If you’ve seen or read the news in the past week at all, you know that there’s a controversy over Sony/BMG’s decision to put what amounts to a virus on some of their music CD’s.

The kids at Electronic Frontier Foundation did some research on the issue and offered the following list of known CD’s to be infected (this is not a complete list):

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver’s Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)

If you choose to purchase one of the listed CD’s… a word of caution: DO NOT put it in a Windows PC unless you’ve disabled the auto-run feature (or hold down the shift key when you put the CD in, which does the same thing for that time only). If you use the shift key method, don’t attempt to browse the CD by double clicking on your CD-ROM, rather, right click on it and select “explore” to view its contents.

How to tell if a CD you’re attempting to purchase has this garbage on it: Look at the spine and the back. If you see the following… buyer beware!:

The spine of the CD will be labeled as such

Look on the back for this message (at the bottom)

To be totally safe, just do what I and a lot of other people are doing…. don’t purchase any CD’s from Sony/BMG. Send them a message: We’re not going to take this crap. They shouldn’t be beating those of us who actually purchase music with a stick.