DRM is, to say the least, a hot subject these days. We probably are many who wonders exactly what and how much of this we will see with Vista, but the fact that Vista still is a while from release doesn’t stop companies from using different types of DRM-protection in CD’s, for example. Mark Russinovich has encountered a new type of this which Sony has chosen to sneak out. It is about a small program running in the background, entirely invisible for you, and then controls all processes and files constantly.
The program was installed in the background when Mark was playing his new CD, which he knew contained copy-protection, but this wasn’t what he was expecting. He discovered the program by mere accident scanning his system for so called rootkits. In other words, small programs installed on your computer hidden for both you and Windows itself.
You can find the program on Mark’s webpage to scan your computer for so called rootkits. We recommend you to read the article though, before starting to modify Windows’ register or files.
Source: Sysinternals
