# Your software doesn't work - that's right, sue the fucking person who showed you. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 10, 2003, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707 "2003-10-10T18:06:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/1 "2003-10-10T18:06:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*LOS ANGELES (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 on 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. \*\* Yeah, that’s right. You’re paid probably millions to produce a shitty piece of software that can be rendered ineffective with one simple keystroke, so you sue the first person that mentions this. Instead of getting your lame shitty butts back on the drawing board and coming up with a new version that actually works. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/2 "2003-10-10T18:39:57Z")
This reminds me of a quote that I read when it looked like some ABC employees were going to be arrested for showing how easy it was to smuggle depleted uranium into the US. > [@](#): > > When somebody tells you that your barn is on fire, you put out the fire and then thank them for telling you. You don’t throw the water on them. ---
**Author:** ![Gravity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gravity/32/14322_2.png) [@Gravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gravity)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/3 "2003-10-10T18:45:51Z")
But it’s so weird. They start out by saying: “We were fully aware that if someone held down the Shift key the first and every subsequent time (they played the disc) that the technology could be circumvented,” BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown told Reuters, adding the company “erred on the side of playability and flexibility.” ([http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031007/media\_bmg\_protection\_1.html](http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031007/media_bmg_protection_1.html)) And then they go right into this. just incredible. ---
**Author:** ![Gravity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gravity/32/14322_2.png) [@Gravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gravity)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/4 "2003-10-10T18:53:44Z")
I realize that that quote is from a BMG person, and not SunnComm, by the way. It’s just so strange. And that’s without even going into a ‘copy protection’ scheme that pre-supposes that you have autorun enabled, or would just randomly say ‘yes’ when it pops up a window saying “hey- this CD has super-special stuff that I will now install. Do you like ice cream? yes no” ---
**Author:** ![mblackwell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@mblackwell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mblackwell)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/5 "2003-10-10T18:58:15Z")
Or better yet, give up the stupid “copy protection” idea alltogether. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/6 "2003-10-10T19:35:52Z")
Copy protection is fantastically stupid in any of it’s forms. At risk of possible legal action, I’ll point out that **any** such sceme can be broken with less than $5 of equipment for more or less anyone reading this board. I’ll not say exactly how, as although it is as legal as church on Sunday, I doubt the mods want even the remotest possibility of the SDMB/the Reader being targeted. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/7 "2003-10-10T20:01:57Z")
Robert, recording analog electrical signals used for audio has been trivially easy for amateurs since the introduction of the audio cassette over 40 years ago. It’s no secret. Once that deeply encoded and protected digital signal is analogized (is that a word?) a chimpanzee could make a copy. What really bugs me is that this copy protection scheme _seems_ to load itself onto computers without the approval of the owner. I don’t particularly like the idea that merely playing a CD in my computer will open me up to having extra drivers and software loaded. I’ve played CDs in my work computer to make particularly dull work more palatable, what gives them the right to load software there? Who is liable if the new software causes an error or conflict? ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/8 "2003-10-10T22:47:37Z")
They’ve decided [not to sue](http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/10/10/news/8797.shtml). ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/9 "2003-10-11T02:24:46Z")
Cheese, I do believe that this program technically qualifies as a Trojan Horse, as they advertise it as “enhanced content”. ---
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/10 "2003-10-11T02:47:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Robert, recording analog electrical signals used for audio has been trivially easy for amateurs since the introduction of the audio cassette over 40 years ago. It’s no secret. Once that deeply encoded and protected digital signal is analogized (is that a word?) a chimpanzee could make a copy. I know that, you know that, and every great ape that’s evolved enough to lose it’s tail knows that, but apparently the makers or more likely the buyers of of copy protection scemes don’t. Draw your own conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![LordVor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90ced4/32.png) [@LordVor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LordVor)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/11 "2003-10-11T02:55:23Z")
From what I’ve read, **Cheesesteak** , the “extra software” that they install, they ask you before they install it. If you say “no”, they eject the CD. What it is is a filter driver that sits on top of the CD-ROM driver, and then when you put in a CD, it senses if the disk employs the copy-protection mechanism, and if it does, then it only allows read requests to the DRM versions of the songs. What the shift key does is keep the driver from installing, after it’s installed you need to delete the driver to keep it from working. They were suing primarily because the guy released the driver name, and the file to delete to make it stop working. How this doesn’t effectively half the storage capability of the disk (they can’t legally call this a “CD” anymore, because they’re breaking the music CD spec), since they’re storing two copies of each song (one that normal players can read, and the DRM version for computers), I wouldn’t know. So you’re getting less music for your money, as well as the music being less accessible. Sounds like a good buisiness plan to me! -lv ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/12 "2003-10-11T04:03:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by LordVor \* > **From what I’ve read, Cheesesteak, the “extra software” that they install, they ask you before they install it. If you say “no”, they eject the CD. What it is is a filter driver that sits on top of the CD-ROM driver, and then when you put in a CD, it senses if the disk employs the copy-protection mechanism, and if it does, then it only allows read requests to the DRM versions of the songs.