Sony BMG Selling Viruses With Music to Boot

I have been meaning to post this for awhile but just never really got the chance.

About 120,000 Canadians may have bought Sony BMG CDs that can damage their computers. Sony announced Friday that 120,000 of the CDs were sold in Canada, but did not say which artists' albums were affected.

The company is to announce an exchange program next week, according to John McKay, a Sony BMG spokesman. McKay said the company will list for Canadians all the affected titles by Monday on its website.

The problem stems from a software program Sony put on the CDs to prevent illegal copying. The XCP software was designed to let Sony know when songs on the discs were being copied.

But it also leaves behind spyware when customers play the music on their PCs. Spyware leaves PCs susceptible to hackers and viruses.

Consumers who tried to delete the programs manually ran into even more trouble, as the software can disable the computer's CD drive. A patch created to address the issue also ended up worsening the security hole.

-Ultimate-Guitar

This is pretty grotesque if you ask me. Sony is not a dumb company, and they knew what they were doing and did not care for the well being of their consumers. No matter what they do people will get around their little tricks, and I feel that it's time for record labels to just accept the fact that people will steal music. They just have to hope that people will be loyal to the bands they like and buy their cd's. There is no way to end the sharing of music. As long as there are computers and the internet it cannot be stopped.