Was SunnComm's Anti-Copy Technology Weak On Purpose?
from the industry-giving-up? dept
An opinion piece by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Glob suggests that everyone missed the "big" story in last week's story about how easy it was to break SunnComm's new copy protection technology. Bray notes that SunnComm's angry response didn't seem to focus on the fact that the technology was easily surpassed - but that this was considered a "flaw". Instead, they said that the technology was acting exactly as it was intended, with an easy workaround. Bray believes that the entertainment industry may be realizing that strong copy protection angers customers, and they're better off just using weak copy protection, which will keep most people in line. Of course, if that's the case, why bother at all? If it's not slowing down the ability for most people to get songs online, then what difference does it make?
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
Heteroscedastic Economies
[ link to this | view in thread ]
"Will keep most people in line"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
copy protection
Also, it might have a psychological effect to keep some people from copying if they feel they need to circumvent some sort of protection before copying as opposed to just inserting the CD and ripping away.
[ link to this | view in thread ]