| Scoobs |
Sony to recall music CDs that have harmful software
Nov. 17, 2005. 01:00 AM
TOM ZELLER JR.
NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE
The global music giant Sony BMG plans to recall millions of CDs by at least 20 artists, from crooners Céline Dion and Neil Diamond to the country-rock act Van Zant, because they contain copy restriction software that poses risks to the computers of consumers.
The move, more commonly associated with collapsing baby strollers, exploding batteries, or cars with faulty brakes, is expected to cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
The company said it would remove all unsold CDs containing the software from retail outlets and offer exchanges to consumers who had bought any of the CDs involved.
"We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause our customers and are committed to making this situation right," the company said in a letter posted on its website, sonybmg.com.
Sony BMG estimated last week that about 5 million discs — some 49 different titles — had been shipped with the problematic software, developed by the British company First4Internet, and about 2 million had been sold.
Market research from 2004 has shown that about 30 per cent of consumers report obtaining music through the copying and sharing of tracks among friends from legitimately purchased CDs.
But the fallout from the aggressive copy protection scheme has raised serious questions about how far companies should be permitted to go in seeking to prevent digital piracy.
The recall and exchange program comes two weeks after news began to spread on the Internet that certain Sony BMG CDs contained software designed to limit users to making only three copies of the music, but which also altered the deepest levels of the computer systems of consumers and created vulnerabilities that Internet virus writers could exploit.
Since then, computer researchers have identified other problems with the software, as well as with the software patch and uninstaller programs that the company issued to address the vulnerabilities.
(Consumers who listen to CDs on stereo systems and other non-computer players, as well as users of Apple computers, would not be at risk.)
Several security and anti-virus companies, including Computer Associates, F-Secure and Symantec, quickly classified the software on the CDs, which is known only to affect users of the Windows operating system, as malicious because, among other things, it attempted to hide itself on the machines of users and communicated remotely with Sony servers once installed.
Some early estimates indicate that the problem could affect half a million or more computers around the world. |
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| Scoobs |
| It is possible to bypass this copy protection on these CDs using CEDX and holding the shift button when the disk is put in the drive. The uninitiated could easily have installed this software when they first put the disk in their computer. The software hid itself on your computer and was very diificult to uninstall. |
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| Pairallel |
| What is CEDX???:confused: |
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| robottik |
| Oh well... Back goes my wife's Ricky Martin CD! :p |
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| jay |
| Just another reason to own a Mac. But I don't buy CDs anymore, I buy songs from the iTunes Store.:p |
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| Scoobs |
quote:
Originally posted by jay
Just another reason to own a Mac. But I don't buy CDs anymore, I buy songs from the iTunes Store.:p
Nothing like locking yourself in. |
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| jay |
quote:
Originally posted by Scoobs
Nothing like locking yourself in.
Yep, I drank the coolaid. And I'm happy about it, too.:p
I have too many other things to do, like getting my post count past kemosabe's to worry about my mp3 player. I've tried the rest, and stay with the best!:D
I also know enough to know the pitfalls and workarounds to the aac format, and having properly weighed all the alternatives, I'm good to go!;) Heck, I even ripped some CDs in the WMA format a while back. Talk about locking yourself in!:p |
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| jay |
quote:
Originally posted by Scoobs
Nothing like locking yourself in.
And another news story about copy protection from our brethren to the north. |
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