• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, December 21, 2006

Sony has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle spyware charges in California and Texas stemming from surreptitiously packaging anti-piracy software with its music CDs. Once loaded onto consumers' computers, the software sent information back to Sony and prevented some consumers from copying music and loading tracks on their iPods.

The misguided effort marked yet another attempt to exert far more control over digital music than ever existed over vinyl records or audio tapes. Not even the most aggressive of music company executives were able to successfully limit the number of times people could make their own tapes of songs they had purchased.

The fiasco also demonstrates that Sony has a profound misunderstanding of how quickly information travels online. It's safe to assume that Sony executives didn't anticipate that their spyware would be discovered as promptly as it was, much less that it would spark more than half a dozen lawsuits. Likely Sony also didn't anticipate just how fast some users would post plain-English instructions for disabling the software.

Record companies' attempts to control how people use music they've purchased--to stop them from copying or sharing tracks-- is clearly a losing battle. As consumers become increasingly Web-savvy, they're not likely to waste their money on CDs that come with restrictions limiting their ability to listen to the music they've purchased.