The Invisible Invasion

by

The Coral

Edit

Having just got into the Libertines and other British bands I asked for recommendations based on that. Someone casually mentioned The Coral and I fell in love with them after listening to their new CD, the Invisible Invasion, just once. Just a fantastic album that doesn't get old.

The downside? This isn't a CD. This is a Content Protected Coaster with what is called XPC protection. Do you want to copy this CD onto your harddrive? Sure! As long as you use protected WMA and install software on your computer. OH! You want to put it on an iPod? SORRY! Sony attempts to blame Apple for only allowing MP3, AAC (both protected and non), and Apple Lossless Codec files onto the most popular player in the planet. "We're working with them", they say, "to make Apple embrace our open standard". Their "open standard" however, is a crippled and lossy format (protected WMA) that is only supported by Microsoft and associated players.

There is a happy ending to this, however. I have found a program that lets me rip the songs from this CD to unprotected MP3 (Exact Audio Copy) so I can put it on my iPod. Sad when people who buy the CD are treated like criminals, and when its easier to just download, isn't it?

As many people may know by now, Sony was recently caught with egg on their face when a security specialist found out that a recently purchased CD (Van Zant: Get Right With The Man) from Sony music not only installed DRM software (digital rights management, to limit and outright prevent copying music to certain devices), but it did so in such a sneaky way that it hid itself entirely from Windows, and opened the system up to security issues such as viruses.

This CD has the same copyright protection, called XCP. When installed, Sony hijacks your computer and installs custom software which:

1) Hides itself entirely from Windows by installing as a rootkit

2) Hides itself in such a manner that any files begining with $sys$ are also hidden. For example, if you install the XCP copy protection software on your machine, and rename "document.doc" to "$sys$document.doc" it then becomes invivisble to you forever.

3) Installs its own custom CD-Rom drivers to hijack your system. It also sneakily names these drivers "Plug and Play Device Manager" to seem as if it's a part of Windows. Trying to delete these drivers manually will disable your CD-Rom drive entirely.

4) Offers no uninstall option until you manually contact Sony

As of my writing this review, Sony has "apologized" for this incident, and claims they will "re-evaluate" this copyright protection software on their CDs in the future.

In the meantime, a virus is currently running wild, which names itself begining with $sys$ in an attempt to hide from the user and virus scanners.

Several class action lawsuits are also pending against Sony right now.

In summary, as you can tell from above, Sony's actions here are absolutely horrible. This is your music. You purchased it, and they should not have any right to dictate how you can use it, let alone install software which compromises your system security.

This is one of the CDs with Sony's XCP copyright protection software on it, and as a result, you should not buy it to send a message to Sony that this will NOT be tolerated in the future.