I totally love this.

Software writers spot open source in SONY BMG CDs

Synopsis: There's a program called XCP that sony put on all its CD's to infiltrate your computer and stop you from ripping and burning their CD's. This program sits resident in your machine, like a virus, and it just so happens that it leaves backdoors open for spyware and other hacks.

This next bit really does sound like an April Fool's joke, but It's not. LAME software (really) is an open source project that plays mp3's. The XCP virus program on the SONY BMG cd's forces you to use an mp3 player that contains LAME components. Again, I swear to you I am not making this shit up.

Quote from the reuters article:

"We can confirm that at least 5 functions in the XCP software are identical to functions in LAME," said Thomas Dullien at security software firm Saber Security in Bochum, Germany, which specializes in the analysis of complex software.

Why is this a big deal? well, when you tightly integrate open source software components into your new CD trying to stop people from ripping off your CD's, but you don't tell anybody about it, then you violate open source copyright. I'll say that again: Sony can be found guilty of violating copyright in order to stop people from violating copyright. Using LAME software, no less.

I'm really not sure why this makes me so happy, but it does.

Of course it can be argued in the interim that, since they contain open source software tightly integrated into them, each of the questionable CD's (all since recalled) must also be open source now according to the terms of use of open source software.

I wanna know what the titles were. If anybody finds out, call me.