A judge tentatively approved a proposed settlement of lawsuits against Sony BMG Music Entertainment that would give millions of consumers a slew of free music.

According to an Associated Press report, US District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald approved a proposed settlement in more than 15 class-action cases brought against the music giant for loading spyware-like software onto its CDs. The deal calls for Sony BMG to provide free music downloads as one of the ways to compensate users.

The tentative approval came just a few hours after Calgary-based Merchant Law Group filed two class-action suits against the music giant.

"We're trying to put the Canadian consumer on equal footing with American consumers to ensure that Sony BMG doesn't think of this as a situation they only have to deal with in the US," lawyer Tony Merchant said.

Meanwhile, Mark Lyon, a Mississippi law student, filed a personal lawsuit against the company, claming that its XCP antipiracy software seriously damaged his computer and that the remedies offered by the company did not adequately resolve the problem.

Lyon set up a Web site as a clearinghouse for information about the legal actions that have arisen from the XCP debacle.

In court papers filed late last month, Sony BMG proposed to settle the class-action lawsuits filed by computer users over the spyware-like copyright-protection software installed on 80 of its CD titles. The label had been using two types of the controversial software: XCP from First 4 Internet and MediaMax from Sunncomm, both of which were designed to limit the number of copies of a disc that a user can make.

The proposal includes many actions the world's second-largest record company has already taken, including recalling of all of its CDs loaded with XCP and MediaMax software, ceasing to manufacture CDs with the software, and providing software downloads customers can download to patch the security flaws created by the software.

But the standout feature of the proposal, according to documents filed with the US District Court in New York, is the offer of free music downloads if the user sends Sony BMG the software-laden CD on the label's dime.

Participants in the settlement--estimated by the company at as many as 11 million--will get new copies of their CDs without the XCP software, plus one of two packages: a cash payment of $7.50 and one free album download, or three free album downloads. Customers will be able to choose from three download services for the albums, one of which will be Apple's iTunes, the dominant music download store on the market.

MediaMax users will be allowed to download new MP3 versions of their CDs, plus another album from a list of 200, according to the settlement. "Sony BMG is pleased to have reached this agreement with the class-action plaintiffs,'' Sony BMG said in a statement.

Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG, began including MediaMax on some of its discs in August 2003 and introduced XCP in January 2005. XCP was used on 52 of Sony BMG's CD titles, while MediaMax was loaded onto 27 of the label's titles, including Alicia Keys' Unplugged and Usher's Confessions.

The public relations and legal nightmare for Sony BMG started in November, and the company was sued later that month.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights advocacy group, and the Texas attorney general were among parties that had sued over the software.

In giving a keynote address Thursday at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, Sony Corp. chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer said the copy-protection controversy reflects the difficulties balancing the needs of artists and consumers.

"Clearly the perception out there is that we shouldn't be doing too much of that copy-protection stuff," he said. "We'll just have to tread very, very carefully. We have to walk the line at Sony between the needs of technology and the consumer, and the rights of the artist, which we feel very strongly about."