Music publisher Sony BMG said in a statement Friday that it would stop manufacturing CDs which use a controversial copy protection technology called XCP.
Sony has recently been the focus of consumer ire, legal action, and malicious software programs over the XCP copy-protection system the company shipped on roughly 20 music CD releases since early 2005. The copy protection software installs and cloaks itself on Windows systems using “rootkit” techniques common to spyware; the XCP software is difficult for users to remove without damaging their Windows installations, and was widely criticized for creating potential security vulnerability as well as being an unwarranted (and undisclosed) intrusion into users’ computers. Last week, Sony began distributing tools to remove the software, but those tools themselves have been greeted dimly by software experts. Sony is also facing lawsuits over the copy protection scheme, and two days ago a Trojan Horse program appeared which could use the Sony copy protection software to cloak itself.
Yesterday, two new Windows Trojans appeared which can cloak themselves using XCP, if it’s present on a user’s system.
Today, Sony threw in the towel. “As a precautionary measure, Sony BMG is temporarily suspending the manufacture of CDs containing XCP technology,” the company said in a statement. “We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use.” Sony BMG added.
The announcement does not impact Sony music CDs fitted with MediaMax, an alternative copy protect scheme from SunComm.
