You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Sony DRM Rootkit fiasco. Just to recap, Sony BMG CDs installed a rootkit as part of their copy-protection scheme. The software hides itself on Windows computers, and acts like malware, and can break systems if users try to remove it. It even phones home back to Sony — some people say it sends back info about the CD being listened to; the company that made the software says it simply looks for updated banners for the program people must use to listen to the CD on their computers. In any case, it’s a real mess for Sony, and they’re doing a typically crappy job of dealing with it, displaying all the arrogance that so endears people to entertainment companies.

Now, they’re being sued, too, in a few US states and in Italy. The lawsuits were inevitable, really, but the widespread reaction of people to this has been pretty amazing, and further evidence that the tide is turning against copy protection. This has put Sony’s efforts under the microscope (exposing the absolutely ridiculous EULA for the corrupt CDs, for one thing), but has also clued people in to the fact that DRM and copy protection are giant trojan horses used by the entertainment industry. It starts with “this is so you can’t copy stuff so much,” but it’s just a ruse to lock down as many playback devices as they can in an attempt to wring as much money out of consumers as possible.

Typical people typically don’t really care about DRM, so long as their iTunes music plays on their iPod and so on. But its pervasive use is slapping the general public in the face with increasing frequency, whether it’s when they realize they can’t buy music from Napster and listen to it on their iPod, they can’t rip all the songs from a CD onto their computer or they’ve gotten a virus because Sony assumes they’re a criminal. The situation has to change, and change quickly, or the entertainment industry is going to copy-protect itself into the grave.

Update: Rather unsurprisingly, the CD that spurred my initial moment of clarity about the stupidity of DRM is one of Sony’s spyware discs.