Sony Music
So, did you know that when you play many new Sony Music Group CD’s on your PC it puts a rootkit on your hard drive. This seemed very odd to me, as well as to the people who wrote the few articles I found on the topic. It really is a case of hurting only the people who legally purchase the CDs. Search for “CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD” on amazon and check out the comments on the results. People are not happy about what these CDs are doing to their computers. (n.b. amazon doesn’t seem to let you do that search any more, so I used google instead, but you get the same thing.) It is unclear to me that breaking the security and operation of people’s computers when they play CDs is a good way to keep customers.
But it seems that the music industry in general doesn’t really care about customers any more. They just want everyone to pay their music tax and shut up. I understand the desire to not have people steal your music, but I have a desire for people to not steal my computer. Fortunately, since I run a mac at least I don’t need to worry about the rootkit, I just can’t rip the CD at all. Looks like I won’t be buying Sony Music CDs any more. The interesting thing here for me is what a stupid idea this is from a business perspective. They only people being hurt are the purchasers, this doesn’t even touch the downloaders.
And one final note, it doesn’t even look like this is about downloading at all. Sony is using rootkits on their customers to make them put pressure on Apple to open the iPod to other music stores. Oh yeah. What an awesome way of doing business. Wreck your customers computers when you can’t get as good a business deal as you want with your partners. If they really care that much they should stop selling through the Apple Music Store.