Sony takes DRM waaay too far

[Dieter]

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

Summed up: the Sony DRM protected cd's install stuff on your pc using malware techniques to conceal itself, then scans your CD once every two seconds (!!) to check if it's the right filesizes for songs and everything, using about 1-2% CPU time.

If you manually try to remove the concealed stuff, you WILL cripple your pc.

You HAVE to install it, because the stupid cd's will only let themselves play using the .exe on the disc... not any other media player. Fuck that shit.


I hereby give Sony the royal finger.

[Bren]

i join you! FUCK SONY!

[AshMat]

WAHOOO i get to slag of sony yes!

FUCK SONY!
That felt good

[Charlie]

So people with Mac's aren't allowed to listen to Sony published music CD's now? Not allowed to put music you LEGALLY own onto an MP3 player?

Bullshit, Sony.

[Raining_again]

thats gunna go down like a ton of bricks! as moira said, how can you put your legally bought music on an mp3 player? an illegal hack maybe? booo down with Sony! :(

[Konfucius]

Such things should be illegal, no word about it in a licence agreement and slowing down your PC too.
The music industry is crying how piracy harms their sales but with such moves they shoot themselves in the foot because I'm certainly not buying a CD that installs malware on my PC and the problems is that your friendly neighbourhood hacker-man finds a way around the malware and the illegal stuff then works better than the legal one.

[Mr_Odwin]

That's odd. How can a CD that plays in a normal CD player not play on the comp except through a special media player?

[Aimless]

thats gunna go down like a ton of bricks! as moira said, how can you put your legally bought music on an mp3 player? an illegal hack maybe? booo down with Sony! :(
Don't worry, I'm sure everything'll be fine so long as you have a Sony-branded player. I mean, who doesn't have one of those?

Oh...

[Calza]

Don't worry, I'm sure everything'll be fine so long as you have a Sony-branded player. I mean, who doesn't have one of those?

Oh...
I have two and my friend has another and they rock :smile: except for sonicstage which sucks :(

[Offerman]

That's odd. How can a CD that plays in a normal CD player not play on the comp except through a special media player?

It wont play on a normal CD Player. Which is where the real problem exists.

[Charlie]

Coming to think of it, my RHCP Greatest Hits CD wouldn't let me record it onto the PC a year or so ago and would only play through a special media player. I recorded it fine onto my Mac a week ago. Still wont let me record it on the PC though.

Solution: Buy a Mac!

[Lammie]

Don't worry........I'm sure there'll still be ripped versions of the Sony DRM CD's available on BT.

Solution: Bittorrent.

[Chanser]

They always say Bittorrent is a bad thing ;).

[Smalldude76]

The last CD I purchased was Beatles 1 on its release. I love limes. I love wires. CDs are too expensive. If only there was another way...

[AshMat]

I have the same problem as moria with my RHCP GReatest hits cd.
My dad managed it on his pc but with special software.

[Offerman]

There will always be ways around it, which is no bad thing.

[Blackfox]

True. Everything is vunarable to exploits and hacks. Some clever chap will work out a way around it, and Sony will have wasted all that money researching it.

[Dan Dare]

thats kneejerk bullshit right there. it pisses me right off when cds cant be copied to itunes.

saying that though, X&Y was copy protected but that stopped working on the new versions of itunes, of which there have been many recently.

[CVD]

It's encouraging people to illegally download music seeing as cd's wont work the way you want them to. It's nothing but bullshit.

[Mr_Odwin]

As long as you can play it on the comp then all you have to do is run a sound recorder program at the same time. Just record to a 44100Hz 16 bit stereo wav file and then cut n' compress.

[Kurtle Squad]

Yeah...And they rip you off with Multi-taps & UMDs....and soon Blu-Ray

[gmac]

yeah sony suck :)
for the most part if you turn off auto-run that seems to help, but otherwise the cd usually lets you copy it to another cd, and then you can rip the tracks to mp3 off that one :)

[rizz]

Lol, my Ep2 soundtrack was protected, and the case said it wouldnt play on a pc or mac. The first thing I did was rip it with WMP.

[Jordan]

Ha, someone cracked it already. Apparently you just have to add ~Sys~ to the command line when you open it in another player/ripper.

Stupid Sony...

[Hellfire]

Next thing you know you can't use your friends' CDs!
Wait a sec...

[RoadKill]

Coming to think of it, my RHCP Greatest Hits CD wouldn't let me record it onto the PC a year or so ago and would only play through a special media player. I recorded it fine onto my Mac a week ago. Still wont let me record it on the PC though.

Solution: Buy a Mac!

Wrong! You can't play these new Sony protected CDs on a Macintosh at all, because it only allows you to play it using a Windows executable.

[Charlie]

Heh, Sony are being sued by 3 different people for using this method. Check out the BBC Technology page.

[Ramar]

Thats good. What Sony has done is wrong, and I'm pleased people are taking them to court about it. For once I'm pleased Americans like to sue people.

[RoadKill]

Sony deserve everything that's coming to them.

When will they learn that copy protection only hurts consumers, and helps nobody.

It doesn't stop piracy in the least, because someone will always make tools to cirumvent any stupid protection they come up with, and then they remove all the DRM and freely distribute it online.

How long is it going to take before they realise this?

[Dieter]

Even my father thinks what Sony's doing is bullshit, and he didn't even know half the stuff I was saying.

[Sanchez]

Sony is now being sued by the state of California.

[wing]

Rightly so. I mean if the law comes down harshly on virus and spyware writers, as it rightly should, sony should be no exception. IMO sonys DRM is exactly the same as spyware and the company should be treated no differently to how the law treats virus and spyware creators.

[Cubechris]

Any Idea when this comes into play, It may have already, and If so which releases are effected?

[Charlie]

Any Idea when this comes into play, It may have already, and If so which releases are effected?

20 CD's in America are using it already, none over hear though.

[Lammie]

Any Idea when this comes into play, It may have already, and If so which releases are effected?

Looks like most of us will be safe...

From Wired.com:

"Sony BMG, yielding to consumer concern, said on Wednesday it was recalling music CDs containing copy-protection software that acts like virus software and hides deep inside a computer.

Sony BMG has used the XCP copy-protection software on 49 titles from artists such as Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan and produced an estimated 4.7 million music CDs. Around 2.1 million units have been sold on to consumers.

The software, developed by a British firm, First4Internet, installs itself on a personal computer used to play the CD in order to guard against copying, but it leaves the back door open for malicious hackers."

[Dieter]

This works on so many levels :)

http://asuka.tky.hut.fi/pub/temp/pics/hellorootkitty.jpg

[gothic_hobbit]

Sony is now being sued by the state of California.

Arnie will show em :D

[Lammie]

So-neeeeee you are TERMINATED!

*hurls grenade*

[Gaijin von Snikbah]

No more Celine Dion or Sarah McLachlan cds for me. Die Sony!

[craig]

You can over come their crappy drm with a small piece of tape, it gets seen as a regular cd afterwards.

Take that Sony.
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=136331

[Jordan]

Hhaha I heard about that Craig. Nice one Sony, nice one.

[Lammie]

should be "spectacular egomaniacal design". When us nerds unite no one can stop us. Not even Sony.