Sony->DRM->Rootkit. Uh. Oh.

There is an incredibly interesting article on some Sony DRM protection on Audio CDs at Mark Russinovich’s Blog.

To resume. If you buy the Van Zant Brothers’ last CD (of Lynyrd Skynyrd fame) and you use it on your computer, a DRM enforcing software will be installed on your PC. The problem is that the software uses techniques common to rootkits, spyware, viruses and so on, to hide itself and it quickly becomes uninstallable unless you do a complex procedure. The DRM software will use (waste) some processor usage (2% on Mark’s PC) to scan the executables you run. Also, if you try to remove the DRM software, your CD drive will disappear from My Computer.

This is not only an insult to the regular customer (note : if you bought the song online or illegally downloaded them you will not have any problem. Only regular customers are actually damaged by this protection schemes.) This has all the aspect of something illegal : it’s an attack of personal privacy and theft of computing resources.

I still can’t believe the recording industries are so blind. Do they really think they will end piracy by infecting computers of regular customers with spyware ?! Suggestion : downloading these songs from eMule (albeit illegal) will not infect your computer with that shit. Buying them from iTunes is even legal, and again, no shit. With both methods you will be able to burn them on a CD-R and listen on a regular car audio system. Or copy it on your iPod or other portable player. Or use it on a different operative system. Give me a reason to buy the CD.

And please don’t do these things on Van Zant’s CDs

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