Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Sony’s Trap-Door
One astute computer programmer has noted in his blog that Sony’s DRM program, included in its copy-protected cds, installs programs on your computer in the root directory without your knowledge. What’s worse, it actively attempts to hide itself and to make itself impossible to delete. What’s even worse, if it is deleted, it disables all the drivers to your computer’s external media devices, such as cd and dvd players, rendering them inoperable.
What makes this particularly disturbing is that Sony, in not informing the user of the cd it is installing such software, is itself guilty of infringing on the Millennium Copyright Act by not informing users with a EULA agreement. Furthermore, its readily selling cds embedded with code that can be used to make malware and spyware even harder to track down, and it would be relatively easy for any computer-savvy person looking for it to copy the code and incorporate into their own little piece of malicious code. Here’s hoping someone sues Sony for this little piece of nefarious before it blows up into a major brou-ha-ha.
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