Good stuff Charles!
Reminds me of some new government policies, "Trust us we only want the best for you?"
The computer segment on 3LO is sadly missed.
Cheers

Golly geewhiz. Not only are Sony BMG being sued on the east as well as the west coast (acrobat court document) of the US of A, the US Dept of Homeland Security is now in text and video clip telling everyone in the Intellectual Property industry what's what. Whether the short remark from Stewart Baker was off the cuff or not, it would have been a moment of truth to see the looks on their faces.

The Washington Post online are running a story regarding the United States Department of Homeland Security and Sony BMG. This has not come as quick as security analysts would have preferred but it is most defiantly welcomed. Thus far Sony BMG has received very little press regarding the SonyBMG & First4Internet's, XCP copy protection software for Digital Rights Management. It is reported that Sony BMG has 20 CD titles with around 1 million in circulation using this style of protection. Sony BMG has ignored the opinions of security experts that have been looking at this since Mark Russinovich of SysInternals released his findings on his blog. Since then Mark has released four blog entries about this topic and is nearing 1,000 user comments and people talking about it on every other blog. It has evaded major wide stream publication I would suggest as not too many people are prepared to pick a fight with Sony. And of greater achievement than ever getting published in the mainstream press whilst trying to get some attention from government officials it has gone the way it should have. The government has stepped in on this and said nicely "We will not tolerate this". And the press now plays 'catch-up' and none of them can say they had an 'exclusive'.

You can watch the video here and the Washington Post Extract below

Stewart Baker who was recently appointed by President Bush as the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for policy. Stewart was seated on a panel that featured entertainment and technology executives Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as Susan Mann, director of intellectual property policy for Microsoft.

"I wanted to raise one point of caution as we go forward, because we are also responsible for maintaining the security of the information infrastructure of the United States and making sure peoples' [and] businesses' computers are secure. ... There's been a lot of publicity recently about tactics used in pursuing protection for music and DVD CDs in which questions have been raised about whether the protection measures install hidden files on peoples' computers that even the system administrators can’t find."

In a remark clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels, Stewart continued: "It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.

"If we have an avian flu outbreak here and it is even half as bad as the 1918 flu, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the infrastructure functioning is going to be a matter of life and death and we take it very seriously."

The topic is clear now "Security" is it and has always been it.

Ccomputer security is not for sale Sony.

Ouch! Even Microsoft takes issue with it. Or could it the case of you can DRM but don't rootkit with me?

Sony to recall all XCP DRM Music CD’s
November 16th, 2005
With the revelation that the web uninstall activeX controll is a greater security risk than the original Rootkit. It makes the mind boggle at where this will go next. Sony have released an update that is now in downloadable .exe or .zip format which eliminates any more downloads of the activeX component.. If you were one of the people unfortuante enough to have had their favorite music do this to your personal computer I am very sorry you have had to endure this.
Freedom to Tinker has a post pointing to USAToday, they have posted an article regarding Sony doing a full-product recall of all CD’s containg First4Internet’s XCP DRM software.

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=927#comments
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2005-11-14-sony-cds_x.htm?csp=34