More fallout from the Sony Rootkit fiasco - the person quoted here works a Saturday shift at a classical music station. Here's what the DRM publicity has done for Sony:

The prospect of taking a recent Sony release into the production studio, and using a selection from it for a pre-recorded program, or one of the staff popping it into the CD drive of their desk computer to review… and corrupting the production and library index on which the whole station depends… well, it is enough to give us all the cold shivers. I’ve been told that the station librarian is not ordering any new Sony classical releases until this whole thing is resolved. Now, there are probably series techies out there who can explain that the chances of this happening are pretty low, that Sony’s anti-piracy spyware couldn’t possibly damage our library and production set-up, and would they even bother doing this with classical releases anyway? But however small that chance would be, we still can’t take it. CD’s with potentially damaging programs hidden in them, versus the security of systems upon which the whole station’s programming depends?

My wife was commenting on this vis-a-vis "mission critical" systems last night - how happy do you suppose the IT staff at your company is going to be when they discover that security holes opened by Sony's DRM allowed malware to get into the network? Especially when all the employee in question did is pop a CD into his laptop while he was on a plane, so he could listen to some music? Never mind what the actual risk of that happening is - the fact is, this is well on its way to being perceived fact.

The upside: with any luck, the negativity will be aimed at DRM in general.