** From what I’ve read, it doesn’t actually block requests to read the CD audio tracks, it merely distorts the audio. You can rip an MP3 from the disc with the driver installed, but it’ll sound all muddy. I don’t know whether it distinguishes between “protected” and normal discs, or just garbles _all_ tracks that you try to rip from any disc. > [@](#): > > **How this doesn’t effectively half the storage capability of the disk (they can’t legally call this a “CD” anymore, because they’re breaking the music CD spec), since they’re storing two copies of each song (one that normal players can read, and the DRM version for computers), I wouldn’t know. So you’re getting less music for your money, as well as the music being less accessible. Sounds like a good buisiness plan to me!** It doesn’t break the spec because CDs with data on them are perfectly legit. A CD Extra has an audio session and a data session; CD players see the audio session, and computers see the data session. Such discs are usually used to put music videos or games on a CD, but as I understand it, a SunComm disc is merely a CD Extra with some special software on the data session. You could say they aren’t “music CDs” because they don’t just follow the red book, but they’re still Compact Discs. It doesn’t halve the capacity of the disc because the DRM versions are Windows Media Audio tracks, which are even smaller than MP3s. A song that takes up 30 MB as a CD audio track is probably only 2 MB as a WMA. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/13 "2003-10-11T04:50:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mr2001 \* > **It doesn’t break the spec because CDs with data on them are perfectly legit. A CD Extra has an audio session and a data session; CD players see the audio session, and computers see the data session. Such discs are usually used to put music videos or games on a CD, but as I understand it, a SunComm disc is merely a CD Extra with some special software on the data session. You could say they aren’t “music CDs” because they don’t just follow the red book, but they’re still Compact Discs.** [No. They’re not Compact Discs:](http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33322.html) > [@](#): > > It’s worth noting that the BMG distributed CD Halderman tested lacks the familiar CD logo. Thanks to the inclusion of SunnComm’s technology the disc can no longer be described as a CD - an item that has a very specific description as detailed in the standards documentation written by the format’s creators, Sony and Philips. A disc that doesn’t follow the standard to the letter can’t be described by its supplier as a CD. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/14 "2003-10-11T06:34:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gary Kumquat \* > \*\*[No. They’re not Compact Discs:](http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33322.html) \*\* Interesting. According to the Princeton student’s [analysis](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/): > [@](#): > > The “Compact Disc Digital Audio” logo is absent from the printed jacket and the face of the disc, but it is embossed in the plastic on the inside of the jewel case. But regardless of the lack of a logo, I can’t see anything in the analysis to suggest the disc violates the [Blue Book](http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci508910,00.html). ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/15 "2003-10-11T14:08:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mr2001 \* > **It doesn’t halve the capacity of the disc because the DRM versions are Windows Media Audio tracks** Wow. If that’s true, that’s really shitty and completely worthless. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/16 "2003-10-11T14:50:21Z")
> [@](#): > > SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs charged that Halderman’s report was inaccurate. He said the Shift key was not a workaround and called it a “design element” of the system. And the issue isn’t the Shift key. Instead, he explained that the company was upset that Halderman disclosed the copy-management file names and directions on how to remove them. > > “I don’t think researchers have a right to publish a ‘how-to’ on how to perform illegal activities under the guise of research,” Jacobs said. “I think the DMCA says pretty clearly that one shouldn’t publish circumvention solutions that protect people’s digital property.” From Wired News: [http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60780,00.html](http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60780,00.html) . Funny how the media jumped onto the obvious hook and got everybody up in a dander :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/17 "2003-10-11T18:33:13Z")
Apparently Jacobs doesn’t think I have the right to protect my physical property by managing what is and isn’t loaded on it. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/18 "2003-10-12T18:10:23Z")
Just remember: when they outlaw the shift key, only outlaws will type in all caps. ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/19 "2003-10-13T05:37:54Z")
I love how SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs tries to pretend his decision not to sue is about not wanting to stifle research, but he can’t help slipping out: > [@](#): > > **"…if I can’t accomplish anything [with a lawsuit] I don’t want to leave a wake."** That’s really what your U-turn is about, Peter, isn’t it? Money. You don’t want to spend the money to sue, because you’ve probably been advised you’ll lose, and the appalling publicity will only damage your company further. Here’s [**one of the best articles ever written on the futitily of RIAA heavyhandedness**](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articles.cfm?catid=7&articleid=863&homepage=yes) > [@](#): > > \*\*…no legal rule is strong enough to overcome a radical technical innovation. Courts can delay progress but they cannot stop it. > > \ …innovation always drives the prices of yesterday’s technology into the dirt. The way to respond to the demise of the commercial CD is not to sue Internet-users. It is to figure out new ways to make money on music.\*\* Progress and technology will prevail. ---
**Author:** ![stick\_monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@stick\_monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stick_monkey)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707/20 "2003-10-13T13:23:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Copy protection is fantastically stupid in any of it’s forms. At risk of possible legal action, I’ll point out that any such sceme can be broken with less than $5 of equipment for more or less anyone reading this board. I think Nintendo’s Idea of copy protection for the GameCube is both novel and functionally uncrackable (meaning it’s hard/expensive enough that most wouldn’t bother), and more importantly, it’s done in such a way that noone really is bothered by it. If you were focusing your statement solely on music DRM, I apologize, and concur. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-software-doesnt-work-thats-right-sue-the-fucking-person-who-showed-you/206707.md?page=2)