Friday, October 10, 2003
DMCA is a four letter word....
I've been rather dormant for the last couple of weeks (traveling, work pressure, gotta pay rent, yada yada yada....) but this little article snapped me out of my coma long enough for a quick rant. If you haven't kept up with DMCA saga this might come as a surprise, but NEWSFLASH: it may be illegal to hold down your shift key! :)
For quite some time now companies have been working on a way to keep these bloody theiving pirates (also known as "fans") from "ripping" audio from CDs and converting them to mp3s. Its proved a massive challenge to walk the fine line of breaking cds so they won't work in computers but will still work in people's expensive HiFi's.
Well one of the most recent incarnations of this rediculous technology is "MediaMax C3" concocted by SunnComm. They thought it would be smashing good idea to use the auto-run feature (yes, you read that correctly autorun) to install a driver that would prevent you from reading the cd. Um duh? So it didn't take long for some bright lad at princeton to point out that the emporer had no clothes on. I've seen some retarded ideas before but using auto-run to implement copy protection? Yowza. When I was still stuck in the windows world (its been almost 5 years now since i thought windows nt was a good idea) the very first thing I would do to any machine was kill auto-run. I hate stuff popping up without my direct summons. Any tech that has to fix desktops for a living has probaby figured out that holding shift down disables auto-run (No I don't want to see the *&#*@ splash screen, I just want the &*( driver. I don't care that you have an expensive graphic designer, your software still sucks.) So "circumventing" MediaMax's slick copy protection "technology" is as simple as holding down shift while you insert the cd.
Oh but just add a little DMCA to the action and it gets interesting. DMCA has this cute little circumvention clause:
So it was not terribly surprising that, in light of their market value taking a $10million dip, SunnComm made rumblings about suing the "erroneous" little student. Luckily someone in the company figured out that, given how crappy their software really was, that they were probably better off hiding under a table.
This completely baffles me. As a child of the 80's, a Columbia House and BMG survivor, and fairly avid music collector, I have spent more money purchasing cds and vinyl than I have any of my cars. Instead of spending so much time combatting piracy maybe the industry should think about giving fans a reason to buy music. Spending upwards of $20 for a cd that will only play in one player out of the 3 I use regularly is not my idea of a money well spent. How about spending a little less money promoting overproduced crap boy band music and searching out a few more talented musicians? yeash.
For quite some time now companies have been working on a way to keep these bloody theiving pirates (also known as "fans") from "ripping" audio from CDs and converting them to mp3s. Its proved a massive challenge to walk the fine line of breaking cds so they won't work in computers but will still work in people's expensive HiFi's.
Well one of the most recent incarnations of this rediculous technology is "MediaMax C3" concocted by SunnComm. They thought it would be smashing good idea to use the auto-run feature (yes, you read that correctly autorun) to install a driver that would prevent you from reading the cd. Um duh? So it didn't take long for some bright lad at princeton to point out that the emporer had no clothes on. I've seen some retarded ideas before but using auto-run to implement copy protection? Yowza. When I was still stuck in the windows world (its been almost 5 years now since i thought windows nt was a good idea) the very first thing I would do to any machine was kill auto-run. I hate stuff popping up without my direct summons. Any tech that has to fix desktops for a living has probaby figured out that holding shift down disables auto-run (No I don't want to see the *&#*@ splash screen, I just want the &*( driver. I don't care that you have an expensive graphic designer, your software still sucks.) So "circumventing" MediaMax's slick copy protection "technology" is as simple as holding down shift while you insert the cd.
Oh but just add a little DMCA to the action and it gets interesting. DMCA has this cute little circumvention clause:
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any
technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that ... `circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure' means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure;
So it was not terribly surprising that, in light of their market value taking a $10million dip, SunnComm made rumblings about suing the "erroneous" little student. Luckily someone in the company figured out that, given how crappy their software really was, that they were probably better off hiding under a table.
"I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on research." - SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs
This completely baffles me. As a child of the 80's, a Columbia House and BMG survivor, and fairly avid music collector, I have spent more money purchasing cds and vinyl than I have any of my cars. Instead of spending so much time combatting piracy maybe the industry should think about giving fans a reason to buy music. Spending upwards of $20 for a cd that will only play in one player out of the 3 I use regularly is not my idea of a money well spent. How about spending a little less money promoting overproduced crap boy band music and searching out a few more talented musicians? yeash.
