Beware of Sony CDs

[[Syl]]

www.theinquirer.net/?article=27426

[High Lord Tolkien]

SONY

Awesome link Syl!
I had read about this a few days ago.
This link you posted wrapped the whole thing up pretty well.
This one: www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony- ... ights.html
went into so much detail my brain shutdown.
But it's informative.
Everyone should scroll down to the bottom to read veiwers responses too.
Looks like the problems are vast.

[matrixman]

Crazy. I didn't understand everything the article said, but I think I got the gist of it. Sony marches to its own beat on many matters and likes to establish rules for everyone else to follow--the kind of arrogance befitting a giant global corporation. I never liked the idea of copy-protected CDs from day one.

[Usivius]

I'm confused.
I am very compute naive, so can someone tell me what is going on? By using these CDs, is my computer getting tagged? or coookied? or whatever?...

[High Lord Tolkien]

I'm confused.
I am very compute naive, so can someone tell me what is going on? By using these CDs, is my computer getting tagged? or coookied? or whatever?...

My take on it is that the Sony CD installs a hidden program for it's own purposes.
By itself it's not harmful.
But it's very existance leaves your PC open to virus' that already exist for this program.
But it's so well hidden that your antivirus program is blind to helping you.
And removing it damages your PC or makes it so you can't use that particular music CD.
And it was only discovered by some amazingly good detective work by some system admins.
So it wasn't like Sony was going to release any patches to fix the program.
The whole things messed up.

[Nathan]

It must be said, though, that sony did not design the software, they bought it from another company, obviously it's their fault for including such software on their CDs, but they did not themselves design it.

[I'm Murrin]

They are being sued over this software:
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8307

[matrixman]

Good to see folks taking legal action against Sony.

[sgt.null]

i hope Sony gets tagged with enough cash dqamages that other companies are reluctant to pull such crap.

[matrixman]

Well, just earlier in the day I was browsing a store and came across a new CD release I wanted to get...but it was precisely on the Sony/BMG label that we've been talking about here. I decided not to buy the CD. I think I'll boycott all Sony/BMG CDs for the time being.

[sgt.null]

these morons can't see past their noses. i burn mix cds for many people. in hopes they will like any given artist and rush out to buy their cd's. how many extra sales have i made for the companies?

[I'm Murrin]

My Kasabian CD was BMG, from last year (before they started putting this new program on) - It also installed its own media player when you put it in the computer, and if you tried to play it on anything else you got the first song broken into ten-second chunks instead of the actual tracks. In the end I just downloaded the songs from somewhere else.

[Nerdanel]

Everyone on Windows should disable the autorun in their preferences, or at least press the shift key when putting in a CD to avoid installing nasty stuff.

Me, I'm using Linux on which that sort of copyprotection is entirely in vain, and boycotting any copyprotected CD anyways. I used to buy a lot of music but nowadays I don't want to give my money to any major record company for several reasons. They don't deserve it.

[sgt.null]

thanks for the tips, i have a burned cd that runs its own player.

[The Somberlain]

How do you permanently disable autoplay? I usually hold Shift if the CD states that it has copy protection, but I can't see how to make it so that no CDs will ever autorun software.

[sgt.null]

bump. i'd like to know this as well. i may have lost some writing because of a virus that may have come from some software.

[Nerdanel]

This seems to be a good explanation for various Windows OSes

I googled for it.

Honestly, I must say I was surprised (even though I shouldn't have been after having configured a static IP address in Windows 98 ). And they say Linux is hard to use...

[sgt.null]

thank you

[I'm Murrin]

cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/
Found this today. They're exchanging CDs for ones without protection, and free MP3 versions of the tracks.
They've ceased production of CDs containing the software.

[sgt.null]

good for consumers, protests can still work.