Sony's nightmare could be ours

It's a pr nightmare for Sony BMG: the ruckus over the extreme copy-protection tech it put on about 20 of its CDs. But now it's becoming a real problem for music fans who have played the CDs on their PCs. The anti-piracy program these CDs automatically install on people's computers "is now being exploited by malicious software that takes advantage of the antipiracy technology's ability to hide files," the Associated Press reports. Once installed, Sony's technology is cloaked - it can't be found on the PC, which Sony doesn't mention in its user agreement. It's also very difficult to uninstall, and uninstalling reportedly disables the CD drive. Worse, virus writers have already taken advantage of the invisibility feature to circulate Trojan horse programs that anti-virus software can't detect (three are in circulation so far, PC security firms said Thursday). The Trojans take control of people's PCs. Mac users get little goodies, too, the San Jose Mercury News reports, but they're not cloaked and in the user agreement, and no viruses have invaded because of them so far. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of the Sony BMG CDs that have the offending copy protection on them. Sony has released a patch. The company has already been sued in a class-action lawsuit, Reuters reports, and CNET later reported that Sony has stopped manufacturing CDs with this tech on them.