Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals.com has documented his experience with Sony’s new copy-protected CDs: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far. It’s a bone-chilling story. According to Mark, just inserting one of Sony’s copy-protected CDs into your computer installs unwanted software on your computer. The software installs as a device driver that hides itself using techniques that are the same as those used by viruses and Trojan horses. It does this without any notification or any attempt to obtain your consent. Mark reports:
Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.
Researchers at F-Secure were working on similar results at the same time and have now published their results:
Although the software isn’t itself malicious, the hiding techniques used are exactly the same that malicious software known as rootkits use to hide themselves. The DRM software will cause many similar false alarms with all AV software that detect rootkits.
The hiding techniques used by the DRM software can be abused by less technical malware authors to hide their backdoors and other tools. If a malware names its files beginning with the prefix ‘$sys, the files will also be hidden by the DRM software. Thus it is very inappropriate for commercial software to use these techniques.
According to Mark’s research, any attempt to remove this software will essentially disable their CD or DVD drive if they try to remove this crap.
This is beyond sleazy. Whoever approved this software should be forced into court and made to pay damages. I’m not a lawyer, but it also could violate several criminal statutes.
Screw you, Sony. You’re not getting another dime from me in any way.
Follow-up: Sony’s even sleazier than I thought and Sony tries to stop the bleeding.
Ed Bott 
A similar thing happened to me. I inserted my newly-purchased Foo Fighters CD, In Your Honor, and up popped up a window. I cancelled the window, but during the autoload, a driver had been installed my computer that enabled DRM for this CD and prevented me from listening to the CD. A Google search directed me to a solution (via the Foo Fighters forum no less) and I was able to disable and uninstall the driver and was able to copy the CD into mp3 files. But it did annoy me that the driver was installed without my approval. It also annoyed me that the warning about the CD being copy protected was barely legible. I’m so grateful for being treated like a thief for legally purchasing a product – it made me remember why I don’t buy CDs anymore.
According to the original post, it does pop up a EULA where it does say that it will install some software (link). Just doesn’t specify quite how evil that software will be.
Charles, I’ve noted your comment and added some important details in a follow-up post here.
Stuff like this just drives people away. The record companies still haven’t figured out how to change the business model, and in turn try to stop consumers from coping files. I hope this ends up in court somewhere.