Music and our rights
Okay, this has nothing to do with science, but I feel strongly enough about this that I need to vent a little steam. The battle between the music labels and consumers has been going for a while - they’re paranoid that piracy is damaging sales and so include more and more copy protection restrictions (DRM - digital rights management), while consumers want more and more freedom to use their music as they please.
This has culminated in iTunes, which offers a compromise - download your music for less than it costs to buy a CD, but you’re only allowed to play it on certain computers, running iTunes, and not on your generic MP3 player. Whether that’s a good compromise, well, that’s debatable - for me, it’s not. I want to play my music wherever and whenever I like, and as I don’t own an iPod that’s tricky. I also get a kind of creepy feeling to know that I don’t really “own” what I’ve bought, but that’s just me.
CDs still were pretty safe - rip them how you like, and then go from there. That’s until Sony got in on the act: their new audio CDs, when loaded onto a computer, rewrite Windows at the fundamental level, called a “rootkit”, making certain files invisible and basically filtering everything you do. More details can be found here. The presence of this program was only discovered by an intrepid user whose system was behaving weirdly. It has since been shown to causes crashes, open your computer up to viruses/trojans that are undetectable by virus checkers, and can be used to disable anti-cheating measures in online games. Trying to delete it will disable your CD drive, and only after public outcry has Sony released a patch.
But that’s not all. Sony requires your to agree to an End User License Agreement (EULA) when you put the CD in your computer, which among other things means that you have to delete your music and all copies if you lose (or have stolen) your original CD. You’re not allowed to put copies of music on your computer at work. They’re allowed to put any monitoring software they like (e.g., rootkit) on your computer, and accept no liability for any damages caused. The list just goes on.
I find this incredibly offensive, outrageous and just downright evil (take a page from Google (see pt 6) guys!) They’re already being sued over their rootkit, which is as good a definition of spyware as anything I’ve ever heard of, and one wonders if the EULA doesn’t violate several free use clauses as well.
If you can find it in your heart, don’t buy Sony. One can only hope the public backlash will put a lid on this sort of thing. In the end, this sort of rubbish won’t stop professional pirates which will always get around it (e.g., use a Mac) but it will mess up legitimate, home users. The funny thing is, with sites like allofmp3.com where songs cost less than 10 cents, come in any quality you want, are free of DRM, and seem to be legal (whether the RIAA like it or not), I would prefer to buy my music than copy it. It’s easier, potentially safer, and quicker than using filesharing, and I would actually tell others to go buy the music rather than copy it for them. It won’t be long before artists give the major labels the flick, and go straight to sites like these to distribute for themselves. Your days are numbered, Sony.
Apoligies for this Monday morning rant, but this really gets my goat. 
It’s curious that if Sony etc want to equate copying songs with theft, then they have essentially committed break-and-enter on many personal computers. Or to make the relation less tenuous, it’s computer intrusion. And EULAs cannot require you to ignore the law.
The unfortunate thing is that in Australia, we don’t really have a “fair use” clause (even after the Australia/US Free Trade Agreement).
Do you know if you can circumvent this rootkit by disabling the autorun feature?
Yes, you can (circumvent the rootkit, that is) - but I think it means that the CD doesn’t play properly (noise over the tracks). I can’t find the reference though.
But your right - Sony really seems to have overstepped their bounds, here.