I’ve been chronicling my distate for DRM (Digital Rights Management) for a while now (see: Digital Music, DRM Music Madness, Happenings, I’ve Seen the Enemy and the Enemy is DRM, MediaMax DRM, DRM User’s Guide, and Customers and Microsoft) so I thought that I would comment on Sony’s latest DRM woes that’s been burning up the tech headlines.

Record labels, believing that customers that buy CDs are contributing to music piracy, have started implementing DRM schemes that discourage people from ripping the music tracks to their computer.

Sony’s latest attempt (see: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far by Mark Russinovich) to curtail this behavior comes in the form of surreptitiously installing software (called a Rootkit) on your machine that can cause damage to the operating system (in this case, Microsoft Windows) and has been known to report some information over the Internet without the user’s consent.

This is probably the best thing that’s happened in the fight against DRM so far. You’re probably thinking that I’m nuts, but bear with me.

This is good because Sony’s draconian implementation of DRM has catapulted the issue of DRM into the spotlight. In fact, there have already been two class-action law suits filed against Sony and I’m sure more are on their way. It’s possible, that if a judge rules favorably (against Sony) in this case, that CDs laden with Sony’s DRM will have to be removed from store shelves in California.

The outcome of this is bound to have ripple effect on the music industry for a long time.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of the CDs that has Sony’s DRM on it.