Helpful Hint

I was talking to Mescalito last night about the new Trey Anastasio album, Shine, and he was saying that he didn't have it, and was scared to even get it since it has the wonderful Sony BMG Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection built in. That reminded me of a funny e-mail sent out buy someone in IT in my company. It's pretty informative. Check it out:

"It has recently been discovered that some CD's are installing "RootKits" on
your computer when you play them on your computer. If you have purchased a
CD that says "enhanced and copy protected" or some phrase similar to that
there is a good chance that you have the RootKit on your system. I'm not
going to go into the details of what a RootKit is, but I will tell you that
it opens your computer up to hackers regardless of your firewall or Virus
Scanner. It has also been discovered that the RootKit can cause weird things
to happen to your CD-Rom and sometimes cause a blue screen when you boot up.
The RootKit is installed as part of the copy protection that Music
Publishers have been implementing the last few years.

Due to the DCMA Law I can't tell you that the best way to avoid this is to
HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY WHEN YOU PUT A MUSIC CD INTO YOUR COMPUTER OR CLICK
"NO" WHEN IT ASKS YOU TO ACCEPT THE LICENSE AGREEMENT.

Due to that same law I don't advise listening to a short Podcast on iTunes
called "Security Now" to get more information on how to detect and remove
the RootKit.

I just want to repeat that I am not advising you to HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY
WHEN YOU PUT A MUSIC CD INTO YOUR COMPUTER OR CLICK "NO" WHEN IT ASKS YOU TO
ACCEPT THE LICENSE AGREEMENT."

I hope that helps.