On January 4th, the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued an open letter requesting that EMI Music publically state that they will not prosecute researchers interested in figuring out what makes the copy protection on CDs released by EMI-owned record labels tick. Hopefully EMI will come through on that one, as the idea that someone could get hauled into court for trying to discern if a CD is capable of opening a personal computer to hacker attacks is a little terrifying. Not entirely shocking though -
From the EFF site:
In late 2005, independent researchers uncovered security problems with Sony-BMG copy-protected CDs, forcing the label to issue patches and uninstallers to those customers who had played the CDs on Windows computers. Several record labels owned by EMI, including Virgin Records, Capitol Records, and Liberty Records, use similar copy-protection technologies supplied by Macrovision. On those CDs, an end user license agreement (EULA) forbids reverse engineering for any reason, including security testing. In addition, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has chilled the efforts of computer security researchers interested in examining copy-protected CDs.
The full story can be found here
This is all happening, as mentioned briefly in the article, in the wake of the discovery that some Sony-BMG CDs released near the end of last year were installing potentially pernicious "rootkits" onto computers when the CDs were played, with or without the consent of the owner.
I am still hashing out why Neil Diamond's 12 Songs was one of the discs chosen to be packaged with the XCP "digital rights management" software (the rootkit installing software that ended up being, ironically, a huge digital wrong,) though I have a freewheeling sociological theory that would probably open up a discussion of file sharing in general, extending beyond the scope of this particular entry.
At any rate, if your mother's computer has inexplicably slowed to a grinding halt when all she uses it for is playing Yahoo games and enjoying the soothing, honeyed croon of The Diamond One, you now have a point from which to begin your investigation. Furthermore, Sony-BMG has released new, "clean" versions of the discs formerly befouled with XCP digital rights management software.
As a direct result of the drama surrounding EMI's copy protecting shenanigans, I now have "EMI" by The Sex Pistols running through my head on a constant loop.
