Glenn Gould's record label, Sony, is in trouble for their misguided
attempts to maintain tight control over what consumers can do with the
music on the CDs they purchase. Although no Gould CD seems to contain
the infamous "rootkit" software, I think it's an issue that's certainly
relevant to his hopes for the music industry. If Sony has their way,
there will be no music kit for Christmas, Cynthia.
What is on the Sony CDs? http://news.com.com/FAQ+Sonys+rootkit+CDs/2100-1029_3-5946760.html
The CDs involved are loaded with a relatively new kind of content
protection created by British company
Like most computing tools, this is not intrinsically a bad thing,
but can be abused. Virus writers use these tools to help take over
computers and hide the presence of their work.
Within hours of this news hitting the net, of course people did
indeed create exploits (trojan horse viruses!) that used the Sony
software to install and mask themselves on PCs. (Macs were affected by
different Sony technology) Ah the hubris! Lawsuits against Sony BMG
have begun to pop up around the world.
Equally odd is the End User License Agreement (EULA)-- that's the legal
document we all have to agree to when we install new software but we
never read. When you insert one of the Sony CDs, the EULA pops up and
this, they argue, means that you've agreed to install the rootkit, what
amounts to spyware, on your computer. The agreement has all kinds of
silly things you agree to, including not using the music for your own
purposes for slideshows, mixes (mashups) etc. Musickitting is illegal
in this contract evidently. This is a description from the Electronic
Frontier Foundation of what is in the EULA with a link to the actual
document: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004145.php
A list from the EFF of some of the infected CDs (watch out Neil
Diamond/Rick Rubin fans!):
http://news.com.com/Are+these+the+Sony+rootkit+CDs/2100-1029_3-5944549.html
Microsoft decided to release a SECURITY update to disable the Sony
software:
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+will+wipe+Sonys+rootkit/2100-1002_3-5949041.html
I'm more concerned that Sony actually thought this was a good idea than
I am over the bird flu, but found this comment about the issue from the
Bush Administration's Homeland Security assistant secretary for policy,
Stewart Baker, interesting:
"I wanted to raise one point of caution as we go forward, because
we
are also responsible for maintaining the security of the information
infrastructure of the United States and making sure peoples' [and]
businesses' computers are secure. ... There's been a lot of publicity
recently about tactics used in pursuing protection for music and DVD
CDs in which questions have been raised about whether the protection
measures install hidden files on peoples' computers that even the
system administrators can’t find."
In a remark clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels,
Stewart
continued: "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual
property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of
intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the
security measures that people need to adopt in these days.
"If we have an avian flu outbreak here and it is even half as bad
as
the 1918 flu, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get
remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the
infrastructure functioning is going to be a matter of life and death
and we take it very seriously."
**************************************************
Signoff instructions, and user preference interface
F_minor Website
**************************************************
|