Digital (Dirty) Rights Management?
I was shocked when I came across this story on Mark’s blog about Sony secretly implanting a small piece of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software onto user’s PC whenever they pop in their original Sony music CD. The DRM software runs in the background to curb user from making excessive copies of the music that they’ve just bought. Well, that sounds fair enough… but doing it behind our back without our knowledge or consent makes it very much like a Spyware (which I think is just as bad as viruses these days). It looks like the recording industry is putting more restrictions on how we could listen to the music that we have just bought or perhaps make copies of the original CD that have suffered scratches from mishandling.
To the average Joe, the DRM software might not mean much if one would use it rightfully. But what worries me is the way Sony have implemented it. As to my understanding, there is no proper way to remove the software that has been implanted rather deeply into the operating system’s registry (not possible from Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs) and the files were nicely cloaked from general view. And they even took the pleasure to install a new CDROM driver to work with the DRM software. Removing any of these DRM software would require a rather complicated steps as shown in Mark’s blog. The steps are definitely not for the faint hearted users as it would require editing the Windows registry, which could have serious consequences if done incorrectly.
Well, DRM is a good idea to protect the interest of the recording companies, and I’m not opposing it. But there should be a proper guideline for the industry to implement them that would also take our interest (the consumer) into account. I believe Sony is taking a step too far in implementing DRM. Some have already shown concern that the cloaking method used could also be used by malicious writers to cloak their malicious codes and goes undetected by anti-virus software. Personally, I feel that the DRM software running on the background is a waste of my system resources and acts very much like a Spyware instead. Shame on Sony and all the other recording companies that might have also implemented similar ‘Dirty’ Rights Management tactics. If they are going to protect their interest using DRM, just do it openly or using other better methods instead of putting ‘bugs’ onto our computers. We had enough of bugs to deal with as it is.
Taking a trip down memory lane… Looks like I have not bought any new original music CDs since my early high school years. Probably about 8 years ago, when there isn’t such a thing called DRM yet and the prices were still relatively reasonable for a high school kid. I guess I won’t be buying any new CDs (with DRM) anytime soon either.
