Sony Music CD's Contain Mac DRM Software Too 399
brjndr writes "A MacInTouch poster has found that certain Sony CD's also contain a smaller extra partition for 'enhanced' content. Running one of the applications found within this partition installs kernel extensions containing DRM software by SunnComm. In Sony's defense you're told what is being installed within a EULA which pops up when the program is loaded. Thankfully we all read our EULAs completely."
Even more thankfully (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Even more thankfully (Score:5, Informative)
autorun (Score:4, Informative)
EULA (Score:3, Informative)
Its not a substitute for truelly reading the whole EULA, however I find it good at helping me and my customers identify 'dodgy' software.
Re:Even more thankfully (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Think different... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh thank God... (Score:5, Informative)
In Windows, you just insert the CD. Maybe into someone else's system when their back is turned. Windows OS trusts external content much more than the user sitting at the desk. "Do me", it says.
Unfortunately, people are still stupid enough to follow these ludicrous steps. Remember the teddy bear "virus" in Windows? Consisted only of an email, the instructions to delete a standard Windows exe file, and a directive to resend the email to all of your friends.
PS. Join us... you know you want to.
Re:Think different... (Score:5, Informative)
You are not often challenged for your password in Mac OS X. The default installation location is
If something's asking you for your password and isn't (a) your security manager wanting to fetch your keychain for a website, or (b) something that should be installing drivers, be very worried and don't type your password until you understand exactly what it's doing. My mother has to type her password so infrequently on Mac OS X that she can never remember what it is.
Even Microsoft Office is a drag-and-drop-to-install application (as well as being a drag), ferchrisakes.
(and mods, please mod parent down for using Andrew Tanenbaum's [wikipedia.org] name).
Re:Admin Privileges (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Think different... (Score:3, Informative)
In 10.3, the group for /Applications is admin, so only user accounts that are set to be Administrators can install or remove applications. Maybe they changed this in Tiger. All of the applications I looked at are also modifiable by group admin. That's why I tell people that they should set up an administrator account, and disable it for themselves. The obvious user name, admin, is blocked by Apple's account administration routines, though (you can create it as your initial user in 10.3, but they stopped that in 10.4). Yes, normally you get a group created that is the same as your user name, but it went ahead and used "staff" instead. I suppose it is a good idea not to have something obvious as your admin account, though.
There are very few things that you need to actually be logged in as an administrator, and even fewer where you'd need to log in as root (usually easier to just open a terminal window and use su (if you've enabled the root password) or sudo).
I don't know about Microsoft Office, but the Office "Test Drive" behaves abominably with respect to admin rights. You basically have to install it and run it as an administrator, but the failure modes if you don't are not obviously because you're not running as the right user. Stupid stupid stupid.
Unless you have your keychain password set to something besides your login password, so it doesn't automatically unlock it when you log in, it shouldn't even ask you for your password then. My parents usually forget their password, since it is set to auto-login for them, except when I'm visiting and using the machine (and thus either logging them out, or using user switching, either of which requires they enter their password to get back on).
Re:Think different... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That's the last Sony CD I ever buy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:List of Sony/BMG sub labels (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, this will also include any mixed mode CDs with bonus video content, but whats to stop that data layer from trying to install DRM?
Re:Oh thank God... (Score:4, Informative)
I spend most of my time on a Mac (at work) but have a PC at home. If I had the money for a new computer I'd buy a Mac, but everytime I think of ditching my PC altogether I have to stop and think...
well, I won't be able to play most of the games I bought anymore...and there's an application or two that's Windows only that I need occasionally...
It pisses me off because I don't want to use Windows. I guess I could live without the old games, but there have been many times where I think, well, at least I can just open that in windows and re-save it.
The best situation I can see is that OS X and/or Linux gets enough market share so that it's common for certain businesses/people to have a PC for occasional compatibility purposes only, which will lead to Mac/Linux converters that will eliminate the need for a PC, so that 100% Mac/Linux shops will have to be a consideration at least.
