Kodo’s Blog

Sony to Recall 4 million CD’s with XCP DRM from Stores

In addition, Sony will offer exchanges for consumers who purchased the discs with a copy that does not contain the XCP DRM.

The fallout from this exercise is going to prove expensive for Sony or is it? The costs of re-pressing 4 million CD’s probably won’t hurt them too much but their reputation is taking a hammering. It is a start but is it too little too late?

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Sony halts production of ‘rootkit’ CDs

Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Friday that it will suspend production of CDs with copy-protection technology that has been exploited by virus writers to try to hide their malicious code on PCs.

They have bitten the bullet and are stopping production of CD copy protection that installs rootkits. Won’t be long before they try some other stunt to get around it but for now it is a start.

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Sony sued by State of California over DRM Root Kit

Well, Sony is on the hot plate now, sued by the state of California for having the DRM Root Kit. It seems that it violates several California laws. If this goes through, they may not be able to sell these CD’s in California at all.

Well seems California has filed and Ney Nork will soon file suits against Sony?BMG for the installation of rootkits on to Windows machines.

The EFF (Electronic frontier Foundation) is also investigating on whether a class action suit can be filed.

If I was a Sony artist I might be getting concerned about now and looking to jump ship.

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Using DRM Against Itself

I figured out how to burn as many CD’s as I wanted with DRM installed. Rename your burning program with $sys$ in front of it.

If you have been following the Sony DRM issues recently you would know that the rootkit that is installed hides file with $sys$ in front of it. This person says that he did that with his favourite burning software and can therefore get around the DRM that restrict CD burning.

Some have said it dosen’t work and some do. may depend on software and machine setup but if it does work Sony are just causing more hassles for themselves. I for one am not sorry.

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DRM this, Sony!

“I hope this is the week that everyone in the world finds out what a root kit is. And I hope it’s a week we look back on in amazement, as we consider just how far Sony was willing to go to criminalize consumers in its efforts to preserve control over its product.

Another excellent article on the Sony DRM issue. This one is written a little bit easier for the non-tech savvy person to understand. If you have time read both articles.

BOYCOTT SONY!!!!!

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More about SONY’s DRM rootkit by Mark Russinovich

Mark Russinovich has another article about the dangerous patch that released by SONY/BMG. He also confirms that the malware sends something back to SONY’s server. Make sure to take a look at the comment posted by XCP support. It basically says … TRUST us in everything we did.

For those of you that haven’t about this case Sony/BMG are putting a program on their CD’s that automatically installs a program called a rootkit. I am no tech expert but my understnding of a rootkit is a program that gets buried very deep into your system, is almost always untraceable except by experts and it can do nasty things to your computer.

Sony are saying it is part of their “anti-piracy� software but there is no reason to install anyhting like this so deeply into your system. They then released a half-assed unsinstall which Mark discusses in the link but it requires jumping through hoops to receive and that’s just not right.

This won’t affect Mac machines but if your a Windows user everytime you put a music CD into your computer make sure you hold down the SHIFT key as this prevents the auto-run feature and no programs will then be loaded. Once the CD is in you can then burn it or play it whenever you like,

Just another reason to get a Mac. The longer this goes on and more mainstream media pick up on it and make the general person understand it’s implications the more likely the big record companies will reisit using these kind of devious tactics to stop people from copying cd’s.

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DRM Crippled CD’s – A story in 4 Parts

This is a story of a guy who purchased a CD in good faith only to find out the DRM crippled it from being copied, ripped or played in anything but in Windows media Player. Even the band disapproved of what happened but they have been caught in the middle.

Check the link and find out the weird part of this story, it’s stunning.

DRM Crippled CD: A bizarre tale in 4 parts