[holymoly]

A Sony BMG statement Tuesday said the company would pull unsold CDs with the software from store shelves and let consumers exchange already purchased ones.

How magnanimous of them. /sarcasm

Are they also going to compensate people whos' PCs have been hosed by their little rootkit spyware?

[sionnsar]

Easy solution: Don't buy anything Sony. You can't trust it.

[Cicero]

This little escapade is probably going to end up costing them at least a billion dollars in lawsuits and bad will. I can understand how such a stupid ploy could have slipped under the CEO's radar, but I can't understand how they could have been so stupid as to leave it hanging out there this long.

I posted the story here first, after it was posted at BetaNews.

Several Antivirus programs have added stuff that will uncover the Sony rootkit, but they have been slow to issue removal tools, probably because of fear that Sony might sue them for removing copy-protection, which is illegal.

Sophos was the first to issue a tool to detect and remove the Rootkit. Considering what has been happening, I would take a chance with their tool rather than anything Sony puts out, because so far all their solutions have only made things worse.

The Sophos rootkit detection and removal tool is at:

http://www.sophos.com/support/disinfection/rkprf.html

It will tell you if you have the rootkit on your computer, and several usually reliable sources have recommended it. I haven't tried it myself, since I don't have the Sony virus.

[ShadowAce]

[polymuser]

Ooooh, this is gonna leave a mark...

[mysterio]

They'll compensate them, all right. After the class action lawsuit which in this case is warranted. If they want to fight the cassette tape over and over again fine, but it's going to cost them.

[tutstar]

ping

[RabidBartender]

"The "XCP" copy-protection program was included on at least 20 CDs, including releases by Van Zant, The Bad Plus, Neil Diamond and Celine Dion. Sony BMG said 4.7 million were shipped, with 2.1 million sold."

It disturbs me that 2.1 million CDs can be sold that include Neil Diamond and Celine Dion.

[thoughtomator]

They will, 5 years down the line and millions of lawyers' fees later.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Pirate Bay.

[Born Conservative]

"We share the concerns of consumers regarding discs with XCP content-protected software," Tuesday's statement said.

If that were true, then why did they release it in the first place?

[js1138]

I smell lawyers.

[Revolting cat!]

[TalonDJ]

Yet another reason I prefer macs ping

[Centurion2000]

When the discs were put into a PC -- a necessary step for transferring music to iPods and other portable music players -- the CD automatically installed a program that restricted how many times the discs' tracks could be copied, and made it extremely inconvenient to transfer songs into the format used by iPods.

That antipiracy software, which works only on PCs running Windows, came with a cloaking feature that allowed it to hide files on users' computers. Security researchers classified the program as "spyware," saying it secretly transmits details about what music the PC is playing. Manual attempts to remove the software can disable the PC's CD drive.

I'd be suing the living hell of them for this.