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."

Comments

I don't know what's scarier:

[GMFTatsujin]

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'm disappointed.. .sorta

[Whammy666]

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.

Gotta love the cluelessness. New CEO anyone?

[fname]

The last line in the article, a quote from CEO Jacobs, says it all:

"It's 10 million bucks, but maybe I can make it back, and maybe [Halderman] can learn a little bit more about our technology so as not to call it brain dead."

Or, you could design a system that isn't braindead.

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?

The problem with this whole mess

[GreenCrackBaby]

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.

Re:The problem with this whole mess

[pavera]

There is no value. I worked with Westwood studios before EA bought them, on the game Red Alert 2 they spent about 20% of the budget on the game on the copy protection they tried to incorporate. The protection was still broken within 2 hours of the games release. On their next game (BladeRunner) they dropped all copy protection because they found that they had sold nearly $1 million in Red Alert 2 because people got the warez copy, liked it and went and bought the real game. Basically they had spent around $10 million to try to prevent themselves from getting $1 million in revenue. Obviously this doesn't take into account the people that played the warez copy and didn't buy the game, but those people wouldn't have bought the game anyway I dont think (and either did they). There is no value in copy protection whatsoever, when will the RIAA and MPAA realize this?

Re:Why are they backing off?

[Sxooter]

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.