Metropol

Evidence has been uncovered that SONY are distributing a root kit installing (on to Windoze operating systems) CD player package with their copy protected CDs.

<http://www.sysinternals.COM/blog/2005/1 ... ights.html>

Would you care to define for the not to computer literate/nerdy what a "root kit thing" is?

From theregister.co.uk:

A 'root kit' generally refers to the nefarious malware used by hackers to gain control of a system. A root kit has several characteristics: it finds its way onto systems uninvited; endeavors to remain undetected; and then may either intercept system library routines and reroute them to its own routines, or replace system executables with its own, or both - all with the intention of gaining system level ownership of the computer.

If you read that blog you'll be pretty amazed. I had a similar thing happen to with a Faithless CD I brought a year or so ago which installed something without me knowing. It stopped me from writing CD's until I did a system restore.

Dr Lobster wrote:I had a similar thing happen to with a Faithless CD I brought a year or so ago

Was it a SONY label or another distributor?

So would you agree that the safest thing for people to do is to turn off the "AUTOPLAY on CD insertion" capability?

Corin wrote:

Dr Lobster wrote:I had a similar thing happen to with a Faithless CD I brought a year or so ago

Was it a SONY label or another distributor?

So would you agree that the safest thing for people to do is to turn off the "AUTOPLAY on CD insertion" capability?

i don't recall which label it was released under, but i do remember that i was able to rip it the usual way once i'd removed the dodgy ASPI driver.

i think you need to be very careful about leaving autoplay enabled - this faithless cd didn't so much as popup a dialog box. i remember being quite annoyed at the time because it took a good half hour to diagnose and fix the problem, which was quite unnecessary. i wouldn't have minded so much if it had displayed a prompt telling me EXACTLY what it was going to do, but it didnt.

Oh but you do get a little logo right at the bottom. or if your extra lucky, you get small print.

This post is Copy Protected

Corin wrote:

Dr Lobster wrote:I had a similar thing happen to with a Faithless CD I brought a year or so ago

Was it a SONY label or another distributor?

"Cheeky Records" - part of Sony BMG

Article on BBC News: Sony slated over anti-piracy CD

Just another argument for avoiding the stupid record labels.