Sony tops Microsoft
9:59 PM - November 7th, 2005
… in the “please hate us” category.
Perhaps you already know what I’m going to talk about. Yes, it’s about Sony and their rootkit-installing music CDs. If you haven’t heard—and if you have, correct me if I state this incorrectly—Sony BMG’s DRM-protected CDs install drivers on your Windows computer, hides them in a way that could also hide other malware, and modifies your system so that the drivers sit between Windows and your CD-ROM drivers. So, not only is it hard to track down the offending files, but if you carelessly delete them, your CD-ROM drive will no longer work.
I feel so disgusted.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
with all this, you can still easily make mp3’s anyway…. you could simply play the cd and do a wav recording as an analog rip…. or worse, you could just play it in a cd-player and line-in to the comp and record, which doesn’t have to go through the computer’s cd drive at all…. sony, too smart. too smart.
as long as a cd can still be played at all, there are ways to rip it.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
Not Sony, too! O_O
November 8th, 2005 at 1:27 am
Actually, there’s an easier way… use a Mac or Linux =)
November 8th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Sony Offers Patch for Its Anti-Piracy Software
“After a chorus of criticism, Sony Corp.’s music division said it was distributing a free software patch to reveal hidden files that automatically installed onto hard drives when some of its music CDs were played on personal computers.”
November 8th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
A patch so poorly written that it could crash Windows. And while the patch is easily accessible, Sony BMG makes you jump through so many hoops to get an uninstaller.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:33 am
Sorry for the uninformative article :P.