Today I was made aware of an article called Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far by Mark Russinovich – and it’s scary news. Mark had bought a Copy Controlled CD made by Sony, and as a result from playing it on his PC, Sony had taken the liberty to install software on his computer – and hidden it.
One thing is to try to limit what can be done with the music on the CD, but trying to hide that you’ve installed software, and make it very difficult to uninstall, that’s going too far. Especially as the software in question takes up resources, poses a security risk, and may also be unstable in itself. This sounds too much alike what is commonly known as malware.
Another question that begs to be asked is: Is what Sony has done here legal? Sony may write about this in their EULA, (but it is not certain that they actually do this, even after they updated it after the fact,) but an EULA can’t override laws – not everywhere at least – and may even be known before the product is bought to be valid.
Maybe it’s time for consumers to sue?