i want to express my utter shock and outrage at the news that sony, which has laid some pretty big eggs in the past, is at it once again… apparently they included some surreptitious rootkit software in their audio CDs recently, which shows jaw-dropping contempt for their customers, for copyright law (such as it is), for fair trading and for the public interest… they lied about doing it (a sony executive said, in an interview broadcast on National Public Radio that “users don’t know what a rootkit is, and therefore, don’t care”…), lied about which audio CDs were affected (it turns out 100% of their audio CD library is affected), and then released a “rootkit remover” that removes their own rootkit (sort of) – in spite of the fact that they originally claimed it wasn’t there at all – but also trashes your system – windows and mac! boing boing has all the sordid details, but the upshot of the whole thing, so far, is that businesses are starting to outlaw sony-BMG-produced audio CDs in the workplace, if you didn’t take the precaution already, it’s a good idea not to install software from any audio CD, and you’d better be buying your music from somewhere else…