Sony BMG Recalls Affected CDs, Offers Exchange

Sony BMG Music Entertainment finally released details Friday of a virtually unprecedented CD recall program that will allow music buyers to exchange recently purchased CDs with copy protection for new discs and MP3s.

It also announced an exchange program to make up with consumers whose PCs have been exposed to unsecure copy-protection software which acts like malware, music publisher. Company said it would swap unsecure CDs for new unprotected disks as well as unprotected MP3 files.

Sony currently refuses to release a complete list of titles that were distributed with spyware, but an incomplete list is available at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Web site: http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/. The EFF site also explains how to identify CDs that contain this spyware.
Sony says it will post the list of all affected titles on or before coming monday.

Sony’s software, installed when playing one of the record label’s recent copy-protected CDs in a computer, hides itself on hard drives using a powerful programming tool called a "rootkit." But the tool leaves the door open behind it, allowing other software--including viruses--to be deeply hidden behind the rootkit cloak.

Sony reported that over the past eight months, it shipped more than 4.7 million CDs with the so-called XCP copy protection. More than 2.1 million of those discs have been sold.

In addition to consulting the list of titles at the website, consumers can identify titles with XCP content protection by checking the back of the CD packaging. If there is a black and white table with the words "Compatible With", and if the URL in that table ends with the letters "XCP" (http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp), that indicates the disc contains the XCP software.

"Sony BMG is reviewing all aspects of its content protection initiatives to be sure that they are secure and user-friendly for consumers," the company said in a statement. "As the company develops new initiatives, it will continue to seek new ways to meet consumers’ demands for flexibility in how they listen to music, while protecting intellectual-property rights."

The recall of 4.7 million compact discs, along with the exchange offer for the roughly 2.1 million discs sold with the copy protection technology included, is an expensive step for a record company that has been battered by criticism online and in other media for the past two weeks.