MP3 Players

[polomint38]

This may not be the correct place to post this question, if not then sorry.

On Monday night, I downloaded some music form bittorrent to my firends Creative Zen Xtra Player and to my Creative Zen Media vision M 30GB. Later that night the Zen Xtra reported a firmware problem and the Zen Media vision stopped responding altogether.

Is this a terrible coincidence or is there any viruses that target media players? If so is there any software to scan for them.

Fortunately both units were still under warranty, so it is only a pain the wotsit, not costing us money.

I thank you in advance for any information you have regarding this point.

[odannyboy000]

Hmm, I hope you learned never to pirate music.

[mjc]

I'm not sure if 'virus' is the right thing to go looking for, but some of the copy protection schemes that have been talked about in the past were going to be able to do that kind of stuff...whether or not something like that has actually been implemented is unknown (other than it sure sounds like something the RIAA would try to do...).

[BryanL]

I'm not sure if 'virus' is the right thing to go looking for, but some of the copy protection schemes that have been talked about in the past were going to be able to do that kind of stuff...whether or not something like that has actually been implemented is unknown (other than it sure sounds like something the RIAA would try to do...).

I don't think something like that has been implemented as a security/piracy check, it would be way too complex first of all and the legal issue is also at question.
To create a 'virus' or 'bug' that shuts down all (since I'm sure they wouldn't take only one media player into consideration) use of the MP3 player would be way too difficult; all media players aren't the same and you'd have to create a unique bug for each system that one is run under.
As for the legal issue, the RIAA wouldn't be doing this in the first place. To download copyrighted files in such a way (piracy) is unquestionably (in the USA) illegal, but to 'break' the devices we use could be considered property damage and I'm sure RIAA has thought of that, too. It would be a legal backlash right in their direction.

So I highly doubt this is the case. Granted, I don't know everything.

[mjc]

As for the legal issue, the RIAA wouldn't be doing this in the first place. To download copyrighted files in such a way (piracy) is unquestionably (in the USA) illegal, but to 'break' the devices we use could be considered property damage and I'm sure RIAA has thought of that, too. It would be a legal backlash right in their direction.

So I highly doubt this is the case. Granted, I don't know everything.

Quite true...but, remember all the fuss over "Trusted Computing Platform"?

One of the things that would be very doable under that is totally shutting down the machine if the OS was suspect...now, look at all the activation problems with Vista (and even MS admitted several months back that a large number of those were false positives).

I'm not saying that it actually is something the RIAA IS doing, just something that they have discussed doing...and since when has the RIAA been concerned with legal ramifications (suing people who don't even have an internet service/connection---just the tip of the iceberg; I won't even get into the contracts that basically turn a 'gold' album into a 'pennies per hour' job for the artists)?

But the one thing that clearly stands out with this problem, is that it does have the earmarks of some sort of DRM/copy protection run amok, especially since the Zen line is one of the players that utilize the WM formats.