Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or were cooling your heels off in Sub-Saharan Africa, you would have heard of the *huge* debate around the SONY-BMG music CD rootkits. Just in case, A few of Sony CDs surreptitiously installed what are known in hacker terminology as rootkits that are capable of shielding their presence in the PC. And experts now are worried this has opened up a real security threat since most IS managers have always assumed that audio CDs are harmless(most still are). More than the security aspect, what I’m concerned is the manner in which a giant like Sony behaved. It is one thing to go behind known mass-pirates of mp3 or serving up old grannies with legal suits. But it is completely another to actually get into the PC of a person who *bought* the CD and not tell him/her about it !! To me, it is yet another of the growing instances of the separation between media publishers and end consumers. Yes, there have been debates umpteen on piracy and DRM(Digital Rights Management), but to actually see a company of the size of Sony resort to such pre-emptive theft-prevention seems a slap in the face of the customer who spent his/her $$$. Like some wise-soul so very rightly pointed out on a /. discussion, probably downloading a single plain mp3 file is *much* safer than actually buying a CD and ripping it off for your ipod !!

And not long ago, I had pointed to an article on how the Korean Genetic scientist Hwang Woo-Suk was accused of giving his American partner too much leeway in their research, thus endangering his “Nobel” options !! And now, I see that the two have parted ways over ethical practices…Maybe I am too cynical, but the whole argument just doesn’t gel ;)
And Just in case you haven’t heard of, Do check out Google Analytics. They are now providing the entire package that used to cost $200 for free…Time to say adieu to statcounter ?? ;)