Nasty Rootkit on Sony CDs

I wish I could claim "prior art" on the usage of the term "scumware" but there's already a wikipedia definition for it. Drat :x :x

[code:1]
Scumware
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Scumware is a collective term for various forms of intrusive and/or destructive computer software including, but not limited to, computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, AdWare, Spyware, or even software that has legitimate uses but which violates privacy or is intrusive in some way, such as RealPlayer.

One particularly insidious trick that some scumware applications such as Bonzi Buddy and Comet Cursor use is giving away a free program that doesn't do anything useful but which is bright and colorful and will appeal to children. Bonzi Buddy is a simplistic virtual pet and Comet Cursor provides various animated and colorful cursors. Once installed, these applications then proceed to display advertising popups, change the computer's home and search pages to point to sponsored sites and some may even leak personal information such as credit card numbers entered into secure forms to the creator of the application. Some forms of scumware also take measures to protect themselves from deletion and can be very difficult to remove entirely.[/code:1]

This thing keeps on rolling. Not only is it scumware, it now stands accused of being "rip-off"-ware as well - Sony's CD rootkit infringes DVD Jon's copyright

thank god i did not try to make even one copy of a cd manufactured by sony!!!
as long as my entire collection of NFS, bless my soul, all of them are original copies, and i never tried to make copies of them at all. so i guess i am covered from the EA angle as well.

Actually, you don't need to attempt to make a copy to get infected by this scumware. All you need to do is insert it in your PC CD ROM drive and agree to the EULA.

oh....ok
in that case...could someone tell me when was this thing first introduced on their cd's. the last cd i bought from EA was NFS underground, and that was in Jan this year!!!

well...then in that case, its just my laptop which might carry the rootkit thingie bob, as i only installed nfs underground on it, and nowhere else!!!