Don't buy a CD (or anything else IMO) from Sony. As noted at the SysInternals blog and picked up by ZDnet, the Register and the Inquirer.net (also here and here), some (all?) recent Sony CDs come with a nice friendly rootkit to install on your windows PC (a rootkit for those not technically minded is a bit of software that installs itself at the root of the operating system and hides itself from the user while preventing said sucker from doing certain things and/or doing certain things itself which the user is probably unaware of).
This is, to put it bluntly, a really really bad thing. Even if the rootkit were well written and its installation clearly explained, neither of which applies to the Sony one, this is a rather draconian way to treat the property of the purchaser of a piece of music. Given that this piece of code is sloppily written, almost impossible to uninstall and that even experienced computer users can install it without understanding its function it is even worse. The arrogant attitude that this behaviour illustrates really deserves to be taken down in a blaze of publicity. I do not at all condone the sharing of copyright material beyond basic "fair use" but it seems to me that in this case, as in many others, the response is in fact far worse than the crime.
It would be almost justifiable behaviour if the record label expected to stop piracy, or if it integrated with other DRM schemes but according to this press release by the creators neither is the case.
I won't be buying any more Sony products of any description because I simply don't trust them anymore.
Update: Courtesy of Baen's Bar is news that the rootkit makes it easy for hackers to screw with a MMORPG - World of Warcraft - by letting them hide programs that can help you cheat from the game program itself