The truth is not harmful, it is what it is.
I was about to blog in response to Susan Bradley's post "
Is the truth harmful?" asking if XCP copy protection was really all that bad and whether the disclosure of this technology (or rather the way in which it was disclosed) was harmful. The dubious technology known as XCP (eXtended Copy Protection) produced by Welsh firm First 4 Internet and deployed by Sony BMG on some of its music CDs was
first 'outed' by Mark Russinovich. I'm pleased to discover that Microsoft seems to share my opinion that this was malicious code. According to
this item and this one from the
Microsoft Malware Engineering Team, Microsoft intends to update its security tools to remove [XCP] copy protection. Well done Microsoft for taking a proactive stance on this one. I hope this technology cost Sony BMG a lot of money - I hope it was a
really expensive mistake that no-one will want to repeat.