Sony, Microsoft, and digital rights management

Many computer users like to think pirating software or music is a victimless crime. After all, how is installing the latest version OS X from one disk onto both your desktop Mac and your PowerBook a big deal? Apple won’t know, and the stuff is so expensive to begin with, you should be able to do what you want with the software once you’ve bought it. Be that as it may, the problem is that protecting intellectual property matters to millions of people, from blockbuster recording artists through to shareware authors selling their wares for ten bucks a throw.

Recently, Sony have embedded a technology known as XCP into some of their music CDs. The idea is that XCP, short for Extended Copy Protection, limits what users can do with the CD. While the disc will play normally on a generic CD player, on a computer it will limit the number of copies that can be made, effectively preventing mass production of bootleg CDs. Ripping songs is also limited, making MP3 file sharing impossible (and incidentally preventing the music from being played in iTunes or on the iPod).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4434852.stm

While this may be annoying, the underlying aims are fair and just. Huge amounts of music are illegally copied and shared on the Internet, and all Sony have done is to try and restrict this. There’s nothing to stop you playing the CD on a CD-player or on a computer (though only through their own, proprietary, music player).

Incidentally, Mac and Linux users aren’t affected at all: the XCP software is Windows-only, so these copy-protected CDs work just like tradtional CDs on those computers.

What’s garnered the criticism from Microsoft isn’t so much that the software targets only users of their operating systems, but that the software buries itself in the Windows system software in pretty much the same way as viruses and other malicious software. The program adopts a misleading name for a start, “Plug and Play Device Manager”. Not only does the XCP software do nothing for plug and play functionality, by using this name, users will associate it with device drivers rather than media players.

Other tricks it uses include deliberately hiding itself from the system software and intercepting data moving in and out of the CD drive. Potentially, exactly this kind of software allows third parties to hide other programs or gather information about the user and send them off to some remote location. Finally, there’s no consensus that the license agreement that comes with the CDs actually covers the right for Sony to install hidden, potentially disruptive, software on the end user’s computer.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, the software is malware — it opens up the operating system to security threats and reduces the efficiency of the system. From next month, their security tools weill remove XCP from Windows systems.

Why should Microsoft care? At one level, they’re simply responding to consumer pressure. Whether or not the software Sony installs actually does serious harm is much less important than the fact that this is a high-profile example of yet another security flaw in Windows XP. Microsoft have to be seen to be reacting.

But at another level, Microsoft must be threatened by the idea that media giants like Sony can adapt the Windows operating system to suit their own needs. Microsoft does of course have its own media formats and digital rights management software, and certainly doesn’t want to see unrestricted copying and sharing of music. However, what Microsoft does need to do is maintain control over the way Windows operating systems handle multimedia files such as video and audio.

Ultimately, Sony backed down, and the XCP software is no longer being installed on any of their CDs. At least not in its present form, it is unlikely to come back. But there surely is no question that the music business will be watching what happens with interest. Apple managed to get the major labels on board the iTunes Music Store by assuring them that any music sold can only be played and copied in a restrictive way.

Music sold on CDs remains much more vulnerable to unrestricted duplication, and the music industry remains committed to curbing this type of theft as much as possible. Once some sort of “smart CD” becomes accepted by the marketplace, expect every music, video, and software company to take it up with enthusiasm.