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SunnComm Says Pointing to Shift Key 'Possible Felony'
The Importance of writes "A couple of weeks ago BMG released an audio CD with a new type of DRM. Earlier this week, a computer science graduate student at Princeton wrote a report showing the DRM was ineffective - it could easily be defeated by use of the 'shift' key. The stock of the DRM company (SunnComm) has since fallen by 20%. Now, SunnComm plans to sue the student under the DMCA and claim that SunnComm's reputation has been falsely damaged. According to SunnComm's CEO, 'No matter what their credentials or rationale, it is wrong to use one's knowledge and the cover of academia to facilitate piracy and theft of digital property.'"
Disabling autorun via the use of the Shift key is pretty well known, isn't it?
/. pointing out that the use of the Shift key would probably disable this kind of copy "protection" when the story about this "system" was first posted.
I recall a post on
Pierre
STEH currently sells at 11 cents per share, a 20% drop means it's down from 15 cents. This is a low-end penny stock, almost completely worthless even before the alleged "damage." Any amateur spammer could move this stock more than 4 cents with even a badly executed pump and dump.
yes there is. he specifically states in his paper that he never agreed to the EULA for the DRM program -- he actually states that he can only speculate on it's inner workings because he never installed the thing.
so basically, he's being sued even though he didn't do anything to their DRM software at all.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
I just called the company. I first talked to a woman whose name I did not get (she answered the phone), and she transferred me to someone else, who introduced himself as "Bill". I believe him to be the COO, Bill Whitmore. We had a rather long conversation about the press release and how SunnComm feels about the information being published. Yes, they did "threaten" Alex with DMCA charges, and they may or may not report this for investigation, but from what Bill told me, they have no plans to file suit against Alex Halderman. I'm not sure if Bill agreed with me that the press release was rather extreme in its implications, but I think he acknowledged something to that fact. don't hold me to that. Bill did, however, seem upset that Alex did not contact the company first, before releasing this information to the world. Perhaps they would have threatened him, perhaps they would have offered him a chance to help fix the problem (Bill said the latter). I don't know. Bill also said that while "all software solutions can be bypassed", his company was trying to create a "licence system" for people to listen to their music legally, without "having to make copies" of it in an illegal manner. So, he said, this is not really a software anti-copying solution, but more of a licence framework for the use of the music. That was what was said, to the best of my recollection.
When /. covered the story originally, one poster half seriously suggested (and got modded informative) using the shift key to defeat the protection. Hmmmmmm. See this comment. /bg
Tell them what I told them: the use of the DMCA against a student who exercised his right to free speech and his right to publish an academic paper has made me strongly decide not to invest in their company, and tell most people I know to avoid their stock like the plague.
On a side note, wasn't the DMCA supposed to specifically protect academic research? Of course this same question was asked when SDMI pulled this shit too, so I guess we all know the answer.
--Kylus
Idiot-proof something, and Life will build a better Idiot.
But the way our legal system works, they can go on claiming both for a while until it looks like they are for sure going to lose/win one claim or the other. Then they can drop the claim that's not working for them. It's all lawyer games. (NOTE: IANAL and NBAYROS (Never Believe Anything You Read On Slashdot))
Furry cows moo and decompress.
We tah ded.
Considering that this is a documented feature of Windows which is has already been published all over the Internet as a quick way of squelching the AutoPlay feature and an attempt at a lawsuit on these grounds would have a snowball in Hell commenting, "Wow! That was over with fast". Searching for this information is ridiculously easy...
Sample Google Search #1
Sample Google Search #2
...and for once, a lawsuit clearly filed for the purposes of harassment is highly likely to result in a successful counter-suit for damages, simply by the fact that this is a documented feature of Windows. Demonstrating that SunnComm's suit had absolutely no merit on the basis that the information in question was already common knowledge should be a walk in the park.
DMCA "Violation" #1
DMCA "Violation" #2
What makes this especially stupid is that they'll be suing someone who has very little (if any) money, although I imagine that may well change after the counter-suit. If the people at SunnComm weren't complete idiots, they'd go after someone who has money, like Jeffrey Richter, who writes books on using Windows as well as articles for the MSDN network and who already published this information in 1998.
Yet Another DMCA "Violation"
I know what you're thinking right now, but even really stupid companies don't try to sue Microsoft over things this trivial.
Actually, if you read the original paper that the student published, you will realize that CD case stated that it would install software when you tried to play it on a PC.
amazing how the position has changed so rapidly (the above article was from 10ish EDT on the 8th)
Pressing the shift key is not a violation of the DMCA. Telling someone to press the shift key is a violation of the DMCA.
It's not about the shift key, it's about deleting a few files from your own computer. SunnComm doesn't believe you are allowed to remove the Trojan Horse they put onto your computer. It's far from obvious if they are wrong or not, as the Trojan Horse is certainly an effective way to restrict copying on a machine on which it has been installed.
(This reminds me that I should write an IETF draft for a very simple DRM scheme for HTTP which relies on the DMCA and other laws for effectiveness.)