Now, I'm no expert in these things, but I'm pretty sure that it's not particularly good customer relationship management to fuck with your customers' computers. Which is presumably the reason why SonyBMG have vowed to stop using a bit of anti-piracy technology that made music fans' computers more vulnerable to viruses. Though the question has to be - why were they using it in the first place?
The news is that SonyBMG are reportedly making changes to some of their piracy-protection software after a number of programmers pointed out the technology they were using was leaving music fans' computers more vulnerable to hacker attacks. The software was used on a number of US album releases as part of the major's partnership with software first First4Internet.
Last week, however, software programmer Mark Russinovich wrote an article revealing that the anti-piracy technology used on the CDs was based on techniques used in many computer viruses, and that once on a music fan's computer it would leave the PC more susceptible to attacks by real viruses. What's more, like a real virus, the SonyBMG software was almost impossible to delete off a computer once installed - the user would have to contact Sony in order to obtain the software to uninstall the anti-piracy software. Russinovich wrote: "The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall". With complaints growing in IT circles about the software, SonyBMG has said it will stop using the anti-piracy tool, and will be providing a patch that will enable anti-virus software to uninstall it.
Fortunately for the record labels this, and other questionable anti-piracy technologies, have only really been criticised heavily in the IT community, although a number of consumer rights groups have raised questions about some of the techniques major labels employ. However, if music fans find themselves installing potentially damaging software onto their PCs just by playing a CD, then the music industry could be facing a whole new PR nightmare.
And all for what? All anti-piracy software is hackable almost as soon as it is released, and every single album you'd care to mention soon finds it way onto Kazaa and the likes anyway. How about we all stop wasting money on daft technology that pisses customers off, and spend it developing compelling content propositions that people will pay a premium for? Oops, the soap box is out again.