Free Republic

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...

<p>It's rampant. The new P2P systems, such as KaZaA and Morpheus, have picked up where Napster left off, and blank CDs now outsell prerecorded discs. The trend is clear: concern not for the law but for economics. This happens with disruptive technologies. If you had a machine that could make a new Lexus for $1,000, then why would you buy one from Toyota for $50,000? Because you had a moral obligation?</p>