I think I’ve just stopped buying CDs. The digital rights management Sony appears to be including on their new CDs more closely resembles an aggressively invasive virus. Rootkits are serious business, even if this one isn’t designed to hand control of your computer over to an attacker (which is what most rootkits are designed to do). The fact that Sony would even play around with a technology designed to attack your system is appalling, and absolutely not worthy of support. According to the DRM virus creator’s press site, even independent labels are using the rootkit virus; beware of any CD released by Upstairs Records, as well as Sony BMG and EMI releases. Upstairs Records is distributed by Universal; for added safety, steer clear of anything released by Universal as well.
The scariest thing about all this is that independent labels have signed on as well. Previously, the lack of copy protection was yet another reason why it felt good to buy a CD from an independent label. But back in 2002, Arts & Crafts put out a pressing of Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People with DRM. To this day I haven’t been able to rip the MP3s off the CD; I had to borrow a friend’s CD, thankfully without DRM (an earlier pressing), and rip the MP3s off her album. I even posted about this before, only to have Jeffrey Remedios from the label email me, asking for an address so he could send me a new version of the album without DRM. I haven’t heard anything from the label since.
That was just Cactus Data Shield, a fairly old DRM technology; if indie labels start using viral techniques to protect their music, then as far as I’m concerned, all bets are off. It’s not worth the time or effort to erase your malware from my system; I’ll just wait for the cracked version and download the MP3s, specifically so I can avoid giving you any money. If that means your artists starve and you go out of business, fine; you should’ve thought of that before you threatened to fuck around with my property.
[...] Someone had the infinite wisdom to make Orton’s Comfort Of Strangers a copy-protected disc. Whether it will launch a crappy proprietary player on my computer, install a malicious rootkit or just give me MP3s full of static when I try to rip it, I don’t know. In fact, I’ll never know because I’m never buying another copy-protected disc again after the whole Broken Social Scene fiasco. And to think, I was starting to really like Beth Orton again. I know she doesn’t appreciate people downloading her work, but that’s no reason to punish the people who actually want to buy her music. The fact that Comfort Of Strangers was floating around the internet long before the album’s street date yesterday shows that anyone who’s determined to listen to the album without paying for it will be easily accomodated regardless of whatever hoops you make legitimate customers jump through. And in case you think copy protection is a necessary evil, think again. [...]
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