You in all probability already know that Sony BMG has began promoting a minimum of some CDs that embrace constructed-in copy-safety, making it troublesome to play the CDs on a pc utilizing any media participant aside from the one bundled on the CD, and limiting the variety of copies you could make. Nevertheless it seems that, behind the scenes, Sony can also be putting in invisible providers within the type of a hidden listing containing cloaked information, which run once you use that media participant. Mark Russinovich of SysInternals did an in depth evaluation of a “rootkit” (their phrase, not ours) he discovered on his PC, and found that, not solely was it surreptitiously put in when he performed a protected CD, nevertheless it additionally hogged system assets and built-in itself into Home windows so deeply that uninstalling it disabled his CD drive. Mark’s conclusion? Selection phrases comparable to “irritating and irritating,” “malware,” and “the software program is poorly written and offers no means for uninstall.” Yowch. Sony, you need to reply? (Although, Mark, critically: Van Zant?)