Sony faces class action lawsuits

Sony/BMG, the world's second largest recording company, is finding itself in hot soup after the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that it had incorporated in its audio CDs to prevent unauthorised copying of the music was found to have critical flaws. The company faces a series of class action lawsuits in California and New York. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading civil rights group for the electronic media and especially the Internet, is also expected to launch its own nationwide class action suits.

Commonly referred to as "rootkit", the software would allow unauthorised access to the PC from a remote location, effectively transferring control to a malicious user, or make the PC a "zombie" spambot. The software, XCP (Extended Copy Protection), developed by First 4 Interenet, a British based group, was found on the CD and which would automatically run when inserted into the CD drive of a PC. The rootkit modifies critical operating system settings on Windows in an attempt to prevent the copying of the CD.

Although music piracy is a grave threat to the music industry and enhanced copy protection techniques are required, such extreme intrusion into the settings of the operating system could effectively make the PC susceptible to attack from the Internet, and atleast two Internet worms have been reported which would exploit this software.

If you have bought a CD from Sony recently, chances are that your PC is a potential target for such attacks. A full list of the CDs carrying the rootkit can be found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Personally, I like Sony for the wide range of products and choices it offers the consumers worldwide and innovation has always been its strength. However, I don't think putting software on CDs which would run without the knowledge of the user and which would open itself to attack from the Internet is exactly the right kind of thing to do, even if it is being justified as a step to prevent piracy. Piracy is bad, this isn't good either.