From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V10 #175 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Friday, June 25 2004 Volume 10 : Number 175 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Today's your birthday, friends... [Mike Matthews ] Re: Sarah Harmer in Australia. [heidi maier ] music cd which installs an application ... [karen hester Subject: Today's your birthday, friends... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ********************** Dave Torok (no Email address) ********************** ************** Ethan Straffin (straffin@xenon.stanford.edu) *************** *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dave Torok Mon June 24 1968 Cancer Ethan Straffin Thu June 24 1971 Cancer Kevin Dekan Mon June 27 1960 Cancer Samantha Tanner Tue June 30 1970 Wild Goose BunkyTom Tue July 02 1968 Cancer Anders Hallberg Tue July 03 1962 Cancer Kevin Harkins Thu July 05 1973 Cancer Laurel Krahn Mon July 05 1971 Cancer John J Henshon Mon July 05 1954 The Year Of The Horse / Ruled By The Moon Jim Gurley Mon July 06 1959 Cancer Lisa Rouchka Fri July 08 1960 Moonchild with Java Rising Courtney Dallas Fri July 09 1971 Catte Michael Peskura Sat July 09 1949 HallOfFamer Finney T. Tsai Sat July 09 1966 Cancer Larry Greenfield Tue July 11 1950 Virgo Rising; Gemini Moon Marion Kippers Tue July 13 1965 Kreeft Ellen Rawson Thu July 13 1961 Double Cancer Mitch Pravatiner Mon July 14 1952 Cancer R. Rapp Wed July 14 1954 On a Gray Eye Sojourn John Zimmer Sun July 16 1961 Cancer Dan Stark Sun July 16 1961 Cancer Cathy Guetzlaff Mon July 18 1955 Cancer Vlad Sat July 18 1970 Warning: severe tire damage Jani Pinola Thu July 20 1972 Jonquil - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 18:33:59 +1000 From: heidi maier Subject: Re: Sarah Harmer in Australia. robert wrote: > Sarah Harmer will be on ABC Radio National this coming Saturday, > http://www.abc.net.au/rn/music/mshow/ > The audio should be available at this address for those in other countries. thanks for posting this. it seems that's as close to seeing sarah live as i'll be getting -- people in brisbane apparently have no taste in music: her show up here has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales. yeah, people'll pay the big bucks to see justin timberlake prance about onstage, but a true singer- songwriter like sarah? evidently not. really disappointing. heidi. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:19:01 -0700 (PDT) From: karen hester Subject: music cd which installs an application ... Read this on Russell Brown's blog today: "I know too many people who work in the music industry to believe, as some do, that it is home to unfettered evil - it's not unreasonable in principle to defend your copyrights - but EMI's latest stunt is simply despicable. The latest Beastie Boys CD secretly installs an application when it is inserted in either a PC or a Mac. The secret driver prevents any tracks from being copied to the hard drive. EMI is effectively installing a virus. If EMI really wants legislators to go ahead and forcibly remove its copyrights, it's going precisely the right way about it. Don't you dare, ever install anything on my computer without telling me, okay? Bastards." - - from http://publicaddress.net/default,1303.sm __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 21:11:24 -0400 From: Philip David Morgan Subject: OT - Re: music cd which installs an application ... Hello, Karen et.al.: Forwarded here is The Register's take on the story of EMI's "virus," which (as of this post) apparently hasn't been unleashed in the States or the UK - although anything these days is possible. (As if EMI had anything more left to lose, save for their "greatest recording organisation in the world" line - or what's left of it.) Amusingly enough, the Beasties' new album is now the No. 1 CD in the States, knocking out Bertelsmann's _Contraband_ by the group Velvet Revolver. The Register has ID'd this one as a "locked-down" CD - this time, using SunComm's MediaMax system, which like Cactus Data Shield 200, won't play nice with any non-Windows computer. (And now I understand that Koch International will be MediaMaxing CDs; whether they'll be used solely on Koch-branded discs or forced onto the labels they market is another story.) Philip David (get me to the Internet Archive) http://www.livejournal.com/users/yougasa 2004.06.24-25 - ---- Beastie Boys CD installs virus By Thomas C Greene Published Wednesday 23rd June 2004 11:18 GMT http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/23/beastie_boy_cd_virus/ A new Beastie Boys' CD called "To the Five Boroughs" ([EMI-]Capitol Records), is raising hackles around the Web for reputedly infecting computers with a virus. According to a recent thread at BugTraq, an executable file is automatically and silently installed on the user's machine when the CD is loaded. The file is said to be a driver that prevents users from ripping the CD (and perhaps others), and attacks both Windows boxes and Macs. The infected CD is being distributed worldwide except in the USA and UK, which prevents us from giving a firsthand report. However, according to hearsay, we gather that the Windows version exploits the 'autorun' option, and that the Mac version affects the auto play option. On Windows, when a CD is loaded, a text file called autorun.inf is read, and any instructions within it are executed. In this case, the machine is instructed to install some manner of DRM driver that prevents copying. We haven't seen either the .inf file or any of the executables, so we can't say how or at what level it accomplishes this - or if indeed it actually does accomplish this. But assuming that the unconfirmed reports are accurate, we have here a media company infecting users' machines silently with a file that affects a computer's functionality, without first obtaining informed consent: a likely violation of pretty much every jurisdiction's anti-hacking laws. It's possible to foresee criminal charges being brought at some point: after all, having a good reason for spreading malware has never been much of a defence in court. And a file that alters a computer's functioning without the owner's informed consent is the very definition of malware. Because this malware can be transferred from machine to machine on a removable disk, and requires user interaction to spread, it is, quite simply, a computer virus. (A worm, on the other hand, is distinguished by its ability to spread without user interaction.) CD virus protection Let's look at the ways this autorun business can be defeated. It's quite easy to disable autorun in Windows by holding down