Today I read about a new kind of copy protection for Audio-CDs. It was introduced by (what a wonder
) Sony BMG.If you insert such a CD (well, actually I resist to call such a crap "CD") into your Windows PC's CD/DVD drive, a license agreement is displayed and after reading (
) and agreeing it, it will seem install a song player software - while it really installs a program which will make sure you won't do anything with the songs you paid for that Sony BMG doesn't want you to do. Nothing unusual so far (that it isn't unusual is a big shame by the way 
), but what lets me freak out is the following: The software isn't installed as "Sony BMG super mega cool copy protection", no it's installed as "Plug and Play Device Manager". Sound's like a system component, huh? Well, that's the intention: Make users (slaves would fit better ) not even think about uninstalling this pile of crap.Uninstalling... well, there's the next problem: There's no uninstaller and trying to delete this lovely piece of software by hand easily results in an unoperative CD/DVD drive.
Enough? No! This software hides files whose names start with $sys$ from the system thus making a malware developer's live much easier. Thank you! Maybe you guys at Sony BMG should think about your new baby as F-Secure treats it as malware.
So let me summarize: You buy an over-priced CD, insert it into your computer's drive (yes, some people like me don't own a hi-fi system and use the computer to listen to music) and what you get is a software which is installed without your knowledge, can't be uninstalled and makes your PC insecure. Sounds like a computer virus, am I right? Young people are sued for writing computer viruses and have to pay thousands of Euros to compensate the damage their software caused on badly administrated systems. So why isn't Sony BMG dragged to court? Where are all those lawyers with their reminders?
I call on you to boycott Sony BMG. Don't let them take your rights! We pay (way too) much money for music, and you want to allow a company to tell you how you can use something you bought and therefore you're the owner of? You want to allow them to make your computer insecure? No!
@Sony BMG:
Stop treating your customers like slaves. Lower your prices and remove DRM and other kinds of copy protection. You'll see increasing sales and decreasing piracy then. Think about it.