Slashdot Mirror
SunnComm - Bomb or DRM Success Story?
pacopico writes "The Register has one of best tech feature stories done in a long time on SunnComm - the infamous Shift key problem DRM makers. The story charts the awesome path SunnComm took from being an Elvis impersonator company eventually to creating CD protection technology almost out of thin air. Great read!"
Of Parasites taken over by Parasites- and searching for a business plan *after* creating the business and selling stock. Amazing that they were allowed to survive at all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
for getting them to respond to this. . .
.com of technology type investing.
what's scary though is that it's things like this that scare ppl from any sort of
As a shareholder, I'd be mad too to find out you can defeat the copy protection by holding down the shift key. That's ABSURD!
It's amazing how apt Leia's "the more you tighten your grip..." prediction is coming true for DRM: That DRM systems don't work.
Jacobs' theory that the complaining Internet posters are motivated by making money from shorting SunnComm's stock is nonsense - it's very difficult to sell "short" (i.e. bet that a share goes down) when the share is obscure and rarely traded.
A professional trader *might* be able to find someone willing to go "long" (take the other side of the bet) but it's pretty unlikely. Joe Public has no chance.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This business doesn't seem to have any idea as to what it really wants to do. The CEO seems like the type of person that could be easily influenced by his surroundings.
*CEO walking down street*
"Hmm... I think I'll have a hot dog. Aren't they also called tube steaks? Steak! Maybe I'll run a steak restaurant. I'll need meat. But I need a butcher to cut it. Butcher shop..."
This guy just doesn't have any focus. If he just stuck to one plan and worked at it, he'd actually have a legitimate business rather than a mirage.
How on earth does a business that lives off shams stay afloat for so long?!?
Live forever, or die trying.
They've gone from impersonating Elvis to impersonating DRM. At least they're consistant.
And they are not happy.
I don't know what American libel laws are like, but here in Britain, what was said about the Register's journalistic practices would, if unprovable, cause SunnComm some trouble...
'Its funny. No one in the legitimate news community would touch the OurStreet dirt package with a 10-foot pole. Theyve been trying to find such a dupe for a year. Our Oregon friend from OurStreet must be jumping up and down with glee that finally he found his "patsy."'
' Mr. Vance proceeded to mischaracterize the source purposely in the article even after being told otherwise. In other words, Mr. Vance purposely made a decision to carry the water for OurStreet.Com even after knowing of the possibility that his source had lied to him about his standing.'
'he didnt bother to fact-check his single main source'
Needless to say, from a regular reader of the Register's perspective, these allegations seem extreme. However, I must say, the SunnComm director is very reassuring: "SunnComm is NOT a get rich quick scheme" - a Nigerian friend of mine told me the same thing the other week.
I'm listening to a mp3 rip of Velvet Revolver
Well, the DRM may have failed, but the marketing machine certainly won.
Velvet Revolver is about as far from good music as you can get.
Considering that the shift key is an OS feature - disable autoplay for *whatever* CD/DVD is being inserted - I (in my very personal opinion) don't think this could successfully be argued as copyright circumvention. After all, the shift-key-bypass predates the technology being "circumvented" using it...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
This is really an article about corporate predators and the nature of Business As Usual (TM).
WHINE ALERT!!!!
And what would you have done in his place? Folded the company?
What many of the posters on this thread fail to realize is that this guy, and thousands of CEOs like him, have a FIDUCIARY responsibility to their shareholders to return value. That is how capital markets work. If they fail to do their jobs, they will be terminated. If they are negligent in carrying out their duties, they will be sued.
These people are tasked with doing everything within the bounds of the law to return value to the shareholder.
Your 401K wouldn't be worth a dime if it weren't for them.
Unfortunately, not all of them operate above the law. That's what makes them such easy targets for anti-capitalists.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Mod parent up.
Couldn't have said it better myself. If your responsibility is to make money, by hook or by crook, you're living a perverted form of capitalism. Capitalism is supposed to reward people for innovating and producing--not to reward people who pretend to produce and do it well. If your real goal is innovation, you will make your money.
That's what scares me the most about "business" anymore. It's no longer about wanting to run an organization, create or sell a compelling product. It's all about finding and using gimmicks to ultimately make yourself wealthy, whether those gimmicks are patents, copyrights, or semi-fraudulent business practices.
I think a lot of our economy is built this way, and I think that it's largely what they've been teaching in business schools -- outsource everything but your core marketing staff. It makes you a more "pure" businessman.
They made a fortune peddling their snake oil resulting from a minimal software development investment. If they don't lose it all in class action suits I'd consider it a success (for them).
"Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation." - John Keynes (1936)
(although he meant that in a macroeconomic sense and this is the case of one company, I think it's still apt.)