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The group began burning unrestricted CDs after fans found that they could not transfer their album 'Z' (pictured) to their iPods. Their manager, Mike Martinovich, told Rolling Stone that Sony BMG should drop DRM on CDs entirely.

'I just don't think that this is the answer to the problem that they think exists,' he said.

Sony said earlier this week that it was reviewing its policy, having previously committed to adding copy controls to all its CDs by next year.

Martinovich's comments come after Princeton University, USA professor Ed Felden, who has exposed the security breaches in both the DRM software and subsequent 'uninstallers' and patches, said that it is simply not possible to have a CD-based DRM system without installing software on the listener's computer and without their permission.

In his Freedom to Tinker blog Felden describes how the process of restricting the way in which material on a CD can be played, ripped and copied can only be achieved by installing software on a PC that actively interferes with attempts to read the disc. Naturally the user is not going to want this software on their machine, so the only way it can be installed is without the user's permission.

'For example, suppose the user wants to use iTunes

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to read the disc,' he writes. 'But the DRM vendor wants to stop the user from doing this, because iTunes can be used to make copies of the disc. The active protection software will detect this and will interfere to ensure that iTunes gets a garbled copy of the music.'

He continues: 'Here's the key issue: active protection only works if the DRM software is running on the user's computer. But the user doesn't want the software on his computer. The software provides no value to him at all. Its only effects are to stop him from doing things he wants to do (such as listening to the music with iTunes), and to expose him to possible security attacks if the software is buggy.'

Therefore, he argues, the software must be installed in secrecy and made difficult to find so that the user cannot easily uninstall it.

And if you want proof that this is the approach that is being taken, he says, you only have to read the prospectus for the forthcoming stock flotation of MediaMax, one of the company's that has supplied DRM technology to Sony BMG.

'The software is designed to be completely invisible to users, programs and system components,' it reads.

Felden notes that these are the same objectives that spyware programmers have: 'How do you get software installed against the user's wishes? You mislead the user about what is being installed, or about the consequences of installation. Or you install without getting permission at all. How do you keep software from being uninstalled? You don't provide an uninstaller. Or you provide an uninstaller that doesn't really uninstall the whole program. Or you try to cloak the software so the user doesn't even know it's there.'

As far as CDs are concerned, where unlike downloads you cannot modify the song files themselves or they will not play in standard CD players, DRM has become inseparable from Spyware.

'Having set off down the road of CD copy protection, the music industry shouldn't be surprised to have arrived at spyware,' he concludes. 'Because that's where the road leads.'