Bonus Tracks

Truth In Advertising

Just bought that new Neil Diamond CD? Popped it into your computer to have a listen? Guess what? You're screwed. You've now got malicious software deeply embedded on your computer that makes your computer vulnerable to viruses and hackers! And it's even hidden from your processor, so good luck getting rid of it! All thanks to Sony BMG!

This week, Sony BMG admitted to placing secret software on the majority of their new music CD releases. Once installed, the Sony software can relay data, which indicates what CDs are being played, to an outside server. To relay the information, the software has to find its destination by contacting the Internet's domain name system address servers, where a publicly available record of that request is left behind.

Said software was also specifically created to stay hidden from the user. And not only does it hide itself from the user, it allows for virus and hacker vulnerability. Sony admitted this, only after some computer geek somewhere discovered this. Sony has been selling these tainted CDs for the past 8 months, and would've continued indefinitely, had it not been for this computer geek. Thank the Lord for computer geeks!


For The First 5000 Only!


Sony finally reported that over the past eight months it shipped more than 4.7 million CDs with the so-called XCP copy protection. What was intended as copy-protection software that prevents the CD purchaser from making multiple copies of the CD they purchased with their very own hard-earned money, suddenly has become a deeply-embedded program that allows hackers access to the computer files. Sony quickly began back-peddling their evil intentions by releasing a software-removal uninstall tool designed to uninstall the copy-protection software deposited by Sony's CDs which in fact actually exposed a critical vulnerability on computers.

The tool downloaded a program that causes a user's hard drive to accept instructions from Web sites. But the program remained active on the user's hard drive after it had been instructed to uninstall the Sony software. The program could then be triggered by almost any code from any Web site, including malicious instructions. This would allow any web page to seize control of your computer then it can do anything it likes. Thank you, Sony BMG!


The Collector's Version

At the time of discovery (or when Sony finally admitted doing this) more than 2 million of the Sony discs had been sold. Sony was quick to note that the copy-protection software is not activated on an ordinary CD or DVD player, or on a Macintosh computer. It only screws up Windows-based PCs. Thank you, Sony BMG!

Santa knows who's been naughty, you know!