<snip>
For its part, First 4 Internet claimed the technology was only found on CDs from earlier this year and said it had created new methods to hide the DRM. Nonetheless, the company has decided to issue a patch to eliminate the cloaking and "allay any unnecessary concerns."

The patch will be made available for download from Sony BMG's Web site, with another offered directly to antivirus vendors. The DRM software will not be removed, however, only uncovered; that means users will still be unable to delete it without risk of rendering their CD drive inoperable.

Customers must contact Sony BMG support for removal instructions.
</snip>

(copied from mail list)

Unfortunately, this is an exaggeration of what Sony have agreed to do - they have issued an installable which removes the filename cloaking component while leaving the rest (primarily, the cd rom driver chain "filters" in place. It is still not possible to remove these other than manually (and yes, the system as a whole still uses up cpu and memory for no benefit other than for sony (and even then, its a trivial hack to prevent the DRM from installing in the first place - just disable autorun, which anyone halfway paranoid does anyhow)

Mind you, sony seem to have added another wrinkle to this story with their new DRM - which is aimed, not at preventing p2p copies, but at isolating Sony CDs from itunes....
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/drm_crippled_cd.html