SunnComm Sues Student Who Discovered Shift Key Copy Protection Workaround
from the the-DMCA-in-action dept
It was just three days ago that a student at Princeton made all sorts of news for discovering that the new copy protection system from SunnComm - being used on new CDs from BMG - had a pretty gaping hole: the copy protection could be defeated by holding down the shift key. Instead of taking this information and thanking the student for his free research into how their copy protection system was incredibly weak, SunnComm has decided to sue Alex Halderman for revealing that information, saying it was (of course!) a violation of the anti-circumvention rule of the DMCA. They say that their market value has collapsed because of the paper - but Halderman says he isn't worried. He points out: "I don't think telling people to press the 'Shift' key is a violation of the DMCA." Of course, the irony in all of this is that Halderman's graduate adviser is Ed Felten, the man the RIAA threatened to sue when he tried to present a paper showing how to break SDMI, an earlier copy protection scheme. After the publicity surrounding that threat, the RIAA insisted they were kidding, and it was insane to think they would ever sue a professor for presenting such a paper... Update: Another article on the suit suggests they may sue him for "maligning the company's reputation". I'm confused how it's maligning the company's reputation if it's true.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
SLAPP laws
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Turning off "Auto-Run" Feature
I did this as a security fix, since I don't like software automatically installing itself on my system without permission (with all the keylogging, identity theiving folks out there, you cannot be too careful,) but then again, I don't have too many Windoze machines to worry about anyway.
Oops, now I may have violated the DMCA. See how easy it is to do kids? I'll wait for the cops to show up at my door.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Different perspective
[ link to this | view in thread ]
More information
" In his paper, published on the Princeton Web site on Monday, the student explained that the SunnComm technique relies on installing antipiracy software directly from the protected CD itself. However, this can be prevented by stopping Microsoft Windows� �auto-run� feature. That can be done simply by pushing the Shift key as the CD loads. If the CD does load and installs the software, Halderman identified the driver file that can be disabled using standard Windows tools. "
[ link to this | view in thread ]
challenge to the dmca
Fact is he is telling us how to circumvent a copyright protection device, which is illegal and hevaily fined under the DMCA.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SunnComm backs off!
[ link to this | view in thread ]