Sony Music Entertainment is a major global record label controlled by the Sony Corporation. In 1988, Sony Corporation acquired CBS Records, Inc. for $2 billion. CBS Inc., now CBS Corporation, retained the rights to the CBS name, and Sony renamed the label Sony Music Entertainment in 1991.
Sony re-introduced the Columbia label after it bought the international rights of the label from EMI. Epic Records is the other branch of Sony Music. The only country where Sony does not have rights to the Columbia name is Japan, where the name is controlled by Columbia Music Entertainment. Columbia label recordings from outside Japan are issued in Japan on the Sony Records label sharing the same "Walking Eye" logo as Columbia outside Japan.
In August 2004, Sony Music Entertainment created a joint-venture with BMG to form Sony BMG Music Entertainment; however, Sony continues to operate its Japanese music business.
In November 2005, Texas Attorney General as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a digital rights group based in California) separately filed civil lawsuits against Sony BMG Music Entertainment for hiding spyware software on its compact discs that left computers that run the Windows operating system vulnerable to hackers.
Sony BMG may once again become simply Sony Music Entertainment should Sony purchase Bertelsmann's half of the venture. On March 27, 2006, the New York Times reported that Bertelsmann was looking to raise money by leveraging some of its media assets, and that executives from both companies were in talks about possibly altering the current venture. Two sources close to Sony BMG have suggested that Bertelsmann may offer Sony its half of the company, though executives have emphasized that any changes will likely take months to conclude.
