Virus on Beastie Boys CD

Read this gem on the Register. Seems that when you run the latest Beastie Boys cd on your computer, it silently runs an executable that prevents you from ripping that CD and possibly other CDs on the computer.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/23/beastie_boy_cd_virus/?index

Posted by jen on June 26, 2004 at 12:40 PM
Comments

I blogged about this a few days back on my site:

http://www.nathanpitman.com/blog/index.php?id=204

I hear that the Beasties have a statement regarding the claim RE Malware on their site.

Posted by: Nathan Pitman at June 26, 2004 01:36 PM

Naturally the Beastie Boys and/or their various people at EMI/Capitol Recods would like to say it ain't so... But yeah, Nathan is 1001% correct, you can read their angle over at http://www.beastieboys.com/news.php

Or, on the off chance that page gets updated or modified, I'll quote their responses below:

1. There is NO copy controlled software on US or UK releases of Beastie Boys' "To the 5 Boroughs."

2. The disk *IS* copy controlled in Europe - which is standard policy for all
Capitol/EMI titles (and a policy used by ALL major labels in Europe).

3. The copy protection system used for all EMI/Capitol releases including "To the 5 Boroughs" is Macrovision's CDS-200, which sets up an audio player into the users RAM (not hard drive) to playback the RED book audio on the disk. It does absolutely NOT install any kind of spyware, shareware, silverware, or ladies wear onto the users system.

You can find more information on the technology used here:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/cds/cds200/index.shtml

This is what EMI has to say about it:
Reports that "spyware" is being included on the Beastie Boy's CD, 'To The Five Boroughs' are absolutely untrue.

While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories, there is no copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology; the same technology being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does NOT install spyware or vaporware of any kind on a users PC. In fact, CDS-200 does not install software applications of ANY KIND on a user's PC. All the copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on the physical properties and the format of the CD. None of the copy protection in CDS-200 requires software applications to be loaded onto a computer.

The technology does activate a proprietary Macrovision player in order to play the CD on a PC, and that player converts WMA compressed files to audio on the fly. It also temporarily installs a graphic "skin" for the player. Nothing is permanently installed on a hard drive. These details can be verified in the 'install.log' file in the computer's root directory.

I've heard from a few people now that the new CD isn't that fantastic anyways... seems to have its fair share of profanity (which I find odd for the Beastie Boys, but hey, times change).

Rock rock on.

Posted by: peter at June 26, 2004 06:32 PM

Indeed rock, rock on. Thanks for the additional info. And the Macrovision tie brings the whole story back in line with Macromedia/this blog. Nice tie in...

Posted by: Jen at June 26, 2004 07:43 PM

I had blogged about this too:
http://www.asvguy.com/2004/06/ot_beastie_boys.html

Best regards,
Burak

Posted by: Burak KALAYCI at June 26, 2004 08:30 PM

Get a mac... none of this crap matters to you then.

Heh.

Posted by: Chad Udell at June 28, 2004 09:28 AM

Except this thing affects Macs too. In addition, songs don't work on iPod.

Posted by: Jen at June 28, 2004 12:06 PM