It may be illegal to, "defang even potentially harmful software, like the anticopying technology found on some Sony BMG Music Entertainment CDs," says CNET News.

But, "Strict legal restrictions" should stay in effect, entertainment industry lobbyists said Friday, urging the US Copyright Office to, "avoid making any changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," it states.

For 'entertainment industry lobbyists' read the Big Four record labels and Big Six movie studios which used to control everything punters saw or heard. Then along came the Net and for the first time, people were able to freely tell each other what was really happening, and about the many non-corporate applications which are available online.

Now, entertainment industry lobbyists are urging the US Copyright Office not to make changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, if the Hollywood-inspired DMCA stays as it is, researchers could be stopped from, "notifying the public about security flaws in digital products," the story states.

Mark Russinovich and Finland's F-Secure may have separately and independently discovered the Sony BMG rootkit DRM, although according to CNET, Princeton University's professor Ed Felten and graduate student Alex Halderman, "uncovered the Sony problem a month before the news about it broke in November - but feared a lawsuit under Section 1201 of the DMCA if they disclosed it without the record label's authorization".

F-Secure research director Mikko Hypponen said as far as he was aware, the system had been in use since March, 2005. Be that as it may, because of the lag time, "a great many of consumers were at risk every day," says Felten in the CNET story.

The First 4 Internet XCP, SunnComm MediaMax, software was hidden on Sony BMG CDs and secretly installed on buyers' computers when they played the music.

When news of this first broke, Thomas Hesse, who runs the Sony BMG global digital business, blandly described the issue as "slight" and said, "Most people, I think, do not even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

Sony BMG came up with a supposed 'uninstall' but as Finland's Matti Nikki discovered, the cure was as bad as the complaint.

"Previous DMCA exemptions granted by the Copyright Office include: Researchers into filtering could study blacklisting techniques, and obsolete copy-protection schemes could be legally bypassed," says CNET, adding:

"When reviewing the DMCA, the Library of Congress is required to consider the impact that the anticircumvention sections have 'on criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research (and) the effect of circumvention of technological measures on the market for or value of copyrighted works.'

"The Copyright Office received more than 100 comments on its notice of proposed rulemaking published last year and plans to release its final determinations by the end of October. Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, said that the office has reached no conclusions yet on any of the exemptions."

Also See:
CNET News - Seeking changes to the DMCA, March 31, 2006
March, 2005 - New: Sony BMG rootkit DRM, November 1, 2005
cure was as bad - Malware tech for all ; ), November 15, 2005