the Shift key when loading a CD. Unfortunately, this has to be done each time the CD is played. However, it's easy to insert the CD once with the Shift key depressed, and then simply rip the tracks to the hard disk. You can then use the CD in other devices, and listen to your corresponding MP3s or whatever on your computer. You can also disable the autorun "feature" on your Windows machine permanently so that this and other CDs infected with viruses won't affect you in the future. To do this, go to the Start menu ==> Run, and type in the command regedit. Your registry editor will launch. Navigate to the following key, and edit as shown: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom and set Autorun DWORD=0 It might be necessary to create the value, thus: Data Type: DWORD Value Name: Autorun Value: 0 As usual, you must reboot your Windows box for the changes to take effect. Disinfection The above procedure assumes that you haven't previously installed the suspected Capitol Records virus, or a similar one from another fine entertainment conglomerate. But if you have, you will need to find and uninstall the malware first. The autorun.inf file on the CD will likely indicate the name of the relevant file(s), the locations where they're installed, and any registry changes made. Armed with that information, go to the Windows 'uninstall' utility: Start menu ==> Settings ==> Control Panel ==> Add or Remove Programs ==> Change/Remove. Look for any program files referenced in the autorun.inf file and uninstall them. If no related programs are listed, you will need to launch the Windows Search Companion and search for any files named in the autorun.inf file and delete them manually. Be sure to activate the options in the "more advanced features" dialog allowing you to search the entire disk (search system folders, search hidden folders, and search subfolders). Now, a word of caution: if the Capitol Records virus has updated a library file or driver, deleting it might affect your system's functioning, and you might need to re-install Windows to put things right again. (Carefully log the time needed to do this and include it in your criminal complaint.) However, deleting a foreign executable file is safe, so long as it's not one you actually need. So be careful about file name spellings so that you don't accidentally delete an important file that's spelt similar to the one you wish to be rid of. - --- Thomas C Greene is the author of _Computer Security for the Home and Small Office_, a comprehensive guide to system hardening, malware protection, online anonymity, encryption, and data hygiene for Windows and Linux. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 17:54:59 -0700 From: Nadyne Mielke Subject: Re: music cd which installs an application ... On 24 Jun 2004, at 17:19, karen hester wrote: > Read this on Russell Brown's blog today: > "I know too many people who work in the music industry to believe, as > some > do, that it is home to unfettered evil - it's not unreasonable in > principle to defend your copyrights - but EMI's latest stunt is simply > despicable. The latest Beastie Boys CD secretly installs an application > when it is inserted in either a PC or a Mac. The secret driver prevents > any tracks from being copied to the hard drive. EMI is effectively > installing a virus. If EMI really wants legislators to go ahead and > forcibly remove its copyrights, it's going precisely the right way > about > it. Don't you dare, ever install anything on my computer without > telling > me, okay? Bastards." > - from http://publicaddress.net/default,1303.sm EMI does this for all of their releases, except for those in the US and the UK. I first encountered it when I imported the first single from Paul Kelly's latest release. It won't play at all in any of my Windows machines, but is happy in my Mac (OS 10.3.3) and my Linux box. I was able to make MP3s [1] via iTunes, so I can listen to it on my iPod. The CD player in my car won't recognise it, but the CD player in my alarm clock will. I dunno if it's still true, but at the time of the PK release (which was one of EMI's first forays into Digital Rights Management (DRM)), the CDs that EMI was producing with DRM were so far off of the CD standard that EMI actually couldn't use the CD logo on them. A lot of people have trouble playing them in standard CD players, let alone in their computer CD-ROM drives. /nm [1] Actually, AACs, 'cause I'm giving them a go for awhile. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 21:21:36 -0400 From: "Cynthia Conrad" Subject: Re: music cd which installs an application ... "karen hester" quoted Russell Brown: > The latest Beastie Boys CD secretly installs > an application when it is inserted in either a > PC or a Mac. The secret driver prevents > any tracks from being copied to the hard drive. > Don't you dare, ever install anything > on my computer without telling > me, okay? Bastards." Here's something I read today on the same topic: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5242774.html?tag=adnews ==Cynthia== ==================================== Blood Ruby - blud roo'-bee (n.) atmospheric alternative music somewhere in the vein of dream pop, ethereal and neoprogressive rock See also www.blood-ruby.com ==================================== ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 00:30:33 -0700 From: "abaton" Subject: The Russian "Singing Poet" Julia Vorontsova Julia Vorontsova will be performing LIVE on WPRB FM Princeton Radio "All Ages Show" this Saturday, June 26th at around 2 pm EST. Make sure your stream is working! WPRB online: http://www.wprb.com/ She will also perform two shows on Sunday the 27th before she leaves New York City for Germany. They are: The last evening of her residency at Pianos. Pianos is at 158 Ludlow Street NYC. She will perform at 9pm. This is a FREE show! Julia will then head uptown and do a 11pm show at the Bowery Poetry Club. The BPC is at 308 Bowery. $5 Let's send Julia off to Europe in good spirits! http://www.abatonbookcompany.us/JuliaVorontsova.html mdabc ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 13:20:34 +1000 From: andrew fries Subject: Re: music cd which installs an application ... karen hester wrote: > The latest Beastie Boys CD secretly installs an application > when it is inserted in either a PC or a Mac. The secret driver prevents > any tracks from being copied to the hard drive. EMI is effectively > installing a virus. And for this they should be sued for all they're worth, and boycotted until they are worth nothing. ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V10 #175 ***************************