If I may go on a tangent here...
I used to work at a pre-press company (my title was "Mac Operator" which I always thought would be a cool 80's rap name. I'd change it to "Mac O" in the 90's [a la P. Diddy], then to "MOpe" around 2003). Anyway, we had one WinNT machine we kept around for the clients who were too low-scale to realize that all print work was done on Macs.
Any Windows job was a guaranteed pain-in-the-ass, mostly for compatibility reasons, but also because WinNT was stupid about networking and printing issues. It always seemed stupid to me that, while we printed to million dollar imagesetters and had clients like the Dell computer catalog, we had to keep this red-deaded stepchiled to run a Windows version of Quark (or for the real low-rent clients who submitted Windows Pagemaker files).
I'm a video editor now, and I still get annoyed when someone wants a non-Quicktime movie file. Some of the blame surely lies with Apple who won't even let you import an MP3 into Final Cut Pro unless you convert it into a Quicktime file first, but for the most part Apple tries to be universal, whereas Microsoft's attitude is "Fuck everyone else. If you're not using .avis and Word .docs you can go screw yourself."
Thank god that blu-ray won out so we don't have do deal with even more forced-incompatibility issues. I just want shit to work. I'm not totally computer-illiterate (I know enough to install a new OS, or random expansion card, or hard drive. I've used Linux a bit on my personal computer), but when there's work to be done I don't want to have to use Google to search for the best way to convert a file or get a random piece of PC hardware to work on a Mac.
Re:List of Sony/BMG sub labels (Score:3, Informative)
The myth that no copyprotected CDs are standards conforming comes from the older generation copy protections, which relied on deliberate redbook errors and unclosed data sessions instead of Windows' autorun.
Besides, many standard discs without DRM no longer have any CD-DA logos printed on them either.
Re:Oh thank God... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Think different... (Score:3, Informative)
For an ordinary user, the Mac ALWAYS asks for an admin password in order to make any change to the Applications folder. If the user is dumb enough to be logged in as an admin, then it does not. Making every user only a standard user goes a long way towards preventing a messed up system. A regular user can still install some, but not all programs in their own user space. However such installs will only affect that user and not the system or other users.
Re:List of Sony/BMG sub labels (Score:1, Informative)
Columbia Records
Epic Records
Legacy Recording
Sony Classical
Sony Nashville
Sony Wonder
Re:Think different... (Score:3, Informative)
This somewhat misses the point that if your dragging an Application into the "Applications" folder and your asked for a password, it's absolutely clear why the system (note: not the application) is asking you for a password. A kernel driver or global startup item can't somehow magically install itself when your only dragging a folder.
As already pointed out, having admin privilages on your account in Mac OS X is absolutely not in anyway 'dumb', anymore than being in the wheel group is on a BSD system - in fact, it's exactly the same, only the group happens to be named 'admin' not 'wheel' (see NetInfo Manager application or nituils documentation for details).
Having an 'admin' account in Mac OS X is not like having an 'Admin' account on a Windows sytem, or running as root on Linux.
A regular user can still install some, but not all programs in their own user space. However such installs will only affect that user and not the system or other users.
All programs can exist (and can be run from) in user space. Only drivers and frameworks (which are rare) must be in the admin-only accessible
Re:Think different... (Score:4, Informative)
I would also like to point out that even when you are dragging and droping apps into the Apps folder it will prompt you once to say "You are about to run (application name) for the first time. Are you sure you want to do this?" which is a pretty good fail safe for programs that are trying to run silently.
Re:Think different... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, Mail and Safari patches do the same, I assume it keeps track of the Applications filename / it's location / MD5 of the binary / etc. which is why it requires confirmation the first time you run the new version of the application (so that someone - or some software - can't switch the legitimate application with a trojan copy).
Good Thing(TM), even if the iTunes patches are a little too frequent.