[wplug] Sony CD protection stunt

[Bill Lavin]

Yesterday USA Today printed an article about a copy protection scheme  
or stunt which you can read @ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/ 
computersecurity/2005-11-02-sony-patch_x.htm .

The CD contains a program that imbeds itself in your Windows system  
where it remains hidden.  It is known as a "rootkit".  If you were to  
find it and delete it - your CD will not run.  It has actually  
damaged one CD drive.  A webpage belonging to Mark Russinovich, who  
found this stunt, is @ http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony- 
rootkits-and-digital-rights.html .  If you want to get rid of this -  
you need to run one program to bring the files out of hiding and then  
another to remove them.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft monitors the online gaming to watch for  
cheating.  There are now hackers who are using the rootkits to mask  
their exploits.  Another problem for Sony.

Supposedly, if you disable autorun the programs do not upload to your  
system - they depend on autorun to install.

Instructions on disabling this thing are available @ the Russinovich  
website above.  I think that only uncloaks the files and you need to  
go to Sony's website to remove or nullify the code.

One album with the copy protection is Van Zandt's "Get Right with the  
Man".  The consumer review part of Amazon.com's listing of the album  
is loaded with comments about this.  Amazon shows the album to be  
copy protected but I don't know if that only appeared after the fact.

This morning Wikipedia showed a list of 49 albums but that has  
disappeared.  You can find some info including a link to a petition @  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_control .