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SunnComm Reconsiders Lawsuit Threat
The Importance of writes "SunnComm, which yesterday had threatened to sue Alex Halderman for writing a report critical of SunnComm's MediaMax CD3 DRM technology, has now backed off that threat. 'I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on research,' SunnComm's CEO Peter Jacobs said."
The fact that he could bring the lawsuit up at all, or the fact that he thought he could WIN.
"I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on research," Jacobs said.
If I may submit an idea, sir, if you really want to avoid chilling effects on research through this law, perhaps you could bring the challenge to court anyway, and then lose. That would set a precident.
Hell, you wouldn't even have to get a good lawyer. In fact the worse a lawyer you get, the more benficial it'll be in the long run. Think it over?
GMFTatsujin
I would have liked to see this go to trial with the aid of the EFF. It would have made an excellent test case challenging the stupidity contained in the DMCA.
On the other hand, I'm glad the kid isn't going to get shafted by this.
When all else fails, run.
I am guessing his lawyers explained to him in simple words his chances of winning that lawsuit...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Too bad they're backing off. This was so patently absurd that it provided terrific support to the anti-DCMA forces.
Translation of this guy's soundbite after being run through the BS machine: "I don't actually know anything about computers, but I thought I knew how to be a belligerent mercantilist. Now I realize I don't have a chance in hell of winning anything, especially since this kid is a college student with no money, so instead I'm going to try to spin it so me and my stupid company don't look like total asses. I'll be going back to my job now as a slave for the RIAA and their associated goons. Have a nice day!"
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
The saddest part is that they acknowledge this will only deter casual copying, i.e., fair-use. The real CD pirates (the ones selling pirated CDs) will just laugh, and no matter what system they use, it will get uploaded to Kazaa (people ripped their old 45s and put them up on Napster for crying out loud). So we have a system which prevents "honest" customers from listening to their music on their iPod, does nada to prevent uploading to Kazaa, and less than nothing to stop CD pirates.
Will somebody please give these guys a giant dope-slap to the back of their heads?
I don't understand why companies keep putting DRM on CDs and DVDs. Is it just ignorance, or do they honestly believe there's value there? I forget how much Macrovision protection on DVDs costs, but it's a significant piece of the total cost of the DVD -- I'm sure that SunnComm charges a similar price for each CD shipped with its "DRM" (I use quotes because this really is the most pathetic DRM I've heard of).
Where is the value for the producers of those DVDs and CDs? All it takes is a single MP3 to be leaked and all the copy protection on the CDs out there is useless. Back in the Napster days I ripped a fairly obscure song and made it available. Even today I can search DC Hubs or Kazaa and find my MP3 all over the place. Copy protection will only ever work if it prevents 100% of copying...which it never will.
My advice to RIAA and MPAA member companies: just drop the whole notion of DRM on your products. Trust your customers, give them what they want, treat them with respect. Most of us won't screw you...honest!
All DRM does is punish the honest user, spawn bizarre laws like the DMCA, and make a fun target for the release groups to crack.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
>> By coincidence he also didn't figure out he didn't have much chance of winning *anything*, financial or otherwise, did he?
He should have know that from the start - he was suing a *grad student* fer pete's sake... Hell, we can barely afford beer and pizza on our stipends, forget paying damages.
Looks like SunnComm learned their lesson from the RIAA, MPAA and SCO: Filing lawsuits because your organization sucks just makes more people realize that your organization sucks.
"I don't want to be the guy that gets laughed out of court for trying to stop users from hitting the SHIFT key".
Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to work out that:
a) the "protection" mechanism was going to be easy to circumvent; and
b) once the circumvention was common knowledge, the "protection" mechanism was going to be useless.
Now if the circumvention method involved something a little more difficult than pressing one single key (or disabling autorun) then he might have something to go to court about. As it stands, their "protection" is useless vs anyone who knows the first thing about how to use a PC - and that subset includes the very people who are most likely to rip a CD and upload it to P2P networks.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Actually, the DMCA does explicitly state it's illegal to bypass an "effective means" of copy protection. Not even the most tech-clueless judge would consider suncomm's protection effective. It doesn't work on windows machines that just happen to have auto-run disabled, it doesn't work on machines where the user is properly running his machine under a non-administrative account that doesn't have permission to install software, it doesn't work on Linux or, for the most part the MAC, making this method particularly ineffective.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
And then once you go to court, if your record is clean, they may (usually? always?) offer to let you take a `don't shoplist!' class (very similar to defensive driving) and if you keep out of trouble for 6 months or so, the case is dismissed.
If you steal a car, they're not quite so friendly. (But if you then take it and have it repainted, they'll all forget about you!)
This situation once again illustrates why the DMCA is flawed legislation. The DMCA actually encourages litigation that borders on extortion, and comes very, very close to supporting the inhibition of Freedom of speech.
Also, it seems to me that developing a product to combat casual copying doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think casual copying is costing the industry a lot of money. And if someone really wants a copy of something, they can always find a geek friend in the neighborhood who can figure out "how to hold down the shift key". The fact is, the majority of consumers are honest customers who pay for product and support. It doesn't make sense to cripple products with DRM for everyone, to prevent supposed losses from people who probably hardly buy music at all. I can more sympathsize with the RIAA getting upset with P2P, where a person can distribute thousands of copies of a track throughout the world in a few minutes -- rather than SunComm trying to prevent a Mom from distributing 12 custom music CDs at her kid's birthday party.
Another point -- from personal experience -- I hardly bought any music at all in the decade before Napster; since technology has been making it possible to rip tracks, play music on my PC, mix video and sound, create custom media , I've actually gotten to the point where I buy 4 to 10 CDs a month -- which is 4 to 10 times more music than I ever bought in the 80s or 90s. I think that there are more geeks like me, than those whose music collection consists entirely of "free" music.