Sony Adds More Than Music to Some CDs
By Jim Stafford, The Daily Oklahoman
Jan. 20–When LaNell Long added a Foo Fighters CD to her music collection last summer, she didn’t realize Sony BMG Entertainment added a little something extra to the disc.
Sony BMG included a secret copy protection file that installed itself on her home computer the first time she played the disc in the computer CD, and things soon went awry.
“It would just shut down the computer, and the computer would come back on and it wouldn’t play the CD,” Long said.
Called a “rootkit,” the file embedded itself deep in her computer’s operating system and would prevent any attempts to copy the music. The act is part of an ongoing “digital rights management” push from the music industry to ensure it gets paid for every copy that is circulated.
In Long’s case, and apparently in thousands of others nationwide, the secret file caused unintended consequences. Sony is facing several class-action lawsuits stemming from the copy protection program, which it installed on as many as 24 million music CDs, according to some estimates.
Long did some research and discovered information about the secret “rootkit” that had been installed. She attempted to uninstall the files herself, but the Sony program thwarted her efforts.
Eventually, the computer’s CD player was entirely disabled.
“This was like a Trojan horse on a music CD is what it basically was,” Long said. “The frustration factor was through the roof.”
Calls placed to Sony BMG Entertainment seeking comment about the “rootkit” software were not returned.
Eventually, Long called a computer repair specialist, who removed the embedded files but at a cost of more than $100, she said.
Although Long experienced a frustrating battle to rid her computer of the secret file, it really didn’t qualify as “malware,” the malicious virus software that afflicts so many computers, said John Parsons, president of the Oklahoma City-based Web hosting company Perimeter Technology Center.
That’s because Long apparently agreed to Sony’s terms when she first played the CD and installed the software, although she didn’t realize it. A similar “end user license agreement” by Sony contained more than 50 paragraphs and included this sentence:
“As soon as you have agreed to be bound by the terms and conditions of the (agreement), this CD will automatically install a small proprietary software program (the “SOFTWARE”) onto YOUR COMPUTER.”
The software was an “ill-conceived” response to music pirating, yet doesn’t approach “Trojan horse” status that many virus authors use to install their malware on computers, Parsons said.
“Reputable entities like Sony do spell it out in the fine print of the license agreement when the consumer installs the product or purchases it pre-installed,” Parsons said. “Most people just click the ‘I accept’ and move on without reading.”
However, Long said she did not click on any user’s agreement when she put the Foo Fighters disc into her computer.
“The only thing it would do is shut down and re-boot up my computer,” she said.
Louis Rivera, manager at two Oklahoma City Computer Nerdz! stores, the computer repair business that helped Long delete Sony’s “rootkit,” said many companies use the user agreements to secretly install spyware on computers.
Spyware programs can be used to track a user’s keyboard strokes or merely to import unwanted advertising onto their computer screen.
“When you agree to their terms of service they usually have some sort of spyware that is piggybacked,” Rivera said. “You don’t read the terms, and you agree to install this third-party software and now all of a sudden you are getting all the pop-ups on your computer.”
It is unclear if legislation soon to be introduced in the Legislature by state Rep. Guy Liebmann, R-Oklahoma City, will apply to software installed on computers when user agreements are clicked.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Daily Oklahoman
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