RSS Feed for This PostCurrent Article

Sony Finally Pulls Copy-Protected CDs

After two weeks of relentless criticism over its XCP copy protection software, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is pulling CDs that contain the software from store shelves. The company is also planning to offer customers a way to exchange CDs that contain the flawed copy-protection software… Sony on Tuesday suspended use of this uninstall process and promised to provide a “simplified and secure procedure” for uninstalling XCP. But the company provided no details on what this new procedure might be, or on how customers might exchange their XCP CDs. It also failed to address concerns about a second type of copy-protection software, called MediaMax, that ships with Sony CDs. Computer experts have said that this software suffers from many of the same problems as XCP. source

Here are some of infected titles from EFF:

EFF has confirmed the presence of XCP on the following titles (each has a data session, easily read on a Macintosh, that includes a file called “VERSION.DAT” that announces what version of XCP it is using). If you have one of these CDs, and you have a Windows PC (Macs are totally immune, as usual), you may have caught the XCP bug.

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver’s Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)

Several other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:

My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album

This is not a complete list. source

I have a few of those titles, but it turns out that my computer was not infected. You can check if your computer is infected at Freedom to Tinker.

Trackback URL

Post a Comment