Saturday, November 05, 2005

Sony the Hacker

Maybe this is widely known, but it's news to me. Sony has copyright protected its discs in a most underhand manner-

The software, called Extended Copy Protection or XCP, hides itself on your hard drive using techniques normally reserved for viruses, worms and trojans, which use similar "rootkits" to evade detection.

And if you notice it is there and try to remove it you may stop your computer recognising its CD drive.

The discs prevent the user from using any other player than the one on the disc to listen to the music on your PC.

Fair enough they want to stop music piracy but screwing around with someone's computer like this is beyond the pale. And what if I want to listen to an album I've just bought on my MP3 player- do I have to go out and buy it again?

I for one will not be buying any Sony releases in future.

BTW, when you're buying music make sure it has a proper "Compact Disc" symbol- if it doesn't then chances are it's a copyrighted disc that won't play on your PC.

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