A reader sent me this excellent email from Alex Reynolds on Sony’s surreptitiously installing rootkits on unsuspecting PCs when a user plays one of their CDs:

To be clear, these are not CDs. These discs do not conform with the CD format and releases omit the CD logo on the packaging.
Here’s information about the Copy Control format that EMI and Sony uses, which includes Sony’s trojan horse. Copy Control discs carry their own Mac OS 9 player, apparently; iTunes cannot be used to play the disc’s music. No mention is made of an OS X or Linux player.
If you want to warn your users to help avoid trashing Windows
machines and incurring support demands, here is a list of releases using Copy Control.

Needless to say you should probably avoid buying any of the above CDs if you care about your privacy, and you should probably boycott SonyBGM and EMI entirely if you give a damn. -Ed

A reader sent me this excellent email from Alex Reynolds on Sony’s surreptitiously installing rootkits on unsuspecting PCs when a user plays one of their CDs:

To be clear, these are not CDs. These discs do not conform with the CD format and releases omit the CD logo on the packaging.
Here’s information about the Copy Control format that EMI and Sony uses, which includes Sony’s trojan horse. Copy Control discs carry their own Mac OS 9 player, apparently; iTunes cannot be used to play the disc’s music. No mention is made of an OS X or Linux player.
If you want to warn your users to help avoid trashing Windows
machines and incurring support demands, here is a list of releases using Copy Control.

Needless to say you should probably avoid buying any of the above CDs if you care about your privacy, and you should probably boycott SonyBGM and EMI entirely if you give a damn. -Ed