[Cross-posted] Don't know whether to laugh or cry when reading this! SunComm, who make a copy protection mechanism for audio CDs, is suing a student who has revealed how to bypass the copy protection mechanism: by the complex process of holding down the Shift key when inserting the CD into the drive! The student is facing a $10M lawsuit and possible prosecution under the DMCA.
This whole story is so bizarre and the statements from SunComm so fantastic that I took it for a farce when I first read it. However, it happens to be true. Read it yourself at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33322.html Some excerpts: SunnComm has threatened Princeton PhD student Alex Halderman with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for exposing a key weakness in the company's latest CD copy protection technology, MediaMax CD3. The company said today it will take legal action against Halderman for revealing how MediaMax CD3 can be bypassed by holding down a Windows PC's Shift key when a protected disc is inserted. Doing so temporarily disables Windows' Autorun facility - which many Reg readers have turned off anyway, they tell us - which prevents a small installation app from being launched off the CD. That software installs a device driver which detects the presence of a copy-protected disc and prevents attempts to copy such CDs. ... "Critical reviews written in part as an attempt to pressure the record industry into abandoning further development of technically protected audio CDs are ethically suspect when based on inaccurate assumptions," says SunnComm - without stating what those assumptions are or in what way they are inaccurate. ... From: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5089168.html?tag=nefd_top On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards. "We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged," Jacobs said. "I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace." [end] ``Distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards''? Now you Shift key is a violation of the DMCA? Bwaahaaa! Regards, -- Raju -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F It is the mind that moves _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
