Student sued over CD piracy study

BBC News ^ | Friday, 10 October, 2003, 08:55 GMT 09:55 UK | no byline

[weegee]

A US student is being sued for showing how to get around anti-piracy technology on a new music CD. Princeton graduate John Halderman published a paper online showing how to defeat the copy-protection software by pressing a single computer key.

This has angered the company behind the software, SunnComm Technologies, which is now planning to sue him.

It is just one of the firms working on ways to make it harder to copy and trade music over the internet.

Press shift

Mr Halderman found that SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 software could be bypassed by simply holding down the shift key on a Windows PC when a copy-protected CD was inserted into a disc drive.

This temporarily disables the autorun function on Windows, stopping a anti-piracy program from installing itself on the computer.

The software was used on a CD, Anthony Hamilton's Comin' From Where I'm From, released last month

In a statement, SunnComm said Mr Halderman had violated criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, (DMCA), by revealing the secrets of the anti-piracy measures.

"SunnComm believes that by making erroneous assumptions in putting together his critical review of the MediaMax CD-3 technology, Halderman came to false conclusions concerning the robustness and efficacy of SunnComm's MediaMax technology," said the firm.

It said the company had lost more than $10 million of its market value since the report had appeared on the web.

But there are suggestions that the company may not pursue the matter.

The Daily Princeton campus newspaper has quoted SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs as saying that a lawsuit would do little to reverse the damage done.

Digital piracy

Mr Halderman, who is studying for a doctorate in computer science, said SunnComm had not contacted him directly.

"I'm still not very worried about litigation under the DMCA, I don't think there's any case," he said.

"I don't think telling people to press the shift key is a violation of the DMCA."

Various firms are trying to find ways of protecting future album releases from piracy.

The music industry blames a sharp fall in CD sales on digital piracy through online file-sharing services.

But so far, most technologies developed to protect music against copying have fallen short.

[weegee]

This temporarily disables the autorun function on Windows, stopping a anti-piracy program from installing itself on the computer.

Shouldn't the owner of the computer have the final say about what software is installed on his computer?

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[sc2_ct]

Good point. And how is it that a student can get sued by a 3rd party for telling people how to turn off a particular function of another company's product?

[muir_redwoods]

Should legal protection extend to such fragile "encryption"? Would a paper lock on my gun satisfy the legal requirement for a lock in some jurisdictions? If there is only a flimsy bit of protection I think the law has better things to do than guarantee the benefits serious software engineering should have produced.

[WTSand]

Why sue the student when Microsoft offers a program (TweakUI) that gives you the option to turn off autorun. Besides Microsoft has more bucks. Dumb lawyers,maybe.

[Libertina]

I remember him saying he wasn't worried about being sued for stating " hold shift key." Poor guy. These companies are getting crazy.

[Voltage]

I am surprised that any program could be installed on my system without my approving it, unless of course it is a virus! Isn't it illegal to distribute virus's?

[dozer7]

"This temporarily disables the autorun function on Windows, stopping a anti-piracy program from installing itself on the computer.

Shouldn't the owner of the computer have the final say about what software is installed on his computer?"


Yes indeed. More important it sounds like the program developers inserted a back door so they could defeat the program and pirate the anti-piracy. Maybe they should fire a few software developers.

[weegee]

Advertising software (even that that will hijack your browser and periodically launch spontaneous popup ads) is termed "spyware" and often loaded without your consent. Some software vendors will "claim" that you consent when you load another package. I have had such software loaded just for visiting a particularly malicious webpage (there is a search engine that will load up when you type certain near names and I am not referring to Verisign's 404-null page).

Spyware is termed a "trojan" program. Legislators must have been paid off by advertisers to exempt these programs from the classification known as "virus". Some of these programs are even reasserting (if you manually delete the program and another bit of spyware detects that it is gone, it will reinstall it).

I don't think that the government will completely outlaw spyware because there have been some who have said that they may want to use spyware to monitor the public's computer activities.

[battousai]

"Yes indeed. More important it sounds like the program developers inserted a back door so they could defeat the program and pirate the anti-piracy. Maybe they should fire a few software developers. "

I wouldn't even give them that much credit, it sounds more like they tried to dupe a bunch of companies to sign on with their pathetic 'protection' software, and now that the truth is out they are mad as hell. boo hoo so sad.. NOT!

They assumed that everyone out there wouldn't know of a BUILT IN FEATURE of windows to bypass autorun, suing this kid is akin to suing microsoft for having an entry for that in their windows help manual and the hundreds of tip sites out that contain the information.

If I were a hapless customer of this sham outfit I'd be hopping mad and sue their pants off first.

And someone mentioned tweakUI, but you don't even need Tweak UI to turn off autorun, well in Win XP anyway, maybe you did in 98, so long since I used it I forget :)

Besides I have autorun turned off by default as I'm sure lots of other people do, because it can mess up CD burning and gets annoying when CDs start autorunning installations everytime you just want to get a file off it or take a look at the CD, so should they now sue all of us for 'defeating' their lame protection. This ones even worse than the last hairbrained CD protection idea which was defeated by a marker ;-)

[Cacique]

bttfl

[struwwelpeter]

Finally I can rip those Tatu tracks.

[Tennessee_Bob]

Nope, didn't need tweakUI in 98 to shut off autorun.

[The Electrician]

According to this article from news.com, the company has abruptly reversed itself and has dropped plans to sue:

SunnComm won't sue grad student

In an abrupt reversal, SunnComm Technologies said Friday that it will not sue a Princeton University graduate student who published a paper that describes how to bypass CD copy-protection technology simply by pressing the Shift key.

. . .

SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs acknowledged his threat to file a lawsuit was a mistake. "I felt the researcher has an agenda, which he does," he said. "But that's not relevant, and I learned that...The long-term nature of the lawsuit and the emotional result of the lawsuit would obscure the issue, and it would develop a life of its own."

. . .

[ChemistCat]

Moral of the story:

Always talk to your lawyer before you talk to your focus groups before you talk to your wife before you talk to your teenage daughter about what her friends think BEFORE you publically threaten to sue some punk kid nobody would otherwise notice...who has published data that hurts your company.

:-)

[trebb]

Looks like I'm in trouble too - I never leave autorun enabled just for the reason that too many CDs have apps that try to start installing without being polite enough to ask first...

[festus]

;A US student is being sued for showing how to get around
;anti-piracy technology on a new music CD. Princeton
;graduate John Halderman published a paper online showing
;how to defeat the copy-protection software by pressing a
;single computer key.

This is HILLARIOUS !!!!!!

Its like a bad monty python skit.

But its true.

An entire project, planning, teams, funding, decisions, strategy etc. defeated by pressing the shift key.

Never fear these guys will never win.

Right or wrong many many average joes are doing this and if you sue to many of them all the lobbying $$ in the world won't stop the legislators from listening to the enraged voting masses.

[eno_]

Shouldn't the owner of the computer have the final say about what software is installed on his computer?

Bill Gates does not think so. Hence Palladium.

[JeepInMazar]

Here is a sample liscense agreement with sections on "fair use" and copyright protection.

http://kabulmedia.com/license_agreement.htm