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I'm not up this stuff. Translation please. What does this mean for the average Joe?

If you've recently bought and played a Sony-BMG music CD on your computer, you've probably got this rootkit installed without your permission on your system. You need to hit the link in Post #12 and download the tool to remove it. It leaves your system vulnerable to hackers who can exploit the hole it blows open in your operating system. It also mines your hard drive for personal data and sends it back (without your knowledge) to Sony.

If you haven't bought any Sony-BMG music CDs, DON'T!

Not much if you have not put a Sony DRM protected CD in your computer which may include Columbia, RCA and a bunch of others. However, there are some reports that it propagates through internal internets.

Hopefully, Sony may well now be prosecutable under Federal Law regarding government and military computers. Map is not detailed enough to see if in Iraq but I would suspect so.

One thing would be for Utah FReepers to put a lot of pressure on Hatch.

I can just see this in 10 years:

1. 10 DRMs on a computer each fighting over which CD driver to use.

2. Most DRMs don't unload and are continuously stealing 10 x 2 percent or 20 percent of your CPU cycles

3. Conflicts between DRMs which no one will take responsibility for. Blue Screen of Death every minute.

4. Even more bootleg songs on the net since no computer owner will even go in the same room as an Audio CD

5. Every song is on the net is in bit perfect form since at least one computer owner in the world is smart enough to run his CD player's S/PDIF optical output into a high end sound card on his computer ...and... the post the rip on the net to get even.

6. Sony is down to 1,569 Audio CD purchasers with the following profile:
Average age......................... 14
Average annual income...... $20 a month allowance
Have computer at home..... 0.000001%
Favorite band..................... Jay and the Nosepickers

I'm not up this stuff. Translation please. What does this mean for the average Joe?

What it means in laymen's terms is this: Sony does not trust their paying customers. They think their customers are thieves. SO this put this little program on their CDs that installs onto the hard drive of your computer when you insert the CD that allows Sony to track data about you and limit how you can use the CD you paid for. If you try to manually remove this software from your computer, it will likely crash your computer.

So if you are a paying customer of Sony, you are being played for a sucker. You would have been better off downloading your Sony music over LimeWire or going to this Russian site to download any album you want for about a dollar. And yes, that Russian site is 100% legal.