In a move that eliminates the goodwill I felt for the company for attempting to find a compromise with their CD protection software, the folks at SunnComm Technologies are suing the graduate student who revealed that holding the Shift key down would disable their new-fangled anti-CD copying technology.
CNN.com - Student sued after revealing CD copying secret - Oct. 10, 2003
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters)—Three days after a Princeton graduate student posted a paper on his Web site detailing how to defeat the copy-protection software on a new music CD by pressing a single computer key, the maker of the software said Thursday it would sue him.
In a statement, SunnComm Technologies Inc. said it would sue Alex Halderman over the paper, which said SunnComm’s MediaMax CD-3 software could be blocked by holding down the “Shift” key on a computer keyboard as a CD using the software was inserted into a disc drive.
“SunnComm believes that by making erroneous assumptions in putting together his critical review of the MediaMax CD-3 technology, Halderman came to false conclusions concerning the robustness and efficacy of SunnComm’s MediaMax technology,” it said.
SunnComm, which trades on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, said it has lost more than $10 million of its market value since Halderman published his report.
That’s quite a monetary impact, but the company admitted to knowing about this flaw from the beginning so I fail to see how they can blame this on the graduate student. There’s a lesson to be learned about hyping your solution when you know there’s a major flaw in it.
Posted on 10/10/2003 at 10:08 AM 
Posted on 10/10/2003 at 10:25 AM 
This one will be tossed out real fast, I hope. They’re idiots for releasing this with the simple workaround to begin with, after all.
Yeesh.