Sony Finally Offers Rootkit CD Exchanges

UPDATED: View the official SonyBMG consumer response here.

"Ultimately, the experience of consumers is our primary concern, and our goal is to help bring our artists’ music to as broad an audience as possible.  Going forward, we will continue to identify new ways to meet demands for flexibility in how you and other consumers listen to music."  

It may be a case of too little too late but Sony BMG has finally responded to the rootkit controversy by offering exchanges to affected customers. Apparently customers will soon be able to swap their protected CDs for a non-protected version. The rootkit software controversy affects 20 titles and over 2 million customers. The exchange offer follows an earlier pledge by Sony to halt production of the copy-protected discs entirely. Affected discs have the address http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/ printed on the back.

But despite these efforts the controversy is growing as Various security firms have stated that on the uninstall package that Sony has offered to remove the rootkit actually exposes users to even more potential viruses. And SunnComm, an anti-piracy firm that supplies an alternate protection system for Sony is also under careful scrutiny with several possible issues concerning consumers and  computer experts.

Stay tuned as the major labels continue to walk into the arena of public opinion and and commit a slow form of suicide…