Mark Russinovich's blog is getting a lot of attention from Sony lately and for good reason. Russinovich, chief architect at Winternals Software LP, discovered last week that there is anti-copying software installed on Sony’s discs which collects information, such as IP address and listening habits, from any computer that is playing the discs. This is all done without the consumer's knowledge or permission. Russinovich came across a rootkit installed on his personal computer and soon discovered that the source was a Sony BMG CD. His CD drive was disabled when he tried to uninstall the rootkit.
Russinovich states in his blog entry today that "Sony’s rootkit hides the Digital Rights Management (DRM) files from users that have it installed, so users not monitoring the developments in this story are unaware of the scope and intrusiveness of the DRM. The End User License Agreement (EULA) does not provide any details on the software or its cloaking."
The fact that there is no mention of the software in the EULA is one issue (and even if it was mentioned, would the average consumer understand the terms?); but there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that your computer crashes when you try to uninstall it. Above all, the software itself raises serious privacy concerns. Anti-piracy -- or, rather, "anti-privacy" -- has gone too far.