Sony Music CDs w/ DRM infects your PC w/ spyware/malware! (G3 Live in Tokyo)

[jemsite]

Sony artists need to put their foot down against "big brother" who has them under contract. Since the RIAA does not care about customers, the time has come for ARTISTS to make noise, protest and go public against this nonsense for the sake of the fans (who are getting PENALIZED for making purchases!).

I don't ever want to hear once more about ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS from artists, the RIAA, their agents, publicists, lawyers or whomever. This crosses a line to which there is no return. If Hollywood didn't OWN our politicians this would be long ago have been illegal and a highly prosecutable offense like spam.

Link to article about Sony CD Sypware/Malware infecting your PC

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

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

-----------------------------
Edit - update

Infected Title List (includes G3 Live in Tokyo buyer alert)
http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html
G3 - Live In Tokyo. E2K97685. 827969768525
* DO NOT PLAY THESE CDS IN YOUR PC *

Sony has reluctantly issued a PRODUCT RECALL...
http://news.com.com/Sony+recalls+ris...l?tag=nefd.top

[fettouhi]

Thank you Sony .

Regards

André

[Distantshore]

To me, its seems Sony has clearly crossed the line. I agree with this guy:

I have to ask. Do you still have the offending CD ??
If so, why ? We all hear that the recording companies are protecting their profits.
There is NO profit in an item that does NOT sell.
Hit them in their pocketbook. Return the CD for a full refund.
I currently do this with all DVDs that contain advertizing I cannot 'skip'.
I do not buy CDs with copy protection. Especially the SACD format.
Do what you will, but I feel no actions, no complaining.
EXTREMELY great work on this example, B.T.W. !!
===
# posted by Dsbeerf : 6:07 PM, October 31, 2005

[red5]

They have gone too far. I think they should no longer have the right to try to enforce copyright infringement in anyway whatsoever, and I am fairly neutral on my stance on downloading music.

My stance on the matter is that I download whatever I want. If I like it and it is something I play more than once or twice I will buy the CD. If I do not like it, I typically throw it all in a folder and if I come back to it and realize that I missed out on a great band/album/song, then I will buy it. If not, it just sits there not getting played anyway. It's basically using the Internet to broaden my musical horizons. So there is some downloading involved, but there is also audio CD purchasing involved as well and I can tell you right now, free mp3s I have got have profitted the music industry much more than they have hurt them for me.

Also, when the whole mp3 thing took off, CD sales were at an all time high. And so was the US economy. Coincidence? I think not. Now we are in a slight depression and CD sales decline... do they really expect that CD sales will not decline as people make less and less money and others jobs get sent to China? Hah, I think not (besides, it was going to drop off somewhat after a while too!).

Another explanation which is almost as big a factor for the drop off in CD sales is a lot of the older bands like Led Zeppelin or King Crimson or whoever have been around long enough that once we buy all their CDs or all that we want by them, we already own them. And look at the **** that they try to push on us for new material - no wonder why sales have declined! It is 45% their own fault so they should be blaming themselves. Until they fix that, they have no right trying to enforce copyright protection.

If I ever get spyware from them and I could afford a good lawyer, I would so sue them... and win!

What exactly does this spyware do by the way? Delete mp3s off your hard drive?

[red5]

Originally Posted by Distantshore

To me, its seems Sony has clearly crossed the line. I agree with this guy:

I have to ask. Do you still have the offending CD ??
If so, why ? We all hear that the recording companies are protecting their profits.
There is NO profit in an item that does NOT sell.
Hit them in their pocketbook. Return the CD for a full refund.
I currently do this with all DVDs that contain advertizing I cannot 'skip'.
I do not buy CDs with copy protection. Especially the SACD format.
Do what you will, but I feel no actions, no complaining.
EXTREMELY great work on this example, B.T.W. !!
===
# posted by Dsbeerf : 6:07 PM, October 31, 2005

How do you know which ones have it? Eventually all new CDs are going to have this **** on it. I think I just stopped buying Audio CDs. Until this **** stops and our first amendment is brought back and Sony is not allowed to **** up our computers, I am not buying another new Audio CD. And I think we need to get a million people to tell this to Sony too!

