Ain't it a bitch when someone fights against thieves?
I'm sure you won't mind if we take away your guns, because you might commit a robbery someday.
Had SONY labelled the disk, "Warning: Playing this disk on your computer will result in software being installed which is designed to prevent replication of this disk," SONY would be reasonable. The person who purchased the disk could decide whether he wanted to play the disk or not, knowing its effects on his computer.
Instead, SONY left ther customers wondering how they got what appeared to be a virus installed on their computers, and which could cripple their computer if they attempted to remove it.
I'm sure you'll be OK with it when a private enterprise secretly makes keys to your house "just in case", and if you later change the locks, your house burns down.
Fair?
>Ain't it a bitch when someone fights against thieves?
From what I've seen, this looks a lot more like someone (Sony/BMG) is fighting Apple, at least as much as thieves, perhaps more so. The point of the software Sony has added to their CDs over the past couple of years has been to prevent people from transferring MP3s to iPods, which makes sense since Sony wants people to purchase Sony's MP3 players instead. Oh, yeah, to prevent copying too. But there's something a bit odd about the list of titles the XCP spyware comes on. Reissues by Gerry Mulligan, Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon...
As a generalization, it's my experience that people who purchase items like these are not the army of rippers & copiers who upload to file-sharing services...but that's me. And it's enough to suggest, strongly, that what Sony is doing has a great deal to do with trying to force Apple to adjust their price points on ITunes, which Apple has resisted. The merger with BMG has created interdepartmental difficulties of all kinds, I've read, and it looks like they gave too much leeway to a company that went too far on Sony's behalf...in the effort to 'fight thieves.'
I for one don't buy the premise that Sony or anyone else is entitled to go to such lengths to protect their intellectual property. It just doesn't make sense to treat paying customers who are actually purchasing your products this way.