Protect your market by killing it?

A measure of intellectual property protection is important in many industries but why does think its right to protect an album is superior to our right to safe computing?

The Sony rootkit fiasco is deepening, now viruses are being designed to exploit it. Malware is a big enough problem as it is without a music company driving a coach and horses through our protection, and all for the sake of bands who are mostly mediocre. Let's face it, when anti virus companies are so concerned they blacklist your rights management code the situation looks pretty dire.

Now in a free market we're all told exists the answer would be simple; just don't buy the product. But the music industry isn’t exactly a free market – after all when the top five music companies and top three retailers collude on price fixing what else are they willing to do to preserve their stranglehold on the market.

In the short term there's not a lot we can do about it, it takes a lot to give up bands you've cherished over the years. What we really need is a test case for the right to return CDs with duff copy protection, either that or the kind of massive class action suit that only American juries can hand out.