I mean there have people people thrown in jail for making viruses. This is far worse than anything they did, because this is a mass marketed virus that will target far more people!

[jemsite]

around here you can't return opened CD/DVDs for anything except the same item, and in many stores (ie. Target) they'll "open" the new CD/DVD they exchange for you at customer service so you can't just return it unopened without a receipt.

THAT IS ANTI-CONSUMER!!!

[red5]

All the **** they are trying to do to prevent people from ripping a CD to mp3 is BS. If they are trying to disable me from ripping a CD that I OWN to mp3 so I can put it on my iPod and play it in my car, then I'm going to have to download it (and like hell I'm going to pay for it again!), so therefore THEY ARE SUPPORTING DOWNLOADING MUSIC ILLEGALLY! I have not seen a copyright protection that actually works yet though.

I have a feeling a quick easy way (but maybe non-convienent for many of you) to fix it would be disabling auto play and when you play the CD, do not ever double click on the CD ROM drive with the CD in it (which runs autoplay), instead right click and go directly to play.

And if someone has a CD with this spyware on it and wants to send it to me, I will see if I can make a patch to block it from being installed! But I refuse to pay for a CD that is going to put as much as a single file on my computer that I did not ask for, even if it is a program that will write papers and code all my homework for me! If I don't ask for it, then it's illegal being there, and that is exactly what this spyware is!

I have found some more information about this. Apparently it is not to stop people from ripping or copying a CD, it is to **** up their computer: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?si...id=172&tid=158

Now that I think of it, I may have seen this before. I had a few computers at work that had hidden compressed system files. No virus or spyware scanner found anything on the computer, and neither could I and I am pretty good at manually locating unwanted files (okay, very good if I am willing to spend enough time on it!). But you could fix this by resetting permissions on all files in the drive which seems to work, but it's easier and just as fast if not faster to re-image the entire machine. It also denies access to svchost.exe which is necessary to load Windows 2000/XP/2003,

Now if you will all excuse me, I have to set up a mp3 server on my OC3 line and download some more mp3s.

[JESTER700]

red5 has the idea, but why not just rip & copy the whole thing and use the copy? If it gets wrecked, you have the original to make another dupe from. I do this already, cutting out lame tunes or making compilations instead of listening to originals.

[red5]

The DRM makes it very tough to get a rip. If you put the cd in and say you do not want to install their spyware, it ejects the cd from the drive. I hear you can still rip if you do install it as long as your computer still works and is usable.

I do not have a cd with the DRM installed on it, and with my boycott of the recording industries I probably never will unless someone sends me one so I can make a fix for the Sony virus (DRM).

[jay ratkowski]

I don't believe any of my favorite bands are Sony artists... if that ever becomes so, I will promptly stop buying cds from said bands.

[JESTER700]

So, why are we letting autorun go ahead & install this thing? Just turn off autorun, load up the disc, and rip the effing audio tracks.

Or, hold down the shift key as you insert the CD.

Or am I missing something?

[elcid]

Sony just released a patch to remove the files from users pc.
It's still bs but atleast they aren't denying anything, I still hope they get sued or atleast fined though I doubt they will.

[jay ratkowski]

Originally Posted by JESTER700

So, why are we letting autorun go ahead & install this thing? Just turn off autorun, load up the disc, and rip the effing audio tracks.

Or, hold down the shift key as you insert the CD.

Or am I missing something?

I always have autorun turned on, but the fact that a company would willingly try to litter your computer with something like this is very very... bad. :P

EDIT - I always have autorun turned off... not on.

[JESTER700]

Originally Posted by jay ratkowski

I always have autorun turned on, but the fact that a company would willingly try to litter your computer with something like this is very very... bad. :P

Well, yeah. I'm with ya.

[dex]

Made BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4400148.stm

Sony have really gone too far this time...

ilia