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RCAF_MadDog · ***Janitor*** Offline Joined: Nov 13, 2004 Posts: 849

Texas sues Sony BMG over alleged spyware

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a civil lawsuit on Monday against Sony BMG Music Entertainment for allegedly including spyware on its media player designed to thwart music copying.

According to the lawsuit filed in Travis County, several of the company's music compact discs require customers to download Sony's media players if they want to listen to the CDs on a computer.

Software included with that media player "remains hidden and active" after installation and makes users vulnerable to security risks and possible identity theft, the Attorney General's office said in a statement.

Sony said on its Web site that it had recalled all CDs that were installed with the XCP technology designed to prevent illegal music copying. But Abbott said that Texas investigators were able to purchase several of the CDs at Austin retailers on Sunday.

Texas is seeking civil penalties of $100,000 per violation of the state's Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act, which was enacted earlier this year.

Read the whole story HERE!!

XcalibeR · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 358

It would be nice if the mainstream media actually knew what was going on (when do they ever, though? :mrgreen:). The CD's don't contain spyware at all. They have a rootkit that in and of itself isn't dangerous to the comptuer. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that. It is not malicious, though its poor does allow the computer to get caught in the middle of computations. Also, it's not downloaded, it is installed when you play the computer. That means it is installed even if you aren't connect to the internet.

Not that you guys need to know that, but to others not so tech savvy, being misinformed can be dangerous.

But I am glad someone finally did it. That kind of behaviour is inexusable for a company. It's bad enough what the RIAA is doing.

RCAF_MadDog · ***Janitor*** Offline Joined: Nov 13, 2004 Posts: 849

Not to mention it allows hackers another backdoor to get into your system from what I read. Besides whether its harmless or not I dont want anyone putting crap in my system unless I know about it first lol. And i'm sure Sony aint the only one out there doing it either.

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