How many CD's are actually infected by rootkitThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published an open letter, urging Sony to consider a product recall of CDs shipped with the controversial XCP copyright protection software which secretly installs a cloaking utility on computers.
The Register in the UK wants to know how many CD's beyond the 20 that Sony is reporting are actually infected. Geoffrey McCaleb is tracking them on his blog, and it goes much deeper than originally reported, as of last count it was at 45.
Sony has attempted to the fix the problem by agreeing to not ship anymore CD's with DRM rootkit, but has not done anything to recall the one's still on the shelf at your local Sam Goody, and this simply is not good enough. They have also made a "fix" available, that might be worse than the original problem. What a good day to be Sony's PR agency of record, because their conceipt and and total disregard for their consumers is going to be an albatross around their neck for a good long time.
Eweek is already reporting:
"Sony BMG will have a big job ahead of it as it tries to replace all copies of controversial copy protection software, according to a computer security expert, who says that he has evidence there are more than 500,000 versions of the program installed worldwide. "
These primarily are located in the Japan, the US and the UK. It is amazing to me that half a million people have purchased these CD's in the past week, and then loaded them into the CD's for their listening pleasure. What happened to the old days where you put it in a walkman or on your stereo. Clearly everything now is mobile and this market is not going to slow down.
All the record companies should take note of this situation and find a way to provide the consumers with what they want in a format that allows them to take it with them pretty quickly, or else another Napster or Grokster will rise from the ashes and the cycle will start all over again.
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