of certain releases in certain markets in late 2001, and a late 2002 report indicated that all BMG CDs sold in Europe would contain some form of copy protection. Copy-protection software The two pieces of copy-protection software at issue in the 2005–2007 scandal were included on over 22 million CDs marketed by Sony BMG, the record company formed by the 2004 merger of Sony and BMG's recorded music divisions. About two million of those CDs, spanning 52 titles, contained First 4 Internet (F4I)'s Extended Copy Protection (XCP), which was installed on Microsoft Windows systems after the user accepted the EULA, which made no mention of the software. The remaining 20 million CDs, spanning 50 titles, contained SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3, which was installed on either Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X systems after the user was presented with the EULA, regardless of whether the user accepted it. However, Mac OS X prompted the user for confirmation when the software attempted to modify the OS, whereas Windows did not. XCP rootkit The scandal erupted on October 31, 2005 when Winternals (later acquired by Microsoft Corporation) researcher Mark Russinovich posted to his blog a detailed description and technical analysis of F4I's XCP software that he determined had been recently installed on his computer by a Sony BMG music CD. Russinovich compared the software to a rootkit because of its surreptitious installation and efforts to hide its existence. He noted that the EULA does not mention the software, and he charged that the software is illegitimate and that digital rights management had "gone too far". Anti-virus firm F-Secure concurred: "Although the software isn't directly malicious, the used rootkit hiding techniques are exactly the same used by malicious software to hide. The DRM software will cause many similar false alarms with all AV software that detect rootkits. ... Thus it is very inappropriate for commercial software to use these techniques." After public pressure, Symantec and other anti-virus vendors included detection for the rootkit in their products as well, and Microsoft announced that it would include detection and removal capabilities in its security patches. Russinovich discovered numerous problems with XCP: It creates security holes that can be exploited by malicious software such as worms or viruses. It constantly runs in the background and excessively consumes system resources, slowing down the user's computer, regardless of whether a protected CD is playing. It employs unsafe procedures to start