According to numerous news stories - Sony in an effort to protect its Copyrighted music CDs seems to be pushing the envelope by employing digital rights management ("DRM") technology that is installed deep in the "root" of the Windows XP operating system and is very difficult to uninstall or remove.
This situation appears to be antagonized by the notion that the Sony DRM scheme is sending back data from consumers' computers to its server "mother-ship" acting like a de facto Trojan horse program. If the data it is sending back includes personal identifying information ("PII") like IP address or name or email address associated with click-stream and listening history there may be serious privacy rights legal issues that need to be addressed. Indeed, the DMCA may provide a safe harbor to bypassing copy protection schemes, like Sony's DRM, when privacy rights are implicated.
To be fair DRM, when used responsibly, can be a reasonable method to protect intellectual property rights. But as we are seeing one must balance the need for DRM with its impact on privacy and fair use - or consumers will vote with their pocketbooks by choosing other music CDs to buy.
We brought a case against Sunncomm (an early provider of DRM to the music industry) a number of years ago for their use of aggressive DRM on Charlie Pride CDs - the case was settled and the copy protection was ultimately removed. Here is a copy of the settlement agreement.
