James Delahunty
15 Sep 2009 1:40
If you think back a few short years, you might remember a very controversial copy protection technology (XCP) used on a number of Sony BMG CD titles. The DRM used a rootkit to bury itself deep into the operating system and it was very hard to remove. Sony BMG settled a case with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States over the incident, but it stands as the biggest example of DRM going too far.
The incident still is causing ripples however. A German court has ordered a retailer to pay compensation to a man who has claimed financial losses due to the DRM. He had put a CD with the anti-piracy software on it into a number of his computers over time and the end result eventually was many hours dealing with virus alerts, attempted removals and restoring lost data.
He claimed that the incident caused him to lose man hours dealing with the situation, and sued over lost income. He claimed $2,200 in damages should be paid to him as a result of the rootkit infection, which came from an Anastacia CD. The German court ordered the retailer to pay the plaintiff about $1,750 in damages, according to Heise.de (German source).