Little ol’ me, I just like Trey Anastasio’s new single, Shine and wanted to buy the CD like a good, law-abiding non-file-sharing consumer. Now I find out it’s one of the Sony virus carriers [from BoingBoing].

How much of a nightmare for the Sony brand is this? First, you secretly spy on your customers by injecting potentially dangerous (and outright sneaky) software into their computers, then you claim it’s no big deal, then you release a horrendously complex and possibly even more invasive process for removing it (which might crash your system, just for kicks).

Then, as predicted, hackers are out writing viruses for your “benign” software.

And top it off, you let your lawyers make an ass out of you with a “surrender your first born” EULA (a EULA, on a music CD???). I still say that instead of marketing departments always needing to run everything past legal, it should be the other way around. Before you manufacture a PR, branding, and customer service nightmare for the sake of “protecting” the company, understanding how that will be received and perceived by your customers, media, and others might be worth a few minutes of due diligence.

I’m dropping this post under “Marketing” as a category because, frankly, that’s who is at fault here for Sony. Either for agreeing that this was a good idea, or bowing to legal, licensing, management, whoever and not sticking up for your customers. Sad.