The Sony rootkit, for those of you whose only knowledge of computers is how to get here to Hoystory, was a piece of software that came packaged with certain music CDs and was installed on computers without the owners' knowledge or permission. This rootkit was designed in such a way to make it difficult to remove and could allow hackers and virus-writers a hiding place on computers. The puropose of the rootkit was to prevent you from making 2.5 million copies of the music and then sharing it with your cousin's half-brother's aunt's roommate from college. After howls of angry protest (and civil suits), Sony removed the offending CDs from stores and promised not to be idiots again for at least six months.

Sony makes the loons at Starforce -- a company that writes software that is designed to prevent you from making copies of video games for your cousin's half-brother's aunt's roommate from college -- look like Mother Theresa. Now, if you follow the trail of breadcrumbs links back to their source, there may be some doubt about whether or not this claim is accurate. However, when Starforce was confronted with the claim, they apparently did not deny it, and instead attacked the people publicizing it as part of the mafia.

What is the claim? That the Starforce software packaged with (mainly) videogames and some other commercial programs will reboot your computer without warning and without allowing you to save any work if it somehow suspects you're doing "illegal" copying.

Starforce and Sony's problems are that they've crossed a line in their efforts to prevent piracy -- instead of doing something with the CD or game that secures it on their end, they've enlisted the user's own computer (without their informed consent) in their efforts. Of course, they're unwilling to take responsibility for what goes wrong when their less-than-rigorously tested software causes injury to the end user, whether it is because of lost work/data or, in the case of Starforce, unnecessary wear and tear on a computer's optical drives.

I understand the need to prevent music, movie and software piracy -- but there's got to be a better solution than alienating your customers because you treat each and every one line a potential criminal. Having to show your receipt while walking out of a CompUSA, Frys or Costco -- especially when they're not moving quickly -- can be annoying, but this sort of "digital rights management" is more like being strip-searched every time you leave the store.

Do they really believe that people will keep coming back?