"Mr. Abbott, who said Texas is the first state to sue Sony BMG over the issue, estimated that 'tens of thousands' of Texas consumers may have been harmed by the XCP technology, although he didn't provide a precise figure. The state has a new antispyware law that calls for penalties of $100,000 per violation."
I had sent a friend information about this Sony thing last week and it got not a lot of attention. However same friend was trying to de-lous another persons PC yesterday and called me for support (Note: I'm not particularly qualified for Windows support at this point, but I can do Google searches and say things like "hang in there" from time to time). I think by that time I was called many of the virus and spyware elements had been cleaned by conventional means, but there seemed to be some persistent problems. Just in case, I asked whether they had played any of those Sony BMG music discs in the machine. Apparently I was on a speakerphone setup, and I heard several denials of the form "We never use our machine for such things" while my friend asked me what I was talking about.
After refreshing his memory, and in turn having the family involved talk among themselves for a while, it turned out that some Sony BMG discs HAD been played in that machine, and some of the remaining questionable files had Sony all over them even though the family didn't own a Sony camera, Sony music player or any other Sony device that they could think of. Finally someone remembered that the little girl in the family HAD played, or ripped, or SOMETHING some music CDs in the machine and off they rushed to find them. In the mean time I was looking for the list of Sony BMG discs affected, originally numbered 20 and widely circulated at that count, but subsequently updated to 50, and listed on a Sony website. I found the list of 50 at about the same time that they found their played/ripped/inserted/whatever CDs and sure enough, several of them had the Sony BMG label on them. Now the catch was that (a) none of the CDs they had found were on the list and (b) none of the CDs they had found had the warning that they contained copyright protection software, and my understanding was that the affected discs did contain such a warning.
Well, by getting rid of the Sony BMG stuff they seemed to be back to a clean machine, and they swore to never insert a music CD into their machine again or to buy a CD from Sony. So, congratulations should go out to Sony BMG and First4Internet for accomplishing their objectives. Now to round out the picture:
(1) I suspect that Sony BMG, Sony alone, and BMG alone have in the past used other protection schemes and while they haven't been vocal about it, other companies are doing the same experimentation. All of these programs have their own ways and means of hiding themselves and controlling what YOU do with YOUR PC. But NONE of them have exhaustively looked into the legal, much less technical ramifications of what they do. They think that by merely relying on third party companies like First4Internet they can claim ignorance of the consequences.
(2) Rumor has it that by the time you are asked for your permission to install software when you insert these disks SOME software has already been installed.
(3) Sony/BMG isn't the only company doing this, they are just the only company that has been caught.
(4) These discs have been out for a year, and some people say two years, or maybe more.
(5) There is no quick and easy way to uninstall these programs, either from Sony BMG or the so-called anti-virus/spyware/adware companies. Jury is out on whether collusion or incompetence is to blame.
So my recommendations would be:
(1) Don't buy any more music CDs if you can find an alternative such as iTunes which grants you reasonable reproduction rights (I buy my music from iTunes and then create unencumbered CDs as a backup).
(2) If you buy CDs, don't buy them from Sony BMG, since they are known to have absolutely no respect for the sanctity of your PC.
(3) While the artists involved may be as much a victim of this as you are, I'd consider giving them an incentive to be less so and boycott their music as well, in my case I'd never heard of most of them, and never listened to the others. How they select which artists music to surround with crap software I don't know. Here is the list.
(4) Spread the word. If you don't listen to music on your PC people you know probably do, and their machine may well be near to unusable at this point.
(5) Rethink whether using Windows at all is in your best interest. Depending on how you use your computer, Apple's OS X, or one of the many forms of Linux may not only protect you from these problems but speed up your use of the Internet. One interesting thing about these CDs is that they play just fine under Linux or OS X without installing malicious software. Maybe using Windows is like wearing a sign that says "Kick me".
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