[OT] Sony + DRM = RootKit??

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Sun, 2005-11-13 at 03:45 +0000, Jerry McBride wrote:
> On Thursday 03 November 2005 11:05, Federico Voges wrote:
> > http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051101-5514.html
> >
> > I wonder if you can play those CDs using Linux or Mac OS X (probably not).
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Fed.
> > 
> 
> Hi Fed,
> 
> They play perfectly under linux. 
> 
> On the sage advice of my 12 year old son, I  bought SWITCHFOOT, NOTHING IS 
> SOUND music cd today. It's on the list of being one of Sony's copy protected 
> releases and took it home. Once popped into my linux box, I was able to play 
> it like ordinary music cd's. I was even able to run cdmp3 across the disk and 
> rip the songs to mp3 and put them on the family music server for my son to 
> play.
> 
> I haven't bother to try this on a windows machine yet, but I HIGHLY suspect 
> that if you turn off the autorun feature you won't have much problems using 
> it there too.

On SUSE 10, if you put the CD in and let it be automounted, you will see
a number of programs. And a file called autorun.inf.

If you check in, say, k3b, you will see that the CD is a multi session
CD. The first session is the music. The second session is a data track,
which is the file system. As long as you have access to the various
sessions. you have access to the music direct. If the OS hides the
sessions, then you are at the mercy of the CD access software.


> 
> Cheers.
> 
> P.S.Since Sony chose not to hamper the playing of their cd's on the linux 
> platform :'), I'll continue buying their products.