there are real practical reasons that you don't want Sony invading your computer.

Are you wondering what I'm talking about? If you haven't guessed by now, I'm referring to Sony's underhand technique of installing malware on your computer when you put a copy protected Sony CD in your computer's CD drive.

Of course Sony are not exactly pioneers in this field, the copy protection specialists have been pushing this sort of 'copy protection' onto CDs for a few years now. It's just typical of Sony's bungling attempts at software development that they would produce a package so badly written that it has the characteristics of a virus.

What else can you call software that installs itself secretly and without your permission, can cause your computer to slow down or malfunction and can totally destroy your system if you attempt to remove it? Oh, I'm sure there is some really, really tiny small print in white on a nearly white background somewhere on the CD liner that describes the protection mechanism as some kind of benefit or added feature that you are implicitly consenting to when you purchase the CD.

I'd like to hope that the security software vendors will add this menace to their list of detected malware. If this package had been produced by Russian or Chinese black hat hack hackers it would be stopped by Symantec, Trend Micro, AVG, McAfee, Sophos, Antivir, etc. within days. I wonder how they will choose to react to the Sony attack?

Even when it's functioning normally, the Sony software (as well as the products of other vendors that preceded it in the hall of shame) interferes with the proper playback of CDs on your computer. In the case of 'protected' CDs, it doesn't play back the high quality CD audio tracks, but instead plays extremely low quality compressed audio through a special crippled player. The player itself is shaky enough to bring your system down in some cases, and interferes with the proper use of other applications due to its bad handling of 'low level' messages from the operating system to the windowing interface.

Because it intercepts access to your CD drive, the software can also interfere with the proper operation of other software, particularly CD and DVD authoring packages, playback of unprotected CDs, games and so forth. If you have a slow computer you may also notice a performance hit on any CD access, or just a general slow down of your computer due to lost memory and CPU cycles.

Naive attempts to remove this package will render your CD drive a dead lump of plastic, as your CD drivers will no longer function. Restoring proper function to your OS may require a reinstallation of Windows. If that isn't malware, I don't know what is.

In many countries, the right to make a duplicate of music that you own is enshrined in law. This right is being consistently undermined by the media publishers, based on unreasonable precedents set by the Digital Millenium Copyright act in the US. Often American companies have attempted to enforce US law outside their own country. In some cases their legal threats have been scary enough for them to get away with it. We (once again) have a media publisher performing acts of vandalism against personal computers that would see any individual hunted down, arrested, and likely imprisoned for some years.

The fact that there is some kind of warning, or secret hidden contract squirreled away on the CD liner (that most people will probably not even glance at) is allowed to justify this action as legal, but it should not. It has all the look and feel of an illegal contract. If you picked up a loaf of bread in the supermarket, and then after eating it, found yourself poisoned, wouldn't you feel a little cheated when your complaints fell on deaf ears because: "a warning was clearly printed on the packaging" - yes a warning written in unintelligable euphamisms that makes it sound like the poison is actualy a vitamin supplement, or barely visible to the naked eye. Then to cap it all you find your only legal recourse is a refund of the price of a loaf of bread - this after three days in hospital recovering from poisoning. I might be slightly overstating my case, but not by far.

This bullying act, allegedly justified by lost media sales that would likely never have been made in the first place, has been continuing for some years now. Sony are not the first to try this particular course, and it's not even the first time for them, but this could be their most bungled attempt at it so far.

Yet again, it seems big business have ridden roughshod over democracy and the ever eroding rights of the individual. The people who put a CD in their computer, or who make MP3s to play in their car from CDs they own, are not pirates, they are not thieves - they paid for the music - and they are not killing music, which we can observe continues alive and thriving despite promises of death at the hand of the compact casette.

If you buy one of these corrupted Sony CDs, or one from another publisher with similar technology on it, I suggest you take it back to the shop where you got it and make appropriate complaint and demands of refund. You might also be wise to disable autorun for CDs on your computer, and refuse to purchase any future operating system that denies you that alternative.

Or you could write to your MP or senator. You can be sure Sony and Warner will be forward with their attempts to put their case to the politicians.

posted by Peter Wake @ 12:04 am