Beware Sony CDs on your PCs

From a buddy:

There have been some threads about this on Audio Asylum and the Washington Post has an excellent article on this abomination. It's serious; Sony CDs install a poorly written piece of malware on your computer without telling you (the incompetent jackass who seems to have written it, one Ceri Coburn of First4Internet, had to ask for help from a Windows programming email list last year). The DRM malware uses CPU resources all the time even when you're
not playing the Sony CD, and it cloaks itself so deep in Windows that anti - virus software can't find it. Even worse, the trick it uses to hide itself opens up an avenue for viruses to hide from anti - virus tools too. One post
on CNet sums up the issue this way: "Highly invasive software that can corrupt Windows was installed by Sony without the user's knowledge or permission. The software is hidden, extremely low level, and impossible to remove by any malware tools. Normal use of the computer can cause Windows' devices to become inaccessible, forcing the user to reformat and reinstall Windows." Sony's "fix" is merely a patch that uncloaks the DRM code so it shows up in your registry, but doesn't remove the damn thing or fix its defects. And the DRM code blows up the beta test version of the next generation of Windows. Its completely unconscionable for Sony to have done this.