Sony class action coming soon…?

From an InternetNews.com article by Jim Wagner:

As details of Sony’s secretive digital rights management protections come to light, its actions are prompting not-so-secret opposition from privacy advocates.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is currently investigating Sony’s anti-piracy tactics in order to determine whether the organization will file a class-action lawsuit in the coming weeks against the music giant, said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney at the EFF.

A privacy organization in Italy, the Electronic Frontiers Italy (ALCEI), on Friday filed papers with authorities claiming Sony BMG was responsible for “illicit actions” in Italy and seeks penal denunciation against the company for secretly inserting software into consumer computers.

Schultz said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of lawsuits from other organizations as a result of Sony’s recent activities and that, “the more we find out about it the more illegal it seems,” he said.

“This is exactly what happens with spyware that gets installed on people’s computers, they have these 27-page license agreements in which you totally agree to let them infest your computer with all kinds of stuff you really don’t want,” he said. “But it’s all kind of buried in the fine print and I think to allow companies like Sony BMG to do the same thing is heading down a bad path.”

Here’s a bit about what Sony BMG does:

Sony uses an anti-piracy software component developed by First 4 Internet out of the United Kingdom, Extended Copy Protection (XCP), which installs a rootkit (define)&bsp;onto the user’s computer to monitor their computer’s activities.

The software monitors all processes running on the computer, ostensibly to determine whether any ripping technology is being used to make illegal copies of the software. However, XCP runs behind a rootkit, which cloaks the software’s activities and is a common tactic used by malware writers to disguise their activities.

Very sneaky, if you ask me…