A Penguin in the Orchard

Rootkit Becomes A Laughingstock

Gaffer tape defeats Sony DRM rootkit | The Register

Now analyst house Gartner has discovered that the technology can be easily defeated simply by applying a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc. This renders session two — which contains the self-loading DRM software — unreadable.

“The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD ‘rip’ programs continue to work as usual. Moreover, even without the tape, common CD-copying programs readily duplicate the copy-protected disc in its entirety,” Gartner (which is at pains to say it doesn’t endorse the use of rip technology) explains.

So, let me tally this up. Sony screwed up a) the code, b) the PR, c) the fix, and now d) the discs themselves. I’ve seen very few more monumental failures in technology.