Read about it on msn.com..update..as of 3pm est ..in a poll by msn..over 50% of 3500 people want to be compensated for there time and trouble..over 80% say they will most likely never buy a Sony CD again..i love it!..can everyone say CLASS ACTION!

This message was edited by RICHNWB on 11/16/05 14:56 ET.

I love it...its gonna cost them more in recalls and lawyers than they ever would have saved from piracy.

If everybody in the world just gave Sony their lunch money, would they shut up and let us do what we want with the products we buy AFTER we've already paid for them?

RobZ

I saw that on Fox News .com a couple of days ago. What a payback!! (snicker,snicker)

I sounds loke there 'fix' is worse yet!

It completely opens the 'door' to your computer to any web site you have gone to.

Pretty nice!

i don't know what cd player but i hope it's not a 400 disc that hooked up to every escient i've done.

No.it only affects PCs..wont harm players of any type..it has something to do with windows xp..

For those of you who may be interested:
[Link: europe.f-secure.com]
[Link: sysinternals.com]
[Link: eff.org]
[Link: theregister.co.uk]
And they want to screw your games too!
[Link: theinquirer.net]
[Link: redherring.com]
[Link: cnn.com]
[Link: newscientist.com]
[Link: theinquirer.net]
[Link: zdnet.com.au]
Don't use sony's web based uninstaller:
[Link: freedom-to-tinker.com]

res

that won't happen, Sony put out a statement on it (don't remember where I saw it)



The biggest issue is why did anyone bring up a 1999 patent that was mostly designed for cartridges [Link: appft1.uspto.gov]

whya does this hapen to Sony, year, after year, after year....

You would think that after the totally screwed up Betamax they would realize what they wre doing. Minidisc, DVD-players that won't play burnt discs, paying off critics of their movies, etc. I love this stuff

Mike

twenty years from now i can see Samsung buying Sony consumer electronics if they keep screwing up.

ok maybe i'm living in a cave but what are you people talking about? what did sony screw up......


signed
someone in a caave

They added a rootkit to the music CDs. They are installing software on peoples computers without their knowledge and its reporting back to the mothership. I beleive it also affects Macs.

Here is a link to all the different Diggs it has had...

[Link: digg.com]

Not Sony but one of their record divisions. They added a program on the CD for people that play it on a PC, the program installs some SW whose job is to make sure you don't copy the CD. The SW messes with the registries, and messes up some important windows files to hide that it keeps track and stops you from copying CDs. The DRM/program itself is not good, but even worst the changes it has made to hide its tracks can be used by other programmes, after it was announced some people released some real viruses that took advantage of the holes.

Then Sony released a fix, but it was just as bad as the original. Later MS released a fix for their OS that cleans up the Sony mess.

At least that is how I understand the situation.

By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent
Thu Nov 17, 8:35 PM ET



BARCELONA (Reuters) - Controversial copy-protection software used by music publisher Sony BMG (6758.T) on music CDs appears to have tapped an open source project, raising questions about copyrights, software experts said on Friday.

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The XCP program, developed by British software firm First4Internet and used by Sony BMG to restrict copying and sharing of music CDs, is already highly controversial because it acts like virus software and hides deep inside a computer where it leaves the backdoor open for malicious hackers.

Sony BMG earlier this week said it would recall some 4.7 million CDs with the software, after the discovery of the first computer viruses last week that took advantage of the weakness.

The XCP program will have installed itself on a Windows-operated personal computer when consumers want to play 49 title CDs from Sony BMG. The programme forces consumers to use a music player that comes with the program.

This music player contains components from an open source project, an MP3 player called LAME, it emerged.

"Multiple software components on the CD have references to the LAME open source MP3 code," Finnish software developer Matti Nikki said in an e-mail.

After unraveling the code, others found similar evidence.

"We can confirm that at least 5 functions in the XCP software are identical to functions in LAME," said Thomas Dullien at security software firm Saber Security in Bochum, Germany, which specializes in the analysis of complex software.

Open source software, if used, needs to be identified as such, so that it can be freely shared with others. Developers on Slashdot.org and other Internet bulletin boards could not find an open source reference in the copy-protection software.

THE RULES OF THE GAME

If open source software is tightly integrated into a single executable program, the whole application has to become open source software, even open source software such as LAME whose MP3 encoder is licensed under the more relaxed Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a lawyer said.

"That's the flipside of open source: If you don't respect the open source rules, the old regime of copy protection comes back in full force," said attorney and Internet specialist Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm at law firm SOLV in the Netherlands.

There was LAME and other LGPL code in the program, and significant amounts were tightly integrated into the executable program, Saber Security said.

"We can confirm the existence of significant amounts of code from FAAC (which is LGPL) in the executable ... These functions are part of ECDPlayerControl.ocx, thus directly integrated into the executable," Dullien said in an email.

First4Internet, which sold the XCP software program used by Sony BMG on its CDs, declined to comment after repeated requests since Monday.

Sony BMG, which also declined to comment, has positioned itself as a defender of artists' rights.

It re-emphasized last week that copy-protection software is "an important tool to protect our intellectual property rights and those of our artists."

Responding to public outcry over the unsecure software, the music publishing venture of Japanese electronics conglomerate Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). (6758.T) and Germany's Bertelsmann AG (BERT.UL) said last week it would temporarily suspend the manufacture of music CDs containing XCP technology.

Microsoft's anti-virus team said earlier on Tuesday it would add a detection and removal mechanism to rid a PC of the Sony DRM copy-protection software, because it jeopardized the security of Windows computers.

Sony BMG last week was targeted in a class action lawsuit complaining it had not disclosed the true nature of its copy-protection software

Question: how can one test their system to see if they have been affected (or should I say infected)?