they launched music cds with DRM protection.
DRM = digital rights managment.
the way they chose to 'protect' their digital copyrights was to install a program, unknownst to the consumer ripping their cd to their musical collection, that would not allow certain things to happen. the program was in the form of a rootkit - not sure what rootkit is exactly - but it was hidden, so that the user couldnt uninstall it. well, sony, when faced with legal issues regarding the installation of the unwanted program, decided to stop putting the rootkit on the music cds, but that didnt solve the issue of the current users who had already unknowingly installed this program. so sony released an uninstall program for that, and that just made things for the user's computer worse. on top of that, a virus was made that exploited such rootkit for what it was, and since there was no real way of removing it short of wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system and other programs and data, it was a nightmare for sony. and its still not over.