The “Daily Princetonian”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com has an article titled “Threat of lawsuit passes for student”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/10/10/news/8797.shtml regairding SunnComm’s decision to drop a threatened lawsuit against a Graduate student who published a method to defeat their newest copy protection scheme. While they are trying to spin it off as a desire not to be the company that “creates any kind of chilling effect on research,” I think it’s an attempt to try and divert attention away from how intrinsically weak their current protection scheme is.
p. John Halderman on his “webpage”:http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/ published a technique for bypassing the copy protection on recently released CD’s by holding down the SHIFT key. If I recall, this is merely the shortcut used to disable “autostart” on Windows. It SOUNDS like what SunnComm has really done is create a hybrid Enhanced CD, that includes either a FAT or ISO filesystem with DRM enabled digital copies of the tracks on the CD. Holding down shift would disble the automatic mounting of the file partition with the DRM files, and allow you to manually go onto the CD and access the raw CD audio tracks.
p. The idea of Enhanced CD’s is by no means new. If anything, on the surface the SunnComm solution appears ideal as it is unlikely to damage compatability, and it enable record labels to provide added value (pre-ripped tracks) for consumers. This kind of approach seems to be exactly the kind of necessary tack – to provide a DRM enabled digital source that is MORE convenient than the existing open CD standard, thus providing a carrot for consumers to move away from trading open files.
p. I hope however, that SunnComm has not sold this solution as more secure than it appears to be on surface examination. Complaining about $10 million in lost stock value seems somewhat ridiculous if that value was based on a misrepresentation of the technologies capabilities by the company’s management.
SunnComm Drops Lawsuit
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The “Daily Princetonian”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com has an article titled “Threat of lawsuit passes for student”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/10/10/news/8797.shtml regairding SunnComm’s decision to drop a threatened lawsuit against a Graduate student who published a method to defeat their newest copy protection scheme. While they are trying to spin it off as a desire not to be the company that “creates any kind of chilling effect on research,” I think it’s an attempt to try and divert attention away from how intrinsically weak their current protection scheme is.
p. John Halderman on his “webpage”:http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/ published a technique for bypassing the copy protection on recently released CD’s by holding down the SHIFT key. If I recall, this is merely the shortcut used to disable “autostart” on Windows. It SOUNDS like what SunnComm has really done is create a hybrid Enhanced CD, that includes either a FAT or ISO filesystem with DRM enabled digital copies of the tracks on the CD. Holding down shift would disble the automatic mounting of the file partition with the DRM files, and allow you to manually go onto the CD and access the raw CD audio tracks.
p. The idea of Enhanced CD’s is by no means new. If anything, on the surface the SunnComm solution appears ideal as it is unlikely to damage compatability, and it enable record labels to provide added value (pre-ripped tracks) for consumers. This kind of approach seems to be exactly the kind of necessary tack – to provide a DRM enabled digital source that is MORE convenient than the existing open CD standard, thus providing a carrot for consumers to move away from trading open files.
p. I hope however, that SunnComm has not sold this solution as more secure than it appears to be on surface examination. Complaining about $10 million in lost stock value seems somewhat ridiculous if that value was based on a misrepresentation of the technologies capabilities by the company’s management.