More on CD installs virus/spyware

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Wittig <wittigjr () gmail com>
Date: June 25, 2004 9:14:45 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: More on CD installs virus/spyware

From http://www.beastieboys.com/news.php

TT5B Copy Control Issues
Jun 22, 2004 - 1:40 pm
By BeastieBoys.com
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.

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