Copy Protection Controversy
In November 2005, it was revealed that Sony was distributing albums with Extended Copy Protection, a controversial feature that automatically installed rootkit software on any Microsoft Windows machine upon insertion of the disc. In addition to preventing the CDs contents from being copied, it was also revealed that the software reported the users' listening habits back to Sony and also exposed the computer to malicious attacks that exploited insecure features of the rootkit software. Though Sony refused to release a list of the affected CDs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation identified Nothing Is Sound as one of the discs with the invasive software.
Bassist Tim Foreman posted a way around the protection on the bands message boards. The original post was soon deleted, which caused some people to speculate that Sony would sue the band over this issue. However, no legal action has been taken. Jon Foreman would later say that he felt the album was "tainted" by this.
An additional copy protection problem was found on some of the disks that were published by EMI. These disks contained Cactus Data Shield copy protection. Ironically, some copies of that version were also recalled due to incorrect copy protection settings, although they were exchanged for other copy-protected copies with the correct settings.
Read more about this topic: Nothing Is Sound
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