Sony Does DRM .... Badly

DRM stands for Data Rights Management, a weapon or tool that content providers are now wielding in their uphill battle against the folks that think that all data should be free. 'Data' can be almost anything including application software, games, music and video. Sony has now stepped into a large and messy situation. Some of Sony's latest music released on CD has caused problems for end users, listeners of the music. It seems that the CD also contains some very subtle software, disguised as a music player, that installs itself onto PCs (not Macs yet) and embeds itself, like an unwelcome, diseased Tick, under the skin of the Windows Operating System; this includes XP, 2K and NT at this point.

The underlying problem is that this occurs without the knowledge of the user. This software, known as a RootKit, hooks itself into some of the Windows primitive layers. This process then takes complete control of the CD and DVD players/burners on the system. Thereby controlling what data can be copied or ripped from the CD. Sounds like a fool-proof plan, no?

Unfortunately, for the user and ultimately for Sony, the RootKit stays embedded forever. There is no clean way to remove it. The overriding problem is that with the RootKit installed, the system is vulnerable to bad guys that can find out that the PC has this installed. The RootKit becomes a free, in-place tool to help system crackers grab control of the PC and install even more nefarious applications on the PC. All of this information came to light in an excellent piece written by Mark Russinovich in his blog entry on 10-31-2005.

There are further entries by Mark in his attempt to get Sony to take some responsibility and come up with an easy way to remove the embedded software. At this point the Sony imposed RootKit is to be considered a Trojan Horse on someone's computer system. The bottom line is -- beware. You have to realize that the Sonys of this world are now pushing junk onto your system, without your knowledge.

This story is changing and developing. More information will come out - eventually it will be in the newspapers for the common folk to read about. I think that if Sony doesn't perform some clever damage control now, they will leave themselves out to be a very large target for the populace to hurl monkey poop upon.

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Update: There are now articles posted on USA Today and the BBC that quote Russinovich's investigation and Sony's damage control attempts... Sony's bundled music player apparently "phones home" every time a user plays the copy protected CD. What could they possibly be using that information for?