Sony. What a bunch of knobs.

That's really all I have to say about the current controversy about their root kits - which, if you've missed it, kids, is a type of mal-ware that sony are currently adding to their audio discs in order to prevent legitimate ripping and playing of music on Windows (and yes, it is just windows) computers. See this page on the BBC, and this one too. Basically, when you put the disc into your computer, it won't play in iTunes or whateva, but just in its own media player. And when you install it, it adds a whole pile of 'cloaked' crap that will basically f*ck up your machine if you ever find it and try to remove it.

So the thing to do is - avoid buying Sony/BMG CDs, or at least those with this crap on them; you can tell if a disc has this stuff on it because Phillips (inventors of the CD) have decreed that anything that restricts your ability to play the disc as you see fit means it is not a CD, and can't carry the CD symbol;
As far back as 2002, Philips representative Klaus Petri told Financial Times Deutschland that "those are silver discs with music data that resemble CDs, but aren't".

Or the other thing to do is to get a Mac owning friend to rip the songs for you, and burn or send them to you. Or just buy it from iTunes.

Sony, you are evil bastards at the best of times. And I can't think of a better way of pissing off all of those who legitimately buy music and want to use it on their computers. Well done.