Sony Exploits Users

UPDATE: You can go here to tell Sony what you think about their unethical and intrusive behavior (thanks, RedHurt).

Sony has taken a page out of the hacker's book and created semi-intrusive software that only affects Windows machines. The hackers, apparently, are happy to let Sony do the hard part for them and are having a hay-day with the access to root directories of Windows installations that Sony's software is affording them. The fact that hackers, and now Sony, target Windows is mostly because it's the most widely used OS -- or at least that's a big part of it. It also has way more security holes (the latest Linux kernel only has 10 security related bugs -- 10! That's crazy. Why aren't we all using Linux? CORRECTION: 10 percent of the bugs in the current kernel are security related. That comes out to about 98.5 bugs -- which is still really good, but not as amazing as 10) and hackers usually have a personal dislike of Microsoft. However, the bottom line is that many of them will target whatever yields the best results, so this is not really Microsoft's fault.

In fact, in this case nothing is Microsoft's fault. This is all Sony's fault. This has to be some violation of privacy, not to mention private property. Sony has basically started packaging a virus with all of their music CDs. This virus gets on to your computer and uses a rootkit (even if they asked for permission this is pretty intrusive) and installs software that won't allow you to play their music on anything other than a Sony player. And it does all this without telling you that its doing anything. Apparently Sony underestimates the average computer user's dislike of authority and exploitation. To protect yourself from this virus there are a few avenues you can take:
1. Burn all the tracks from the Sony CD to a burnable CD on a Mac or some public computer that you don't care about. Don't copy the entire CD, just the music tracks.
2. Disable the autoplay function on your Windows OS. You can Google that to find exact instructions. Alternately you can hold down the "shift" key every time you put in the CD to stop it from autoplaying.
3. Don't use Windows. The virus only installs itself on Windows...

Sophos claims that they will have a tool to remove the virus soon, if you're already infected. I think that Sony has way over stepped the bounds of ethical business operation here. Its a very underhanded, Microsoftesque thing to do, and I don't think that we should stand by and let them do this, otherwise it will become standard practice. If it weren't completely illegal I would say that we should do everything we can to propagate Sony music over peer-to-peer networks so that they can't make any profit ;) (that's a wink, as in wink-wink nudge-nudge). However, there are legal alternatives. First, if you've been infected by Sony's virus and live in California you can join a class action suit against Sony. Furthermore, we can boycott buying Sony music. However, if you must have some you can buy it from iTunes or Napster. The tracks themselves are not infected, just the CDs. Finally you can take one of the steps above to at least make sure that you don't get the virus. It is ridiculous and unethical for companies to install software onto personal computers without the user's permission or understanding. It is also unethical to not provide a removal tool for such software, even if the user agrees to the installation. It is slimy and underhanded -- although easy to get around -- to make people use your player for music they already paid you for. Sony should be punished for their unethical behavior and has lost my business due to their underhanded tactics. I hope that they are not allowed to get away with this intrusive behavior and laws are made to specifically protect us from corporate-sponsored viruses and spyware -- especially if they are installed without our knowledge.