Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal

Sony BMG was a music and entertainment company, which was a partnership, fifty-fifty, between Bertelsmann AG and the Sony Corp. of North America. One of the things the company is best remembered for is it's controversial copy protection implementation.

The copy protection was written on selected compact discs released by Sony BMG during 2005. The copy protection used one of two security suites,

1. XCP, Extended Copy Protection, put on fifty two titles.
2. MediaMax CD-3 software, put on fifty titles.

One of the major flaws in the software was how it interacted with the Windows operating system. When a compact disc was played on a Windows PC, the disc automatically installed the security software. The problem was that the security installation created a loophole in Windows for malicious programs to exploit.

The security issues inherent in Sony's security software was first highlighted by Mark Russinovich. It finally led to Sony announcing a product recall and releasing a http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/updates.html to remove the troublesome rootkit from users PC.

The final embarrassment for Sony BMG was the fact they violated Jon Lech Johansen GNU's License, by using his code in their security software without asking for permission.