Sony went too far this time

In another example of the music industry's sheer arrogance, Sony was slammed by the Homeland Security Office for their latest little trick they tried to pull on the public.

Sony Music secretly started hiding software on their music CD's called XCP. The problem with this is that the program installs itself in your computer without your knowledge. It buries itself deep within the operating system using a method called "rootkit".

Once embedded into your computer, this little program prevents you from copying the music to MP3 (so you can download it to your iPod). It also tracks what music you play and reports it to Sony. All of this without your knowledge or consent.

In addition, this little program can be exploited by hackers and viruses to allow access to your computer without your knowledge.

" It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. "

If you attempt to remove this little program, you will find that there is no way to do it. If you are very technically savvy and dig it out, you will probably find that it renders your CD ROM drive useless.

If I recall, writing a piece of software that installs itself without your knowledge or consent for the express purpose of restricting your computer system is illegal. That is what viruses do. Sony claims it is not a virus. But this program walks, talks, and quacks like a virus. I'd say it is a virus.

So does Microsoft and the Office of Homeland Security. Today, Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, said

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

This comment was aimed squarely at Sony.

Microsoft and all of the major anti-virus vendors are putting out fixes that will disable Sony's evil little gift to the world. Sony has agreed to stop putting XCP on their disks.... for now.