Well as I see it the bigger issue here is that Sony has already let the cat out of the bag so to speak. Now script kiddies and other wanne-bes will take the Sony code (cause they don't know enough to write driver files) and mix in their own spyware/adware crap that can now use the SAFE-MODE hiding as well. Long term it just makes it more difficult for an average Joe to remove spyware from his/her system.

I don't think Sony was purposefully doing anything wrong, just a bad idea overall that will probably come back to haunt many users that never even bought a Sony CD, but because some dork decided it would be a good idea to mix in their spyware with it.