[Full-Disclosure] Student faces suit over key to CD locks

From: Richard M. Smith (rms_at_computerbytesman.com)
Date: 10/09/03

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    To: <full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 17:54:48 -0400

    http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5089168.html?tag=nefd_top

    Student faces suit over key to CD locks
    Last modified: October 9, 2003, 2:01 PM PDT
    By John Borland
    Staff Writer, CNET News.com
               
    SunnComm Technologies, a developer of CD antipiracy technology, said
    Thursday that it will likely sue a Princeton student who early this week
    showed how to evade the company's copy protection by pushing a computer's
    Shift key.

    Princeton Ph.D. student John "Alex" Halderman published a paper on his Web
    site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm
    technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The
    technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently
    distributed by BMG Music.

    On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action
    and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the
    student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with
    violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking
    through digital piracy safeguards.

    "We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company
    has been wronged," Jacobs said. "I think the agenda is: 'Digital property
    should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the
    marketplace."
    The cases are already being examined by some intellectual-property lawyers
    for their potential to test the extremes of a controversial copyright law
    that block the distribution of information or software that breaks or
    "circumvents" copy-protection technologies.

    Several civil and criminal cases based on the Digital Millennium Copyright
    Act have been filed against people who distributed information or software
    aimed at breaking through antipiracy locks. In one, Web publisher Eric
    Corley was banned by a federal judge from publishing software code that
    helped in the process of copying DVDs.

    In a criminal case, Russian company ElcomSoft was cleared of charges that it
    had distributed software that willfully broke through Adobe Systems' e-book
    copy protection.

    Both of those cases dealt with software or software code, however. The issue
    in Halderman's case is somewhat different.
    In his paper, published on the Princeton Web site on Monday, the student
    explained that the SunnComm technique relies on installing antipiracy
    software directly from the protected CD itself. However, this can be
    prevented by stopping Microsoft Windows' "auto-run" feature. That can be
    done simply by pushing the Shift key as the CD loads.
    If the CD does load and installs the software, Halderman identified the
    driver file that can be disabled using standard Windows tools. Free-speech
    activists said the nature of Halderman's instructions--which appeared in an
    academic paper, used only functions built into every Windows computer, and
    were not distributed for profit--meant they would not fall under DMCA
    scrutiny.

    ....

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