Re: 10/7-9/03 - [STEH] CNET: Student faces suit over key to CD locks; Shift key breaks CD copy locks; Court dismisses free-speech lawsuit
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.
"This is completely outrageous," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that has previously represented computer academics concerned that copyright law would impair their ability to publish. "This is not black hat (hackers') exploits he's revealing. This is Windows 101...It is relatively hard to imagine any better example of how the DMCA has been misused since it was passed five years ago."
Jacobs said SunnComm's attorneys would refer the case to local federal authorities, who could make the decision on how to proceed on the DMCA issue. He said the company was also exploring a civil suit based on damage to the company's reputation, since Halderman concluded that the technology was ineffective without knowing about future enhancements.
Future versions of the SunnComm software would include ways that the copy-protecting files would change their name on different computers, making them harder to find, Jacobs said. Moreover, the company will distribute the technology along with third-party software, so that it doesn't always come off a protected CD, he added.
The damage to SunnComm's reputation, while not necessarily permanent, was quickly seen in a drop in its market value, totaling close to $10 million over several days, Jacobs said. No final decisions about legal action have been made, he added.
Halderman said he's not overly worried about the legal threat. The EFF represented his advisor, Princeton professor Edward Felten, in a lawsuit dealing with academic freedom to publish computer security information, and Princeton University supported Felten in that case.
"I expect I will be well-represented in the case of a lawsuit," Halderman said. "If pressing the Shift key is a violation of the DMCA, then the law needs to be changed."
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Shift key breaks CD copy locks
Last modified: October 7, 2003, 10:58 AM PDT
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
A Princeton University student has published instructions for disabling the new anticopying measures being tested on CDs by BMG--and they're as simple as holding down a computer's Shift key.
In a paper published on his Web site this week, Princeton Ph.D. student John Halderman explained how he disabled a new kind of copy-protection technology, distributed as part of a new album by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton.
Under normal circumstances, the antipiracy software is automatically loaded onto a Windows machine whenever the Hamilton album is run in a computer's CD drive, making traditional copying or MP3 ripping impossible. However, simply holding down the Shift key prevents Windows' AutoRun feature from loading the copy-protection software, leaving the music free to copy, Halderman said.
The technique was confirmed by BMG and SunnComm Technologies, the small company that produces the anticopying technology. Both companies said they had known about it before releasing the CD, and that they still believed the protection would deter most average listeners' copying.
"This is something we were aware of," BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown said. "Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility."
The ease with which Halderman and others have disabled BMG and SunnComm's latest copy-protection techniques illustrates the delicate balance that record labels and technology companies are trying to strike in protecting content without angering listeners.
SunnComm's technology is the most flexible version of CD copy-protection to hit the market yet. It includes "pre-ripped" versions of the songs on the CD itself, each of which can be transferred to a computer, burned to CD several times, or transferred to many kinds of portable devices. These differ from unrestricted MP3 files in that only limited copies can be made, and not every portable music device can play them.
The Anthony Hamilton CD is the first release in this new generation of copy-protected CDs that come preloaded with these "second session" tracks designed for use on a computer, a strategy also being pursued by SunnComm rival Macrovision. Record labels have pushed for these tracks, mostly provided in Microsoft's Windows Media format, to be included on copy-protected CDs in order to ameliorate consumers' concerns about not being able to use their music on computers.
SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the technology--which will be improved in future versions--should still be attractive to record companies. Though simple, the act of holding down the Shift key in order to enable copying does let computer users know they're doing something unauthorized, he said. That alone will dissuade many people from making copies, he added.
"This is not an all-or-nothing thing," Jacobs said. "People can break into your house, because there's lots of information out there on how to pick locks. But that knowledge doesn't mean you don't buy a lock."
In order to fully prevent the antipiracy software from loading, a listener has to hold the Shift key down for a long period of time, at exactly the right time, every time they listen to the CD on a computer. Moreover, anyone who doesn't load the software won't get access to the second session tracks, which on future CDs will increasingly include videos and other bonus material, record company insiders say.
For his part, Halderman says the workaround is so simple that it's hard to fix. Nor is he worried about falling afoul of laws that make it illegal to describe how to get around copy-protection measures.
"I hardly think that telling people to push Shift constitutes trafficking in a (copy-protection technology) circumvention device," Halderman said. "I'm not very worried."
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Court dismisses free-speech lawsuit
Last modified: November 28, 2001, 5:20 PM PST
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer
A New Jersey judge on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit brought against the music industry, saying that threatened legal action didn't keep a computer-science professor from publishing research on anti-copying technology.
The judge dismissed charges brought by Princeton University professor Edward Felten, who said legal threats stopped him from publishing a paper outlining the weaknesses in the industry's technologies for protecting digital music.
Felten had sued the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents major music labels, because the association sent him a letter threatening legal action if he published his research.
"The court has put the scientists in a position where they have to beg Hollywood to publish their research," said Robin Gross, staff attorney for intellectual property at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented Felten. "It puts the researchers at risk."
Both the Justice Department and the RIAA asked the court to dismiss the case. Judge Garrett Brown of the Federal District Court in Trenton, N.J., agreed Wednesday.
Felten's suit requested permission for the Princeton researcher to publish his findings and asked that certain parts of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) be overturned.
The DMCA, passed in 1998, prohibits the circumvention of copy protection and the distribution of devices that can be used to bypass copyrights--even if their users don't do anything illegal once they've broken the security. Software makers, Hollywood and the music industry make up the core proponents of the law.
The judge's ruling has not yet been made available.
However, in its motion filed on behalf of the DMCA, the Justice Department said that Felten's concern over being prosecuted under the law has not stopped him from publishing.
"Whatever concerns (Felten and others) actually harbor, it appears that they have not forgone a single publication of any material as a result of those concerns, and they do not allege that they will actually forgo any conduct in the future," the DOJ wrote in its motion. "In short, plaintiffs' speech has not been chilled."
In a statement issued Wednesday, Cary Sherman, senior executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA, praised the decision.
"We are happy that the court recognized what we have been saying all along: There is no dispute here," he said. "As we have said time and again, professor Felten is free to publish his findings."
The EFF's Gross says the organization will "most likely" appeal the case.
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