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Mark Russinovich has discovered a rootkit on his computer that he believes is part of a DRM scheme for a Sony CD. Like your average malware, it's hidden, poorly written, difficult to get rid of. And according to Russinovich, the EULA says not a peep about it, meaning Sony didn't even bother with the usual pretense of giving people fair warning: "While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far."
If this isn't in the EULA or otherwise disclosed, it comes perilously close to falling foul of the criminal law here in the UK for unauthorised modification of the data on a PC. I wonder if some jail time would adjust Sony's attitude to DRM and its customers?
Thus it happened that two weeks after the initial post, in which Mark Russinovich explains how he discovered that SonyBMG tries to protect the contents of some of their CD's in really nasty ways, the snowball turns into a real A V A L A N C H E and als... [Read More]
1. Martin Geddes on November 1, 2005 10:09 AM writes...
If this isn't in the EULA or otherwise disclosed, it comes perilously close to falling foul of the criminal law here in the UK for unauthorised modification of the data on a PC. I wonder if some jail time would adjust Sony's attitude to DRM and its customers?
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