Sony DRM Defeated With Adhesive Tape
Adding further insult to Sony's already considerable injury, tech research group Gartner has found that the digital rights management code that accompanies the Sony/First4Internet rootkit can be defeated with a piece of tape. The Gartner research note explains, "The user simply applies a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 — which contains the self-loading DRM software — unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD 'rip' programs continue to work as usual." The research note goes on to condemn efforts to secure CDs: "After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs. Gartner believes that it will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players." Back in 2002, Sony's "Key2Audio" technology was defeated by pen and ink.
