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(Note: replace the references to Julie Andrews with your favorite artists if necessary.)

Suppose Julie Andrews is going to record a new album (she can sing a bit... just one second more...), and the record label is going to use SDMI to "secure" the music on CD. Suppose the only software that can read SDMI-secured CDs are for Windoze and Macs.

Suppose the online copies of the Julie Andrews album is released in Windows Media format rather than something useful like Vorbis.

Does that mean I'm shit out of luck if I'm using Linux and looking for "street legal" SDMI-compliant software (with the RIAA pulling the Intervideo defense to shut us up)?

Will the RIAA get MP5-armed agents to do a "shoot to kill" at the next Jon Johansen?

Will the SDMI ever be used in the first place to create "racism by reason of operating system?"

Trivia: Ms. Andrews' case against the doctor who wrecked her voice would have been handled by Lewis A. Kaplan if it weren't for the doctor's settlement.

Companies can give (or sell) initial versions of their products to reverse engineers, in the HOPES that a security flaw or bug will be uncovered.

Your suggestion seems akin to the Hack SDMI challenge which was vehemontly opposed by the Slashdot community. Sell stuff to reverse enginners so they can hack it up? That's even worse than HackSDMI, at least they offered some money to the hackers, or whatever.
I know that HackSDMI was hated more for what it represents: the music industry trying to control how we can listen to our music, but there was still the issue of abusing the hacker community.

I strongly support reverse engineering, but it seems to me like you'd like to see reverse engineers exploited in the same way. Part of the concept of reverse enginnering is that those who do it work on their own for themselves, and if they feel like it, for the general good. A company could hire a bunch of resident reverse engineers and do whatever the hell they want inside the company, but once you try to exploit the community by trying to improve your product for free, then you've undermined the hacker mentality as well as the concept of open source, since your product is not open source.

On a semi-related note, maybe the final solution to all this copyright nonsense and the continuing limitation of constitutional as well as reasonable rights is to just abandon copyright all together and we can all be communists. All knowledge belongs to everyone, the government can fund software development... =D I'm getting flamed for this one.... oh well

Go to the download page of the HackSDMI website directly without going throught the click through link agreement page. This way you don't have to agree to anything to download the files (there isn't any warning or EULA on the download page).

Please note, I myself did NOT use the clickthrough to get to this page, or to find its address.

-Adam

Sometimes its good to stop and think, unless you're thinking, "Why am I crossing a freeway?"

Go to the download page of the HackSDMI website directly without going throught the click through link agreement page. This way you don't have to agree to anything to download the files (there isn't any warning or EULA on the download page).

Please note, I myself did NOT use the clickthrough to get to this page, or to find its address.

-Adam

Sometimes its good to stop and think, unless you're thinking, "Why am I crossing a freeway?"

The high road in my mind would be to do the hack, turn down the money, and loose the hack if/when SMIDI is released. Heck, just strip the watermark and post stripped file on your website.

I agree real hackers will do it for the freedom but this would be an excellent to time to make the SMIDI Secretariat look like a chump. They get the bad press of dropping the ball again and they are left scratching their heads over where to find the holes. So much for that little contest. <:

The click through seems to give the official "Ok" to hack it now and doesn't require turning anything over.

...

You may, of course, elect not to receive compensation, in which event you will not be required to sign a separate document or assign any of your intellectual property rights, although you are still encouraged to submit details of your attack.

...

By releasing encoded digital music samples for attack and other digital files, the SDMI Foundation and the technology proponents are only providing permission, under U.S. or other applicable law, to attack those particular samples and files during the duration of this SDMI Public Challenge.

The high road in my mind would be to do the hack, turn down the money, and loose the hack if/when SMIDI is released. Heck, just strip the watermark and post stripped file on your website.

I agree real hackers will do it for the freedom but this would be an excellent to time to make the SMIDI Secretariat look like a chump. They get the bad press of dropping the ball again and they are left scratching their heads over where to find the holes. So much for that little contest. <:

The click through seems to give the official "Ok" to hack it now and doesn't require turning anything over.

...

You may, of course, elect not to receive compensation, in which event you will not be required to sign a separate document or assign any of your intellectual property rights, although you are still encouraged to submit details of your attack.

...

By releasing encoded digital music samples for attack and other digital files, the SDMI Foundation and the technology proponents are only providing permission, under U.S. or other applicable law, to attack those particular samples and files during the duration of this SDMI Public Challenge.