The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced Thursday that it had reached a preliminary settlement with Sony BMG over their controversial CD copy-prevention software.

In October, Mark Russinovich, a programmer, noticed that his PC was infected by a rootkit, which he traced to a Sony BMG music CD using XCP copy-prevention. Other researchers found similar problems with the MediaMax copy-protection used on other Sony CDs. Sony may have sold millions of CDs with this and similar software on it. The brouhaha turned into a PR nightmare, and aggreived consumers filed class-action lawsuits.

Said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn of the proposed settlement, “Under the terms, those consumers will get what they thought they were buying—music that will play on their computers without restriction or security risk.” The EFF has presented the settlement to the New York federal court for preliminary approval, which will likely consider it in a hearing on January 6, 2005.