US court agrees Sony DRM settlement

By Steve Malone

Posted on 13 Jan 2006 at 10:26

Users who bought Sony BMG CDs containing the controversial 'spyware' copy protection mechanism can enjoy a download bonanza. A US court has now agreed a settlement which, Sony hopes, will put an end to the legal action brought by dozens of disgruntled music fans.

Sony was hit with a storm of lawsuits after it emerged that the company's CDs had secretly installed 'rootkit' technology known as XCP and MediaMax on PCs which made it impossible for Windows to view it.

The technology used by Sony was intended to prevent illegal copying of the disks. However, not only was the secret installation of files defined as spyware, and was therefore illegal in many US states, the issue turned into a public relations nightmare with many companies, including Microsoft, offering tools to remove the offending software from users' machines.

As a result, Sony had already agreed not to use the controversial technology and has promised to exchange any disks with the DRM on it free of charge for a non-copy protected disk. However, in a bid to end the class action suit that was gaining momentum, Sony has now agreed to provide further 'incentives' to customers of the insidious XCP software.

In addition to getting a clean CD, anyone who returns an XCP protected CD can choose to get compensation of $7.50 and a promotional code allowing the holder of the code to download the contents of any one of a number of albums (non protected) from the Internet.

Alternatively a customer may choose to forgo the cash and opt to download three albums. In addition Sony must choose three downloads sites where the albums can be obtained - one of which must be iTunes. Owners of CDs containing the MediaMax code are offered free downloads only.

The XCP content protection software was included on 52 Sony titles and MediaMax on 27.